Lean into Email in 2022: An Interview with iContact’s Hank Hoffmeier

I like email. Data says almost all of us do.

Email breathes easier than the social noise pollution of customers and brands trying to shout at each other through a disjointed deluge of disaster and dog photos. Ever notice how your brain feels switching from the overstimulation of Twitter to the one-on-one hush of a list of emails which you can either choose to open or delete? Do you experience a difference? Stats indicate that our private email inboxes are a sort of refuge we’ve come to count on, a quieter corner where people can experience satisfying customer service when done right.

When Moz and SMB email marketing software provider iContact  joined hands this past summer, I began looking for an opportunity to explore our shared goals of facilitating brand discovery and brand-consumer communication. Like you, I’ve absorbed years of steady statistics about the outstanding ROI of email marketing amid louder social media hype, but this was my first chance to sit down with an expert like Hank Hoffmeier, who is Strategic Insights Manager at iContact.

I believe reading Hank’s tips and talk on trends today will make 2022 the year you center email in your customer service strategy for its welcome privacy, usefulness, familiarity, cost effectiveness, and excellent conversion potentials.

The profit and popularity of email marketing

Miriam: A stat which stunned me is that email marketing generates $42 for every $1 spent, yet I sometimes feel like email has been presented as “boring” vs. the glaring busy box of social. What is your take on this, Hank?

Hank: According to Demand Curve, email marketing has a higher ROI than any other form of publicity, can drive 6x more conversions than Twitter posting, and is 40 x more likely to be noticed than what a company posts on Facebook. Email marketing allows you to send the right message, to the right person, at the right time, at a ridiculously low cost. Stop throwing money at PPC and social media advertising that takes longer to convert and costs so much.

Email marketing allows you to get personal with your subscribers. This is either not plausible or can be very challenging with other channels like social media that require you to follow customers to message or DM them. Email is where we obtain long form personal messages, obtain order and shipping information, and communicate at work.

With your email marketing campaigns, each message can feel like a one-on-one conversation by using segmentation and personalization. Subscribers can be greeted by first name and can experience content that matters to them on the basis of data such as survey information, purchase history, engagement history and more. Make sure to ask for information to help provide a better experience for your subscribers.

Miriam: Email open rates increased 13.64% in 2020, mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I was surprised to read that it’s actually millennials who are spending more time in email than any other group. What stats convince you most that email is popular, not just with brands, but with everybody?

Hank: A study from Pew Research says six in ten American workers who use the internet say email is “very important” for doing their job, while the Content Marketing Institute reported that 83% of B2B marketers use email newsletters for content marketing. Still not convinced? 95% of online consumers use email! In fact, to sign up for a social media account, you need an email address. The demise of email marketing has been reported year after year, but it is still a pillar in the content marketing world.

Email’s edge amid privacy concerns and consumer protections

Miriam: Consumer privacy has become a huge topic for SEO, and I’ve mentioned above my “quiet corner” idea about email, but I know it also faces challenges. What can you tell me about respecting customers’ privacy?

Hank: Data privacy is going to be trending next year. Email marketers are going to need to do more with less. We are seeing more of an emphasis being placed on data privacy. Apple in particular is creating a challenge in measuring email open rates and identifying subscriber location. For sure, we will see more email and technology companies follow suit. There is also the pending demise of third party cookies to worry about.

By collecting first party data, marketers will be able to continue segmenting, targeting and personalizing their emails for maximum effect. Things that will help marketers prepare would be updating sign up-forms, using surveys, and integrating with CRMs and e-commerce platforms to make better use of data being collected.

Miriam: I’ve talked about social channels being overwhelming, but complaints about groaning inboxes are common, too, especially when customers receive emails they don’t want. What can you tell me about double opt-in as a vehicle for respecting customers’ wishes?

Hank: Marketers should only send emails to people who want to receive emails from them. No exceptions. One way to ensure that subscribers really want your emails is to use a double opt-in process. This allows subscribers to confirm that they want your awesome emails and also helps them find your email in their inbox right away and dig it out from spam, should it land there.

Your double opt-in messaging should not be generic. Get potential subscribers excited to receive your emails and want to opt-in right away! Remember to offer value and entertainment.

More importantly, once subscribers opt-in, you need to send a welcome email right away, telling them what to expect and how often. It helps set expectations and allows you to start your relationship off right.

Miriam: So, what types of emails have you documented as being most welcomed by customers who have definitely opted-in, and have you noticed any differences in this between virtual and local business customers?

Hank: For the most part, the differences are small between brick-and-mortar and e-commerce emails. They are both similar in that brands are looking for conversions and the differentiation is that the conversion for brick-and-mortar can drive traffic into a physical location vs. e-commerce’s solely online purchases. The same email marketing best practices work for both entities.

According to the IDC, 80% of people check their email within 15 minutes of waking up. Email is still the preferred method of communication for consumers. We buy stuff and want to know when it will ship. We want to be entertained and inspired. Marketers need to educate and inform their subscribers using email.

Emails that have images and video tend to perform best. According to Forrester, video content has a 95% retention rate versus a 10% rate with text only. Use more images and videos in your email marketing campaigns to entertain and inform.

The mobile mountain and the marketers’ meh

Miriam: 64% of small businesses are using email marketing, but one-in-five campaigns isn’t formatted for mobile use. This is a huge mountain of a problem! Both Moz and iContact care a lot about SMBs. What advice do you have to help them make the necessary mobile transition?

Hank: Let’s face it, we live in a mobile world. More than half of email opens are on a mobile device. If you are not creating mobile responsive email campaigns, you are creating friction with your recipients. It is a bad experience that will lead to subscribers ignoring your emails or worse, marking them as spam or unsubscribing.

Almost every email marketing platform will have a drag and drop email editor that inherently creates a mobile responsive version for you. iContact has an easy-to-use editor that provides inspiration and great results.

Let’s cover some basic items:

• Email content needs to have the ability to stack elements on top of one another and images and text must conform to the size of the screen they are being displayed on

• Avoid images with small details that will not render well on mobile, while also making sure that your content is not cluttered and allows for finger-friendly clicks and scrolling. Calls to action, such as buttons need to be legible and clickable.

• Use larger font sizes, shorter subject lines, avoid stacking links, and the most important tip is to test, test, test!

Miriam: Sadly, about half of marketers confess they feel the email campaigns they’re engaging in are only poor-to-average in quality. It’s definitely a “meh” state of affairs. What are the top mistakes you see in your day-to-day work in this field and do you have tips for improvement?

Hank: The biggest mistake I see email marketers making is thinking of their campaigns through their lens. They do not get to know their audience (avatar) well enough to send emails that matter to them and wonder why the results are lacking. Consider:

1. It’s important to find the right frequency of emails that resonate. Do not send too many or too few emails. Survey your audience or watch trends in your reporting to find out the right amount of emails to send.

