How to Create an Email List and Use It for SEO

Your email list is a valuable business asset for lead generation and nurturing. However, there's an overlooked benefit of enhancing your SEO.

Understanding the synergy between email marketing and SEO can transform your email list into a tool for boosting search engine performance.

In this article, I will guide you through creating an email list tailored to improve SEO, a crucial strategy for businesses aiming to gain a competitive edge.

An email list is a database of email addresses and other relevant contact details from individuals who have consented to receive updates and promotional material from a business or individual.

In 2021, HubSpot acquired The Hustle, a well-known newsletter that curated a daily roundup of business and tech headlines. This transaction, worth an estimated $27 million, hinged on The Hustle's impressive 1.5 million subscriber base.

In other words, 1.5 million people willingly exchanged their email addresses for a daily dose of business news sent straight to their inbox — a lucrative asset to The Hustle (and now HubSpot).

Fast forward two years, and HubSpot has expanded this list to 2.5 million active readers. Each lead is a potential customer who engages with email content, clicks the website, views advertisements, and possibly makes purchases.

Since subscribers willingly exchange their contact information to be a part of your list, emails and newsletters are the perfect opportunity to get your thought leadership content into the hands of engaged readers.

You're driving traffic whenever you send out an email or newsletter containing quality content and links to your site. This increase in organic traffic is a positive signal to search engines, potentially boosting your website's rankings.

So, while email lists might seem like an old-school digital marketing strategy, they can still pack a powerful SEO punch.

At this point, it's clear that an email list is worth its weight in gold. Let’s get into how to build one.

1. Define your target audience

The first step is to define your audience clearly. Your efforts may miss the mark without deeply understanding who they are and the specific problems they want to solve.

Focus on creating detailed buyer personas for B2C or ideal customer profiles for B2B. This should include demographics like age, location, firmographics, preferences, and pain points to drive your SEO strategy.

However, don’t just wait for feedback; be proactive in understanding your audience. Here are some practical ways to gain deeper insights:

• Tap into your customer relationship manager (CRM) to understand purchase history, interaction patterns, and areas of customer satisfaction (or dissatisfaction).

• Collect survey data at different stages of the customer journey to identify gaps or improvement opportunities.

• Leverage Moz Pro's Competitive Research tool to find competitors in your industry and then sign up for their email list to see how they run it.

• Use social media monitoring tools to find where they hang out online.

2. Collect email addresses

To convert casual site visitors into willing email subscribers, balance respect for your audience's needs with strategic value offerings and an optimized user experience.

Choose the right tools

Begin by selecting tools that streamline collecting email addresses. Platforms like Jotform are invaluable for creating user-friendly forms that integrate smoothly with your website, enhancing the overall user experience.

Timing and placement of popups

While popups sometimes get a bad rep, they can boost your subscriber list if used sparingly and timed well. The key is to display these popups at the peak of user engagement.

A study by Wisepops, analyzing over 513 million displays of email popup campaigns, revealed that popups are most effective when they appear approximately four seconds after a user lands on a page. You can also check your Google Analytics to determine how long a user stays on your site (find the average engagement time) and adjust accordingly per landing page.

Email sign-ups will pour in when you pair a compelling call to action with an irresistible lead magnet — think exclusive e-book, discount code, or webinar.

3. Develop an opt-in form

Opt-in forms are your gateway to growing an engaged subscriber base. You don't need coding skills to create an opt-in form that converts. Instead, the magic lies within your chosen email marketing platform, content management system, or third-party integration.

For example, here's a peek into the design panel for Squarespace's promotional popup.

Here, there are options to:

• Spruce up the styling with fonts and colors

• Control how and when the popup appears

• Update headlines and text

• Turn the popup on or off

• Set an action or goal

• Change the layout

The design process is simple, thanks to these advanced tools. The key, however, is the emphasis on specific details:

• The placement of your form

• The simplicity of your form

In other words, the less friction, the better.

So, let's look at some types of opt-in forms and their ideal placements:

Sidebar forms: Ideal for blogs or content-heavy pages. They sit in the side margins, gently reminding users to subscribe without disrupting their reading experience.

Footer forms: Placed at the bottom of a webpage, they capture attention after a visitor has engaged with your content.

Inline forms: Embedded within the content, they are perfect for articles and blogs, subtly inviting readers to subscribe at strategic points.

Popup forms: These forms deploy at specific intervals or actions, like when a user is about to exit the page. While they command attention, use them sparingly to guarantee a smooth user experience.

Landing page forms: These forms are direct and focused, often yielding higher conversion rates.

Email footer forms: A subtle invite at the end of your emails to further engage your readers.