2. The days of “spray and pray” are over. Many marketers fail to use subscriber segmentation. Segmentation allows for better-targeted emails. According to the Data & Marketing Association (DMA), marketers can realize up to a 760% increase in ROI by using segmentation. How about that? Better results for sending the right message to the right person!

3. The most underutilized feature in email marketing is automation. By using workflows, you can create a powerful welcome or nurture series as well as have checks and balances along the way to drive better engagement and conversions.

Miriam: I do feel concerned for SMBs when I receive their emails with formatting errors or other problems that must be undermining the success of their campaigns. What are the bare minimum basics small business owners should look for in an email marketing tool?

Hank: Since email marketing has been around for a long time, whatever platform you choose should not be hard to use, should offer the most up-to-date features, and have good support. Look for these must-haves:

• Segmentation

• Automation

• Easy to use email editor

• Templates

• Dependable support

• Split testing capabilities

Email for welcome stability in 2022

I learned so much from chatting with Hank, and hope you’ve found good takeaways, too. As he says, email marketing has been around for a long time, and there’s something reassuring about that.

Make no mistake, email isn’t standing still. I’m interested in innovations surrounding AMP-style emails that turn mailers into microsites, enabling recipients to complete a checkout, book an appointment, or RSVP without having to leave their inbox. Dark mode email compatibility is another trend I’d like to know more about, and I’m always on the lookout for A/B split test developments that indicate how to prompt more engagement on matters of social progress.

But I think it’s the longstanding reliability of email that appeals to me most. As marketers and business owners, we feel constantly pressured to jump into the latest-greatest-new-thing. There can be fun in that, but also fatigue. Also, wasted client budgets when trendy experiments lack a foundation of proven results. Recently, I saw Rand Fishkin explain that email open rates are 252x higher than Facebook page engagements. Veteran marketers have been softly sharing this kind of wisdom about tried-and-true email marketing for years.

Do experiment! Do build the brands you market to converse everywhere. But don’t forget to take a breather when it’s so readily available, leaning on the steady edifice of email with its history of high conversion rates. Most companies, and most customers, have experienced more rapid change lately than we’ve wanted, and I’d say this should make the dependability of email communications all the more welcome to all parties in the year ahead.

Why Getting Indexed by Google is so Difficult

Every website relies on Google to some extent. It’s simple: your pages get indexed by Google, which makes it possible for people to find you. That’s the way things should go.

However, that’s not always the case. Many pages never get indexed by Google.

If you work with a website, especially a large one, you’ve probably noticed that not every page on your website gets indexed, and many pages wait for weeks before Google picks them up.

Various factors contribute to this issue, and many of them are the same factors that are mentioned with regard to ranking — content quality and links are two examples. Sometimes, these factors are also very complex and technical. Modern websites that rely heavily on new web technologies have notoriously suffered from indexing issues in the past, and some still do.

Many SEOs still believe that it’s the very technical things that prevent Google from indexing content, but this is a myth. While it’s true that Google might not index your pages if you don’t send consistent technical signals as to which pages you want indexed or if you have insufficient crawl budget, it’s just as important that you’re consistent with the quality of your content.

Most websites, big or small, have lots of content that should be indexed — but isn’t. And while things like JavaScript do make indexing more complicated, your website can suffer from serious indexing issues even if it’s written in pure HTML. In this post, let’s address some of the most common issues, and how to mitigate them.

Reasons why Google isn’t indexing your pages

Using a custom indexing checker tool, I checked a large sample of the most popular e-commerce stores in the US for indexing issues. I discovered that, on average, 15% of their indexable product pages cannot be found on Google.

That result was extremely surprising. What I needed to know next was “why”: what are the most common reasons why Google decides not to index something that should technically be indexed?

Google Search Console reports several statuses for unindexed pages, like “Crawled - currently not indexed” or “Discovered - currently not indexed”. While this information doesn’t explicitly help address the issue, it’s a good place to start diagnostics.

Top indexing issues

Based on a large sample of websites I collected, the most popular indexing issues reported by Google Search Console are:

1. “Crawled - currently not indexed”

In this case, Google visited a page but didn’t index it.

Based on my experience, this is usually a content quality issue. Given the e-commerce boom that’s currently happening, we can expect Google to get pickier when it comes to quality. So if you notice your pages are “Crawled - currently not indexed”, make sure the content on those pages is uniquely valuable:

• Use unique titles, descriptions, and copy on all indexable pages.

• Avoid copying product descriptions from external sources.

• Use canonical tags to consolidate duplicate content.

• Block Google from crawling or indexing low-quality sections of your website by using the robots.txt file or the noindex tag.

If you are interested in the topic, I recommend reading Chris Long’s Crawled — Currently Not Indexed: A Coverage Status Guide.

2. “Discovered - currently not indexed”

This is my favorite issue to work with, because it can encompass everything from crawling issues to insufficient content quality. It’s a massive problem, particularly in the case of large e-commerce stores, and I’ve seen this apply to tens of millions of URLs on a single website.

Google may report that e-commerce product pages are “Discovered - currently not indexed” because of:

• A crawl budget issue: there may be too many URLs in the crawling queue and these may be crawled and indexed later.

• A quality issue: Google may think that some pages on that domain aren't worth crawling and decide not to visit them by looking for a pattern in their URL.

Dealing with this problem takes some expertise. If you find out that your pages are “Discovered - currently not indexed”, do the following:

1. Identify if there are patterns of pages falling into this category. Maybe the problem is related to a specific category of products and the whole category isn’t linked internally? Or maybe a huge portion of product pages are waiting in the queue to get indexed?

2. Optimize your crawl budget. Focus on spotting low-quality pages that Google spends a lot of time crawling. The usual suspects include filtered category pages and internal search pages — these pages can easily go into tens of millions on a typical e-commerce site. If Googlebot can freely crawl them, it may not have the resources to get to the valuable stuff on your website indexed in Google.

During the webinar "Rendering SEO", Martin Splitt of Google gave us a few hints on fixing the Discovered not indexed issue. Check it out if you want to learn more.

3. “Duplicate content”

This issue is extensively covered by the Moz SEO Learning Center. I just want to point out here that duplicate content may be caused by various reasons, such as:

• Language variations (e.g. English language in the UK, US, or Canada). If you have several versions of the same page that are targeted at different countries, some of these pages may end up unindexed.

• Duplicate content used by your competitors. This often occurs in the e-commerce industry when several websites use the same product description provided by the manufacturer.

Besides using rel=canonical, 301 redirects, or creating unique content, I would focus on providing unique value for the users. Fast-growing-trees.com would be an example. Instead of boring descriptions and tips on planting and watering, the website allows you to see a detailed FAQ for many products.

Also, you can easily compare between similar products.

For many products, it provides an FAQ. Also, every customer can ask a detailed question about a plant and get the answer from the community.

How to check your website’s index coverage

You can easily check how many pages of your website aren’t indexed by opening the Index Coverage report in Google Search Console.

The first thing you should look at here is the number of excluded pages. Then try to find a pattern — what types of pages don’t get indexed?

If you own an e-commerce store, you’ll most probably see unindexed product pages. While this should always be a warning sign, you can’t expect to have all of your product pages indexed, especially with a large website. For instance, a large e-commerce store is bound to have duplicate pages and expired or out-of-stock products. These pages may lack the quality that would put them at the front of Google's indexing queue (and that’s if Google decides to crawl these pages in the first place).

In addition, large e-commerce websites tend to have issues with crawl budget. I’ve seen cases of e-commerce stores having more than a million products while 90% of them were classified as “Discovered - currently not indexed”. But if you see that important pages are being excluded from Google’s index, you should be deeply concerned.

How to increase the probability Google will index your pages

Every website is different and may suffer from different indexing issues. However, here are some of the best practices that should help your pages get indexed:

1. Avoid the “Soft 404” signals

Make sure your pages don’t contain anything that may falsely indicate a soft 404 status. This includes anything from using “Not found” or “Not available” in the copy to having the number “404” in the URL.

2. Use internal linking
Internal linking is one of the key signals for Google that a given page is an important part of the website and deserves to be indexed. Leave no orphan pages in your website’s structure, and remember to include all indexable pages in your sitemaps.

3. Implement a sound crawling strategy
Don’t let Google crawl cruft on your website. If too many resources are spent crawling the less valuable parts of your domain, it might take too long for Google to get to the good stuff. Server log analysis can give you the full picture of what Googlebot crawls and how to optimize it.

4. Eliminate low-quality and duplicate content
Every large website eventually ends up with some pages that shouldn’t be indexed. Make sure that these pages don’t find their way into your sitemaps, and use the noindex tag and the robots.txt file when appropriate. If you let Google spend too much time in the worst parts of your site, it might underestimate the overall quality of your domain.

5. Send consistent SEO signals.
One common example of sending inconsistent SEO signals to Google is altering canonical tags with JavaScript. As Martin Splitt of Google mentioned during JavaScript SEO Office Hours, you can never be sure what Google will do if you have one canonical tag in the source HTML, and a different one after rendering JavaScript.

The web is getting too big

In the past couple of years, Google has made giant leaps in processing JavaScript, making the job of SEOs easier. These days, it’s less common to see JavaScript-powered websites that aren’t indexed because of the specific tech stack they’re using.

But can we expect the same to happen with the indexing issues that aren’t related to JavaScript? I don’t think so.

The internet is constantly growing. Every day new websites appear, and existing websites grow.

Can Google deal with this challenge?

This question appears every once in a while. I like quoting Google here:

“Google has a finite number of resources, so when faced with the nearly infinite quantity of content that's available online, Googlebot is only able to find and crawl a percentage of that content. Then, of the content we've crawled, we're only able to index a portion.​”

To put it differently, Google is able to visit just a portion of all pages on the web and index an even smaller portion. And even if your website is amazing, you should keep that in mind.

Google probably won’t visit every page of your website, even if it’s relatively small. Your job is to make sure that Google can discover and index pages that are essential for your business.

GMB to GBP: 3 Invitations for Google to Alter Their Indifference towards SMBs

Software dashboards are supposed to feel clean and quiet, organized so that everything you need to do good work is right at hand, like this:

Seeing the rebrand of Google My Business to Google Business Profile include the news that single location businesses will no longer enjoy the dignity of a room of one’s own because nice dashboards will be the sole province of more fortunate, large enterprises, it feels like SMBs are now being told (with indifference) to manage their listings here:

In Google’s own words:

“Moving forward, we recommend small businesses manage their profiles directly on Search or Maps. To keep things simple, ‘Google My Business’ is being renamed ‘Google Business Profile.’...The existing Google My Business web experience will transition to primarily support larger businesses with multiple locations, and will be renamed ‘Business Profile Manager.’”

To wit, big businesses will be granted some version of the former Google My Business dashboard, with its helpful navigation and dedicated work areas, while SMBs must figure out what has changed and try to manage their most visible local business listings directly in the messy SERPs, amid an astounding clutter of ads, organic results, SERP features, carousels, images, video results, and so on.

Perhaps it’s no big deal and local businesses desiring the organization of a dedicated listings management dashboard can rely on the Moz Locals of the marketplace. Or perhaps it’s a turning point.

Maybe now is a critical moment in Google’s history to invite them to rethink this troubling pattern their powerful company has fallen into since they stepped into the lives of small business owners 16 years ago, and began to dominate so much of their fate. The highlighted words in the above quote are an emphatic statement of alignment with larger — often elite — brands instead of with the diverse small businesses, which are the very meaning of localism.

Personally, I see our socioeconomics deeply wounded by the pattern of giving preferential treatment to whatever is largest and treating whatever is smallest with chronic indifference, and I believe Google has the clout to change this dynamic within their own, very substantial sphere — if they choose to. Today, when champions of positive change are the most important people in any room, please join me in sending three invitations to Google from the local business neighborhood, in hopes of an RSVP.

1) Could Google stop hiding 59% of websites in local packs?

My friend and Moz’s marketing scientist, Dr. Peter J. Meyers, recently shared some numbers with me that deserve to be seen. Running 10,000 keywords through MozCast, half of which were specifically localized to cities, Google returned 3,322 local packs on desktop, meaning that 33% of the SERPs queried featured these types of results. Of these packs, 59% featured zero links to local business websites, in this fashion:

This was not a case of website links missing because no websites existed — packs in which some of the entries had website links and others didn’t (because no URL had been added) were 41% of the total number. Rather, these website-less packs were of the kind that have been dubbed “local teasers”, and a variety of other names over the years.

Dr. Pete ran the test twice, and on the second trial, website-less packs made up 58% of the total. In other words, nearly 6/10 of Google’s local SERPs intentionally hide URLs. This is not a force of nature, or a scientific principle — it’s a decision Google is making to obscure local businesses’ home base, where they work so hard to offer a customer experience they directly control.

Why am I inviting Google to change this? Granted, the chief charm of local business listings is that they can be just what customers need for very quick information. But the pandemic has made local business websites centers of help, commerce, and communication like never before, and these companies deserve a search engine that respects the investments they are making in shopping carts, booking systems, live chat, text and audio-visual media, and other brand-controlled assets.

Google’s vision is to be, as Tidings founder David Mihm says, “the transaction layer of the Internet”, but I invite them not to support that goal by hiding the transactional capabilities offered by the small brands that make up Google’s index. It’s not right or fair to do so.