4. Use social media platforms

Social media is an invaluable tool for promoting your email list. Engaging posts on platforms like LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Facebook can drive subscriptions and increase your reach.

Tailor your strategy based on your audience's preferred platforms. For instance, a B2B company might succeed more on LinkedIn, while a lifestyle brand could thrive on Pinterest.

Include social sharing buttons in your emails to turn your readers into brand advocates, amplifying your reach and potentially creating new link opportunities.

5. Craft your content and design

The twin pillars of a successful email campaign are compelling content and gorgeous design. Mastering both can improve the effectiveness of your email list.

Write relevant and engaging content

Subscribers sign up for your email list to access high-quality content. It must resonate with your audience’s interests, challenges, and needs.

Here's how to create content that resonates and drives engagement:

• Address common problems or challenges your audience faces and provide actionable solutions.

• Keep your subscribers informed with the latest industry news and expert opinions.

• Add custom graphics, videos, and other media to make your content more visually appealing and easy to digest.

• Share real-life examples like case studies or customer testimonials to provide authentic insights.

• Collaborate with industry experts or influencers for added credibility.

• Repurpose existing content with a unique angle or fresh perspective.

Optimize formatting and design

Poor formatting can lead to your valuable content being overlooked or deleted.

Follow these design optimization tips to avoid this dreaded fate:

• Ensure your content is accessible and easy to read on mobile devices.

• Opt for a single-column layout to simplify mobile viewing and reduce excessive scrolling.

• Use white space for a clean, more readable design.

• Write concise subject lines to avoid truncation on smaller screens.

• Align your calls to action in the center for easy tapping on mobile devices.

• Compress images to reduce load times.

6. Incorporate relevant keywords into your email copy

Choosing the right keywords is the difference between an average SEO strategy and a winning SEO strategy. Use Moz's free Keyword Explorer to discover relevant terms related to your email content.

Next, use AnswerThePublic to reverse-engineer your keywords and find other related phrases your audience would likely search for. Now, you have a list of keywords to incorporate into your email copy and enhance its relevance naturally.

Finally, monitor your competitors with Moz SEO Competitive Analysis Tool. Sign up for their newsletters, study their content strategies, and refine yours to be more comprehensive, relevant, and actionable.

You've built an impressive email list. Now, it's time to harness its potential for your SEO strategy. Here's how to make the most of it:

Segmentation

Tailoring your emails to individual interests and stages in the buyer's journey enhances user engagement.

For instance, a real estate CRM software can help agents segment their email lists based on property types, locations, or buying stages. Sending targeted property listings or market updates at the right time can increase organic site visits, lower bounce rates, and extend time on-site — all positive ranking factors.

Content promotion

Content is king. But without ‌proper promotion, it's easy for great content to get lost in the abyss. Use platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and X (formerly Twitter) to promote your newsletter and engage with a broader audience.

Here's a great example from Aleyda Solis, who uses social media to share insights from her SEOFOMO newsletter and encourage folks to interact with the content.

Social media engagement

While they seem like the opposite marketing strategies, social media complements SEO. Embedding clickable social icons in your email content creates a chain reaction of shares and interactions, driving a surge in site traffic.

As you foster this organic engagement, remember that search engines take notice, and they love what they see. Repurpose your email content on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, or Twitter to engage with your audience where they are most active.

Use the Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) to track performance

By integrating UTMs with your campaigns, you gain insight into your traffic sources and understand which efforts are truly effective.

Let's break it down into a few components and see how it works:

UTM Source: Tells where the traffic is coming from

UTM Medium: Shows you the path your visitor took to reach your website. It could be through an email, a social media post, or any other medium in your campaign.

UTM Campaign: Specifies the campaign you’re tracking.

UTM Content: Reveals which link the recipient clicked.

Combine UTM parameters with Google Analytics to track user behavior from when they open your email to when they purchase or take a desired action on your site.

Tracking other results

Maximize results by focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, if you want more organic traffic to your site, measure click-through rate (CTR). Alternatively, to grow your subscriber list, focus on form conversion rates.

To do this, you'll need to add the proper tools to your tech stack:

• Moz: Create a Campaign in Moz Pro, and you can track everything from keyword ranking, landing pages, and backlinks to your website.

• Google Analytics: Ideal for understanding user behavior on your website. Track everything from page views to how users interact with your content post-click..

• Sprout Social: Useful for measuring social engagement and sentiment. Understand how your brand is perceived on social platforms and track the reach of your content.

While the industry is buzzing with the latest AI and social trends, you're cutting through the noise by sticking to an old-faithful asset — email lists — to gain an edge.

Time is of the essence. Leverage the free suite of SEO tools from Moz to find untapped keywords. Write meaningful content. Send those emails. And watch your SEO performance soar.