Something Google can do to signal that they aren’t disrespecting single location businesses is to return websites links to all local packs whenever a business has uploaded a URL. This would show that Google understands that small business owners often feel powerless having a giant search engine own so much of the display of their information and reputation. Google can toss the ball back to Main Street so that more customers end up on a platform where the business controls the customer experience in their own, unique style.

2) Could Google align with straight talk, not scare tactics, for a healthier shared workspace?

As recently demonstrated in a study by Sterling Sky, Google’s local product has become a dominant driver of local business leads. Short of going completely off the Google grid, local business owners are forced to make Google’s place their own in order to be found by customers, and everyone deserves to have a shared workspace where they’re treated with dignity.

Unfortunately, Google chose to kick off the rebranding of Google My Business as Google Business Profile by subjecting local business owners to emails and CTAs developed to frighten them into believing that anti-trust regulations of Google’s monopoly will hurt small businesses.

The local SEO community tended to take it like this:

As reported by Near Media’s Mike Blumenthal, these scare tactics may not be new, but they are certainly antisocial. Having witnessed Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen explain how causing society anger, distress, and fear monetarily benefits publishers, all technology brands of good conscience should be pledging to become allies to a healthy and informed society instead of one that is being harmed with calculated misinformation.

As a Californian, I take Google’s attempt to cause fear personally, having recently lived through third party food delivery and rideshare corporations pouring a record-breaking $200+ million dollars into Proposition 22 in order to deny a living wage and basic protections to a group of drivers who are so poor that they are often living in their cars and eating part of the food they are meant to deliver. Prop 22 was recently ruled unconstitutional, and many voters and drivers now regret that they were manipulated into voting for it via a threatening, powerful ad campaign.

No business model should rely on creating the very stress physicians tell us to avoid to protect our health, and I would invite Google to rethink the workspace they’re creating, in which independent business owners have little other choice than to participate. These scary CTAs and emails are being received by the doctors who provide vaccines to Google executives and employees, the independent distillery owners who made your hand sanitizer when Purell disappeared, the local grocer or restaurateur who makes and delivers your meals while you work from home. Reciprocal respect is required.

Be an honest ally to the local businesses that have heroically served society through COVID-19 and kept our communities supplied. Don’t target them with misinformation and cause them distress just for the sake of protecting Google’s profits. Individual and societal health are priceless.

3) Could Google draft a good neighbor policy to establish a new relationship with small, local businesses?

In his inaugural address in 1933, FDR stated:

“In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor...the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.”

I’ve spent most of the last two decades of my life consulting with local business owners and becoming an advocate for the essential role they play in building diverse and sustainable communities. Perhaps it’s because I grew up hanging out in the imagined neighborhoods of Mister Rogers and Sesame Street that it seems so fundamental to me that respect for one’s self is the first step towards respecting others. Google, as a workplace, is full of good people who deserve an environment of respect that is felt by all staff, all local product users, and all communities. If you want to make localism your platform’s business, these folks deserve a good neighbor:

I can’t speak for the local business owners who have put on masks every day for the past two years to serve others at great personal risk, but I would like to start an open list today of suggestions for how Google, with its central role in the online local world, could become a better neighbor in serving the offline, real world we all share:

1. Reconsider excluding single location business owners from the dashboard; everyone deserves an equal workspace.

2. Return website links to all local packs.

3. Do not use fear to protect your profits; stress causes damage to human health.

4. Do provide accessible support for all Google local products, via a full staff of remote workers who have been deeply trained in all the things that can go wrong with Google Business Profiles and how to fix them.

5. Create a dedicated, remote listing spam removal team to the scale of the problem and demote easily-manipulated ranking factors like business title stuffing.

6. Create a dedicated, remote review mediation staff to the scale of the problem to promptly investigate and resolve business owner reports of review spam attacks.

7. Launch an investigation into the pattern of low quality Q&A answers and reviews that has arisen from the decision to incentivize Local Guides; if business owners aren’t supposed to offer perks in exchange for this type of UGC, Google really shouldn’t either.

8. Don’t use your power to favor Google products and partners over small business solutions.

9. Do use your power to lead on Climate Action to protect local business districts from wildfires, floods, and other increasing disasters.

10. Put @EthicalGooglers and other human rights and DEI groups within Google at the center of company policy-making to reflect a real-world diversity of people, values, and needs.

I’d like to ask the Moz community to be a good neighbor by adding their sincere suggestions for positive change you believe Google can contribute to. Tell me what you’d add to my list by tweeting me.

In his article entitled How Indifference Can Kill a Relationship, John M. Grohl, Psy.D. states:

“What a relationship has real difficulty surviving is when two people have gone into ‘autopilot’ mode and become indifferent toward one another. When you’ve given up on emotion entirely, when you feel nothing toward the other person, that’s a difficult thing to come back from.”

I don’t believe that the good human beings working at Google are personally indifferent to the doctors, restaurateurs, grocers, drivers, shopkeepers, teachers, religious leaders, and other community servants who care for their needs and whose entities make up the thing now called Google Business Profile. I believe all we have here is a relationship that needs to be fixed, and that Google already has everything they need to do it. 2022, with all we’ve been through together, would be a wonderful year for Google to show their deep investment in localism and their intentions to build forward from a place of mutual respect.

Image credits Kelly Sims, R. Kriatyrr Brosvik, and Baker County Tourism

How to Make Newsworthy Content: Part 2

Content marketing expert Amanda Milligan is back with three more ways to make your content more newsworthy. If you haven't seen part one, be sure to check it out! 

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Amanda Milligan, and I am back with a part two for how to make newsworthy content. So when I made part one, I was working at Fractl, and I talked about three things. Let's see I remember them. It was data, emotion, and impact as three elements you need to be considering when creating newsworthy content. Those are still important. If you haven't seen that Whiteboard Friday, check it out after this one. It doesn't need to be in any particular order. 

Now I work at Stacker. stacker.com is a publication, but it's also a newswire. So like the AP for breaking news or Reuters for financial news, Stacker is a newswire for data journalism. So I work on the brand side though, where we partner with brands. They underwrite content, and we syndicate it to our newswire. I've been talking to the team, since I'm still relatively new, and they told me that these are three additional things that they consider when they are creating content for their publishing partners.

So it was fascinating to get their take on this, and I'm really excited to share this with you. 

Is it serviceable?

So let's just dive in. Three things to consider. The first is if the content is serviceable. Basically, all that means is how can it help the reader. So as marketers, we're actually already pretty good at this. This is like the how-to content of the world just with more of a news spin.

So it's not going to be your standard blog post. It's going to be more along the lines of how do you take something practical that's happening to people, that's also newsworthy, which we can get into exactly what that means. This will overlap with a lot of these other different qualities. So if it's serviceable and it's also adding context to a greater story, if it's serviceable and also based on new data, or it's based on an emotional component or it impacts a lot of people, those things all help it be newsworthy.

Is it contextualized?

The second is contextualized. This is something that Stacker really excels at and I find fascinating. So we can't break news as marketers. That's not our job. We're not in the business of doing really quick reporting off of big events. That's just not what we're doing.

So contextualizing is taking a look at what's trending, what people are talking about, what's happening and thinking about the other angles, the other perspectives that tell a more comprehensive story to that. This has worked really well. I think it's something that all brands should be considering when they're following like if you have those websites or blogs that you follow in your niche, thinking about what those kind of like top news stories are and how you can add to the conversation.

Is it localized?

Finally, localized. So this one is near and dear to my heart because I actually have a journalism degree even though I never became a reporter. I learned localization in college. I took a class called reporting that was extremely difficult. It was the weed out class for the journalism degree. The first time I got an A and I got my article run in the college newspaper, it was from localization.

There was a national story about how doodling can help improve your concentration, which I thought was interesting and kind of contrary to what you would normally think. I called up local experts, like people at the university, neuroscientists, and I said, "Hey, I just saw this report come out. Do you agree with it?" They were thrilled to talk to me about it, and they told me all about how they absolutely believe that that's true, that they doodle when they are listening to presentations.

Anyway, it's not that the data was any different or anything. It's that it was localized. It was that it mattered to the people who were reading it because it was being corroborated by people in their own community. So localization can be a huge asset if you're a brand that has a brick-and-mortar or not. If you specialize in certain areas, if your customers live in certain areas, localizing content can really speak to them in a way that the national content might not.

An example story

So I just ran through those things. So let's do a little exercise. This is a statistic I saw recently. The median home price for an existing home in August of 2021 increased by 15% compared to 2020. 

So this is from the National Association of Realtors. It's a statistic I saw. The exercise I want to do is let's try to come up with angles, not even necessarily the ones that you're going to run with for the story, but to brainstorm in that direction. 

1. Serviceable

So serviceable. How do you take a statistic like this and consider the serviceable angles? So I have written, "Where are the most affordable places to live?" So if we're finding that home prices are going up, it's a practical, helpful thing to know where it could actually be affordable to move.

If people are thinking about moving, they're like, "I don't know if it makes sense to do that." At least now they can have their options. Then going a little deeper or even just like a different way of approaching the same conversation is what an average home looks like in X place at X price. So you're taking those increased prices and you can show examples of what a home looks like.

I've seen projects like this before. You probably have too. But it's a different way of illustrating the same useful point, which is where could I actually see myself living. That's what makes it serviceable. You're giving them information that they can actually act on later. So those are some serviceable angles. 

2. Contextualized 

Contextualizing. So there's a lot to unpack in this stat. I believe this was a Forbes article I was reading, and they go into a little bit of detail about some of the context. But there are other ways to dive into the context. Even without reading the story, what I was thinking about was: What is the average down payment now? So if the home prices are increasing, presumably the down payment costs are increasing.

What I remember the article saying was that that's always the biggest hurdle, or not always, most of the time the biggest hurdle, especially for first-time home buyers, is the down payment. It's a big sum of money. So how much is that increasing, and what does that look like for the average person? What does that amount of money equate to in the rest of your life? How long would it take to save that amount of money?

These are all contextualizing details that make it feel a little bit more relevant to you. Then I said, "How does this compare to the average student loan debt for a person?" So just telling a greater financial, like personal finance story. The way the team at Stacker thinks about contextualizing is you're comparing it to similar things.

So things may be historically is the quickest way to do it. Like how has this been in the past? But also different things that are still relevant. That's where student loans come in. It's not just in a vacuum. Your financial situation is impacted by multiple elements, and it's good to get a full picture of that. 

3. Localized

Finally, localizing. So how have prices changed? So this is the average in general. But have they changed in different states at a different rate? Which states has the price increased more? Which states maybe have stayed the same or maybe have dropped? That's not being illustrated by a national statistic. What local programs exist for first-time buyers?

This is a great combo of serviceable and localized. So if you are a first-time home buyer and you're thinking, "I have no idea how I'm going to do this now because COVID happened. I don't know how I'm going to afford a house." An article that shows them all of their options, tells them what localized programs there are for first-time home buyers is extremely relevant and serviceable and local, and that is where you get the sweet spot of newsworthy content where publishers are really going to want that information.

So consider these as potential angles to brainstorm when you're coming up with content ideas. 

Final tips

Consider the data

Also consider what I talked about last time, which is data. We're all about data. If you can use original data in your story or take existing data and draw new conclusions and tell new stories with it, that's gold.

Consider emotion

Emotion, does it have an emotional impact? Impact, meaning how many people does it affect. All of these things are great, great lenses to come up with fantastic newsworthy content. 

Thank you so much for listening to this and taking the time. If you have any questions, feel free to reach me on Twitter. I'm @millanda, and my email is amilligan@stacker.com. I love talking about this stuff. Please reach out if you have any questions and thank you so much again.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com. 

Improve Your Reporting and Make Stakeholders Listen by Incorporating Share of Voice

What is “share of voice”?

Share of voice (SOV) in marketing originated as advertising terminology, defining the percentage of media spend by a company compared to the total spend in the market. In essence, it’s meant to gauge visibility of a brand compared to its competition. In the SEO world, it measures organic visibility compared to the rest of the search landscape.

Share of voice has been used in the SEO industry for years, but recently more SEO tools have begun incorporating it as an additional measurement alternative to simple rank tracking.

Rank tracking is extremely valuable, but when it comes to reporting and speaking with stakeholders unfamiliar with the minutiae of SEO, rank tracking can get people confused and caught up on a specific rank for one term at one point in time. Not to mention that search engines are extremely sophisticated now, and many factors can influence why a brand may rank position #1 in one location and position #8 in another.

Share of voice is an alternative measurement that brings rank tracking to a higher-level conversation about overall awareness performance.

I’d be remiss not to mention that share of voice is just one metric to incorporate. Good SEO measurement dives deeper into the business impact of the channel, But including SOV can be a great way to discuss overall awareness, which is an important step in the funnel to sales and conversions.

How is SOV calculated?

Share of voice is typically calculated as (Position Click Through Rate X Search Volume) / Total Volume summarized for all keywords. This allows higher search volume terms to make a bigger impact than those with lower volume.

For example, if you rank position #3 for a term with 1,000 monthly searches and position #1 for a term with 100 monthly searches, you would do the following math to get SOV:

• Keyword 1: Position 3 CTR 9.25% * 1,000 = 92.5

• Keyword 2: Position 1 CTR 34.76% * 100 = 34.76

• Total SOV = 127.26 / 1,100 = 11.57%

Thankfully, tools can do this automatically for us. (2013 me was doing this at scale in Excel, and ain’t nobody got time for that anymore!)

How to use STAT SOV

STAT automatically calculates SOV within their tool. They do this at a few different levels: the overall project, a data view, and a tag. This allows for flexibility to report on SOV for the whole site, a certain section, or a certain topic. You can get as creative as you want when setting up the tags and data views. Just keep in mind what you would want to report as SOV for a website when creating your tagging strategy.

There are plenty of resources already on how to set up tagging strategies. Here is a great article on the overview of using tags for analyzing data, and STAT resources have plenty of documentation on how to set up tags.

Out of the box, STAT utilizes their own click-through-rate percentages, but you can customize them to match your industry if you have different metrics you’d like to use.’

STAT automatically calculates the SOV for the top competitor sites in a group of keywords. You can add your sites domain(s) and any top competitors you want to make sure are included as “pinned” sites within the SOV settings tab.

Learn more about how to customize the SOV settings here.

Once you’re all set up with your customization, you’ll receive daily updates to SOV and can use the helpful reporting dashboard to compare over time.

Incorporating SOV into reporting dashboards

You can always export data directly from STAT or utilize screenshots in your monthly report format of choice, but I prefer using the STAT Google Data Studio connectors. These allow for an easy data connection and the ability to add custom visuals to existing or new reports. It’s a shortcut to making client-friendly visuals that don’t require custom updates.

Here is a great resource to start with if you are new to the STAT GDS connection. You’ll have to learn how to do simple API calls to get some of the data points you need, but I promise you’ll feel more powerful once you master.

If the API instructions scare you, use this builder to input your own account metrics as a shortcut.

Once you have your API details, go to this link to begin setting up the SOV data connection at the site level and use this link to set it up at the tag level. You should see a visual similar to the following. The site connector will have Site ID and the tag connector will have Tag ID. Fill in your fields and add to an existing or new report.

Once you have the data in your report you can now build your ideal visuals.

Visualizing SOV

Share of voice in STAT is listed in an ongoing line chart or a table. I find that useful as an SEO, but a stakeholder tends to just need a quick snapshot they can read as “good” or “bad” quickly. People's attention span is getting lower and lower with more things to distract them everyday. Good data visualization can get your point across faster and gain trust with stakeholders.

There are a few options I tend to use as a starting point. These range from snapshot in time visuals to trending visuals.

Bar chart

Bar charts are extremely easy ways to visualize the SOV in a way that allows the audience to compare and see who is winning and who is losing in a snapshot in time.

To visualize SOV within a bar chart use Site as your Dimension and Share of Voice as your metric. Ensure SOV is properly calculated as a percent of the total. You can either customize your date range to be a default time frame or use a date range filter on the page to allow it to be changed on the fly.

Pie chart

Pie charts are very controversial in the data viz industry. These are generally not a good option since you can’t easily compare the inputs to each other. I challenge that the share of voice is less of a comparison and more of a percentage of total, which is what a pie chart is meant to show, and therefore sometimes utilize them as a quick snapshot. I tend to include a bar chart next to this visual to dive in more just in case, but you do what you prefer.

Follow the same instructions as the bar chart when setting up the visualization.

Table

Tables are simple and effective ways to easily read data. I wouldn’t suggest this as a visual by itself, but it’s great to have as a reference for a chart or for an analyst.

By default the table settings will sum the share of voice metric so make sure you adjust it to be a percentage of total.

Line chart

This would be similar to the out-of-the-box visualization in STAT itself. The difference is that you can visualize in more of an aggregate format and make them a bit more in line with your reporting visuals. Add certain colors to draw attention to your sites or calls-outs as needed. When setting up a line chart, use a simple number versus a percent to make sure it aggregates properly.

Again, these are just starting points, use what you need to tell the right story to your audience.

Take it to the next level

One of my favorite parts of GDS is the ability to interact with your data and customize it on the fly. These are just some quick tips to make your dashboards even more useful.

Utilize filters

Filters allow you to adjust data on the fly. There are two types of filters: a page level filter that can change multiple visuals while looking at the report and a visual level filter that pre-filters specific visuals. Use a page level filter when you want the report viewer to have the ability to dig into the data and use visual level filters for when you want the data to only display the filtered data you selected.

Page-level filters

You can add a filter under the “Add a Control” dropdown. The most common page level filters I use include date range control and dimension filters. You can set up dimension filters to be self-selecting or custom search options. Which you choose depends on what you want a report viewer to have access to use.

For example, adding in a filter for Sites allows you to change the competitors listed in a visual. This can help you remove competition that is making the visuals hard to read (*cough* Google *cough*) or that the audience doesn’t care about.

Visual-level filters

There are different options to apply filters at the report, page and visual level, but all of these are filters that are applied to your visual before it’s created. This customizes the data in the visual to exactly what you want to show versus the report viewer having to self-select.

For example, you could add a visual level filter to only show the sites you have manually added, in case you didn’t want to show the full landscape.

I wouldn’t recommend using pie charts for filtered data, since it does remove key data points from the total.

You can learn more about filter options from Google's resources.

Create competition groupings

Calculated fields in GDS give the ability to layer data transformations on top of the raw data source. You aren’t modifying the data itself, but instead creating a new value to include in the report. There are plenty of resources to learn how to create calculated fields so I’ll just cover the high level steps here.

Example: You want to visualize the types of competition with the top SOV by site type versus domain. Setting up the following calculated field will summarize the SOV by grouping so you can get an even higher level view of your top competition:

To add a calculated field, open the data source and click “Add a Field” and then add in your custom code.

Make multiple views

Who says you only have to have one report? I’m a huge fan of an internal and external report view. This allows you to set up more details in your internal report while keeping an external report high level and focused on the visuals. Use the internal report to dive deeper and build your insights for the stakeholder-facing one.

For a client-facing report I tend to keep the visuals focused on a specific time frame without the ability to filter. This allows the client to see what I want them to see.

For my internal reports, I tend to include the ability to adjust timeframes, include multiple filter options, and include tables to support my visuals so I can easily download or see the raw data if needed.

Get creative with your data

With tools like STAT and Google Data Studio, you can combine data sources on a common data point. The SOV data source has “Date” as a field, so any other data source that includes a date can be combined.

Want to visualize SOV on the same chart as traffic? Want to combine multiple tag SOV data sources into one? Want to layer published content dates over SOV changes? Get creative and try it out! Might as well start asking if you can visualize something and then see if you, can versus feeling limited to the basics.

We’ve covered how to set up your projects to look at SOV with STAT and how to pull that data into the Google Data Visualization tool in this article. Now go forth and use your learnings to create something custom for your client or business. Remember to focus on the story you want to tell first, and let the data bring it to life.

Links and Brand as Ranking Factors: 2021 Correlation Study

It’s been a long time since Moz last published an in-house ranking factor study, and also a long time since I last published one prior to joining Moz. In my case, this is partly due to my long-standing skepticism and caution around how studies like these are typically very loudly misinterpreted or misrepresented. There’s also the complexity and difficulty of quantifying on-page factors within Google’s increasingly nuanced and sophisticated interpretation of relevance (although, yes, we’re working on it!).

Nonetheless, I think there’s value in a narrower study (or studies), for a few reasons. Firstly, it can be useful to set a comparison point that we might revisit — perhaps if we notice a change in Google’s algorithm, or if we think a given industry or set of keywords might be untypical. Secondly, we might still wish to compare narrower sets of metrics — such as link vs. domain level linking factors, follow vs. dofollow links, or branded search volume vs. Domain Authority — and this, too, requires a baseline. Lastly, there’s some merit in reaffirming what we would expect to be true.

How to interpret a correlation study

It’s a cliché to say that correlation does not imply causation, but one that few seem to remember in this context. I’ve written before at length about interpreting correlations, but if you don’t want to go back and read all that, I think the main thing to check before you go any further is whether you can simultaneously accept all of the following to be true:

1. Links are a fundamental part of how Google works

2. Links are correlated with rankings

3. Building links may not always improve rankings

4. Sometimes links are a symptom, rather than a cause, of SEO performance

I’m not asking you to agree with all those statements, just to be open to this kind of interplay when you consider studies like this one and how they affect your worldview.

As it happens, though, whatever you or I may think, most SEOs do still hold that links directly improve rankings, which seems reasonable. But surprisingly, a narrow majority will not say this without qualification: this recent study from Aira shows the commonly-cited caveats of a lack of technical issues, and of some verticals not really benefiting.

What counts as a good correlation?

When looking at large datasets and very complex systems, any one metric having a non-zero correlation is worth paying attention to, but obviously some context is needed, and comparison between metrics can be useful for this. For the sake of this study, it’s probably more useful to compare correlation values between metrics than to get hung up on specific absolute values.

With all that said, then, let’s get into the data.

Methodology

This study is based on the first 20 organic results for every MozCast keyword (10,000 keywords), on both desktop and mobile, from a suburban location in the USA.

Spearman’s rank correlation is used, as we’re comparing ranked variables (organic ranking) with logarithmic(ish) metrics like DA, and variables with extreme high-end values (like link counts). Using Spearman’s rank allows us to ask whether the order in which results appear is the one we’d expect based on a given metric, rather than getting bogged down in issues around different SERPs having vastly different distributions of link-count or DA.

Page, Subdomain, and Domain-level external links

In this chart, we look at how the number of links to a page’s domain predicts its ranking, compared to the number of links to a subdomain, compared to the page itself. Keen students of SEO theory will be unsurprised to see page-level links being by far the most potent predictor.

I’m sure this data will feel vindicating to SEOs and digital PRs who swear by building links directly to product or category pages, and they may have a point. However, there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Often, homepages are the most linked-to page on a site. We shouldn’t be surprised to see homepages rank well in the SERPs where they’re relevant, and that is some of what this data describes.

• You can achieve, from a PageRank perspective, a similar effect to direct page-level link building through the use of internal links. (Depending where your built links are pointing, of course.)

Links vs. Authoritative Links

This is perhaps another chart that more reaffirms what we’d hope than blows anyone’s mind, but yes, Moz’s DA and PA metrics — which look at the overall authority as well as quantity of links to a domain or page — do outperform raw followed link count.

That said, I may find this unsurprising, but plenty of brands and agencies out there still do KPI link building campaigns based on link count, so perhaps this chart will be of particular interest in their case!

Branded Search Volume vs. Domain-level

This comparison is an old favorite of mine, and illustrates some of the reasons why link-level factors are valued by Google in the first place: they were, originally, a proxy for popularity.

Those of you paying attention may actually be surprised that DA outperforms Branded Search Volume here. That does tend to be the case as you get deeper into search results. If we look at the top 10 only, you see lower correlations in general (due to the smaller dataset), but the ordering is a little different:

This is a similar finding to studies I’ve published before, and makes sense when you consider the competitive and data rich environment on the first page for competitive terms.

Does this mean branded search volume is a ranking factor?

Not necessarily! And this is the type of conclusion I was seeking to warn you about earlier. Brand very likely is an important part of what Google is trying to measure with links, as ultimately they want to give us results that we trust and want to click on. Presumably, Google’s engineers are not narrow-minded enough to think that links are the only way they could measure brand, given the wealth of data at their disposal, but whether branded search volume specifically is used is anyone’s guess. What we can see is that it very likely correlates with things that are used — just as DA is not directly used by Google, but correlates very well with things that are.

Similar to click-based metrics, there’s a semantic debate to be had here around whether something that Google is optimizing towards in its algorithm — but possibly not directly using as an input — constitutes a ranking factor.

Certainly you should not take away that your best bet is to directly manipulate branded search volume by generating a load of artificial searches. That said, naturally causing people to search for your brand, especially in conjunction with relevant product terms, can only be a good thing. Whatever Google is measuring (whether it be links, search volume, clicks, or anything else) is likely to be improved by the same activities you’d use to naturally raise branded search traffic. Which is, of course, probably why it correlates so well.

Takeaways

No major shocks: “links correlated with rankings, SEO study finds!”

But, there are some important reminders here:

• Page-level performance is important, however you go about achieving it

• Raw link count isn’t a great metric

• Demand for your brand is at least as good a predictor of rankings as domain strength on the first page

Like I said above, though, please do remember in any incendiary tweets you’re now penning that the relationships behind these correlations can be more complex than meets the eye!

5 Simple Tips for SEO + Email Marketing Flywheels

If you haven't been using email marketing tactics to support your SEO efforts, now is the time to start. In today’s episode of Whiteboard Friday, Cyrus explains how to use the complementary powers of these strategies over and over again, so that each becomes bigger and more powerful the more you do it.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a larger version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans. Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. I'm Cyrus Shepard. I hope you're enjoying this video no matter which day of the week you're watching it on. Today I want to talk about SEO and email marketing, specifically five simple tips for SEO and email marketing flywheels.

What is a flywheel?

So when I talk about SEO and email marketing flywheels, what do we mean by flywheel? Well, that's where we're using the power of SEO to grow our email marketing list and conversely using our email marketing list to grow our SEO for more website traffic. There are actual ways you can do that and doing it over and over and over again so that each becomes bigger and more powerful the more you do it.

So it's like a flywheel. It's really hard to get started. But as you get going, it gets easier and easier and easier, and everything grows a little bit more effectively. So if you're an experienced SEO and email marketer, this video may not be for you. But if you primarily do SEO and you're looking for ways to improve your mail marketing, or you're primarily an email marketer and you're looking for ways to grow your SEO, these are the tips for you. 

Set goals

So let's talk about our goals. What are we trying to accomplish with this email SEO marketing flywheel? First of all is simply more visitors, more visitors to your website content, because more visitors usually leads to more links, sharing, and things like that. The links and sharing can be positive SEO signals to Google, which actually lead to higher rankings.

So if we can get more people to our content through our email, the downstream effect of that could be higher rankings and more traffic generally naturally generated through Google search results. But also we want bigger and more powerful email marketing lists because your marketing list is one of your best marketing channels, especially if you segment users, which we're going to talk about in just a little bit.

Ultimately, we want more conversions and sales. Whatever your marketing and business goals are, that's what we want to achieve with this flywheel effect. 

How to achieve those goals

1. Incentivize sign-ups

So let's talk about the specifics, how are we going to get into it. First of all, we want to get more sign-ups from our content, from our website material. So we want to incentivize sign-ups.

Now the important thing to realize is you don't have to incentivize sign-ups just through SEO. You can do it through any marketing traffic channel. That's direct traffic, social media traffic, and referral traffic. Any way that people are visiting your content, you want to target those to incentivize for sign-ups to your email marketing list. So one of the ways I like to do this through SEO is through what a lot of people call content power-ups.

That's where you're incentivizing sign-ups by offering bonus or exclusive content in exchange for people to sign up for your list. For example, this is "5 Simple Tips for SEO and Email Marketing." What if at the end of this post I would offer five additional bonus tips in exchange for signing up for exclusive content? The idea is that you want to offer something that they can't find on the website. That could be a tool, some additional content, downloads, any sort of free bonus, a coupon, whatever you can think of, something exclusive to incentivize those sign-ups from your content. 

2. Segmentation

Second tip, we don't want to dump everything onto the same large email list. We want to make sure that we're segmenting those sign-ups by topic and interest.

Unless your site is very narrowly focused, you generally want to segment your list among different topics. For example, here at Moz, we cover SEO, but we cover many, many different types of SEO based on user interest. So there's local SEO, there's technical SEO, there's copywriting, there's link building, all these niche interests that we want to segment users by.

So there's a couple different ways to segment. One is self-segmentation, where people can check a box and say I'm interested in this and this and this. But a little bit easier is automatic segmentation based on the type of content that people are visiting. So on your technical SEO pages, if that's what you were doing, you would put people onto a technical SEO sign-up list and make it clear that they're receiving technical SEO tips.

Always make it clear what they're receiving. But this segmentation is going to come in useful in just a little bit. 

3. Content promotion

So the third thing, the third tip, and this is where we're getting into the meat of it, is content promotion. This is where we're using our email list to send traffic back to our website. When people think about SEO and email marketing flywheels, this is what they typically think about.

They think about the content promotion aspect. Now the important thing is we're not trying to promote all of our content. No, we want to promote our best content, because your website, your visitors are coming, they're doing a Google search. They're not necessarily aware of what your best content is, and that's why you want to deliver your best content. Importantly, you want to personalize it with the segmentation.

You're not promoting all your content to all your visitors. You're personalizing it based on their interests because you already segmented them out based on the type of content that they consumed. So if we're sending out a technical SEO newsletter, we're sending the best of our technical SEO content to those people who have already indicated an interest in technical SEO.

One of the most important things to remember, you don't have to just promote your new content. It's okay to promote the best of your old content as well, because again your users aren't aware of what that is. So oftentimes in an introductory email, maybe the first email they receive in a series, you can promote and highlight old posts or even do it in a series.

"This is our best content over the last five years. Make sure you don't miss this." That old content, if it's truly the best, will oftentimes outperform your newer content. So that's how you can personalize and segment and send out your best content to get more promotion and more eyeballs on your best SEO content and hopefully more links, sharing, and all that to keep the flywheel going.

4. Incentivize sharing

So not only did we incentivize sign-ups, now that we're in the email part and sending emails out, we want to incentivize sharing. That's my fourth tip, incentivize sharing, because we don't only want people to visit and read the content, we're hoping that they'll share it with their audience as well. One of the ways I like to do that is to segment my best sharers.

Now what do I mean by this? I'm not only segmenting by interest, but I'm segmenting by influence. So I might put together a list of influencers or people I know in my particular industry that have signed up. Maybe I've targeted them. Just like I offer people exclusive content to sign up for the email list, I'm offering my sharers exclusive content before I share it with the rest of the world.

So I might email my sharing segment and say, "Hey, we just published a post. We haven't told anybody. We're going to announce it on social tomorrow. But I wanted to let you know about it ahead of time if you want to share it with your followers." Because we made it exclusive, we haven't shared it with our followers, it gives our influencers something to share and it makes them feel special and sharing it out with their own audience.

There are different strategies that you can use to do that. But it is often an effective tactic to segment your best sharers. It's a little advanced, but that can incentivize sharing and hopefully help out your SEO. 

5. Keyword research

Finally, when we talk about SEO, we talk about keyword research. Keyword research is one of those SEO areas that works really well in incorporating into email.

Now, here at Moz, we have a tool called Keyword Explorer. There are other tools out there. But millions of keywords suggestions. Traditionally, in SEO, you use keyword research to determine your content, targeting keywords that your audience has interest in. We have lots of guides here at Moz on how to do that, how to target content around keywords.

But you can also use that keyword research in your emails. One of the most important places to use them is your email subject line. If you know the interest that your audience is interested in, through your segmentation, you can start to understand the keywords that drove them to their content, and using those same keywords in your email subject lines can improve your open rates. But that's not the only place.

One of my favorite places to use keywords is in the sign-up CTA. So when you have a sign-up form on your website, you can use a generic sign-up form, like, hey, sign up for our newsletter. Okay, that's not very effective. But if you use the keywords, the targeted keywords sign up for our technical SEO tips or our local SEO or our best dog food recipes, the keywords that people use to find your website are going to be the best keywords to incorporate into your CTAs to get them to sign up. You use keywords in your email subject lines to get them back to your content and so on and so forth. It's another part of the effective flywheel. 

Bonus: turn your best emails into content

So finally, bonus tip, I want to make sure that you don't forget to turn your best emails into content. Your content doesn't have to live exclusively in separated channels. If you're writing killer emails to your audience, that get a lot of engagement, that have super high open rates, those are emails that you can turn into content for your website.

Or if you have a popular newsletter, you can simply archive all your emails into HTML so people can search. You may not want to do that for certain reasons if the quality isn't very good. But if the emails are actually good, go ahead and turn them into content, because that's going to help your SEO as well.

All right. I hope you enjoyed these tips. If you have any questions about email or SEO, please reach out to the team here at Moz. We're here to help. Hope you enjoyed it, everybody, and please share this video. All right, thanks.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com.