How To Use Email Marketing and SEO Together: An Ultimate Guide

What are email marketing and SEO?

What is marketing if not the art of connecting with your audience at the right time and place? By weaving together email marketing and SEO, probably the most important tools of digital marketers, you make sure your message is seen by those who matter most. Let’s start with brushing up on why those two are so important.

Email marketing basics: what you need to know

These days, 93% of surveyed consumers and business buyers consider email their primary mode of interaction with businesses, according to a report by Salesforce. Thanks to automation and personalization, emails are beyond one-way communication — now, it’s a dialog with your subscribers. Beginners might be tempted to write it off, but that would be a costly mistake like no other: for every dollar you’ve spent, email marketing delivers a $36 return, according to recent ROI stats. This explains both the popularity of email marketing and why the daily email volume was expected to surge to 361.6 billion in 2024. 

SEO basics: what you need to know

Today, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is one of the most important tools for digital visibility. The reason is pretty simple: billions of people worldwide use search engines as their main source of information, including business-related searches. With 89% of the search engine market dominated by Google, any brand wants to be in Google’s good graces to get on top of the first-page list. 

Years ago, optimization was all about the right keywords and phrases, but with the new Google policy, you need to make your entire website better, from design and site architecture to content. On top of that, there is the need to be recognized as an authoritative and trustworthy source: SEO is not just about catering to algorithms but also about providing value that meets the searcher’s intent. All of this is worth the effort, though: effective SEO strategies lead to higher organic rankings, bringing more traffic and conversions.

How SEO and email marketing work together

SEO and email can influence each other in more ways than you can imagine. 

Of course, there are real-world examples out there. Here is one:

This case study shows how integrating SEO with email marketing can create a profitable sales funnel. So how can you turn your website visitor into a paying customer? Below are the tips on a strategic blending of SEO and email marketing.

What are the key benefits of email marketing for SEO

Email marketing can do wonders for your SEO by getting more people to visit your site, keeping them interested in your content, and even helping you get more links back to your site. By sharing your blog posts, videos, and images through emails, you can reach more people interested in what you have to say. This can make your site more popular and trusted by search engines, leading to better search rankings. Now, let’s dissect every way in which email marketing can be helpful for SEO.

Boosting onsite engagement

Picture this: you run a culinary blog and send out emails packed with mouth-watering recipes directly to food lovers. These are precisely the audience you want — engaged, interested, and ready to explore what you have to offer. 

By reaching out to the right audience, you lower your site’s bounce rates and keep people engaged longer. Better engagement will potentially improve your SEO rankings since the search engine will consider the aforementioned metrics. 

Establishing expertise, authority, and trustworthiness

While it might sound surprising, expertise, authority, and trustworthiness are factors that search engines count for ranking web content. So, informative and high-quality emails help you to achieve the goal of becoming an authority in your field. That is why your email newsletter should bring real value to customers and establish your brand as a go-to source for reliable information. 

Email marketing abuse can backfire on SEO results, too. For instance, using a purchased email list can destroy a domain’s reputation due to a surge in unsubscribe rates and spam complaints. On the other hand, growing an engaged email list through honest and informative content benefits your website’s SEO.

Getting backlinks

The other signal of credibility and authority for search engines is backlinks — links from one website to another. Think of them as a vote of confidence. For example, you read a post from your favorite blogger with numerous links incorporated in it. You clicked on those that you found most relevant and interesting, and then you were redirected to other websites and continued to find out more. While for you, this might mean a new, cool article to share at the Sunday brunch with friends, for Google, this would indicate that the website you’ve visited can be trusted. 

You can use your email marketing strategy to increase the number of natural backlinks to your website and improve your search engine rankings. Here’s how:

• Start by identifying your most valuable content — the pieces that are informative, engaging, and useful to your audience. Blog articles, research, interesting cases — think of the info people would want to read or share.
• Make sure your content is easy to share. Of course, no one would quote your essay on your product’s importance in full in their Facebook posts. So, try to summarize any useful information and present it in a shareable format, like infographics or snippets that can be easily embedded in posts or social media.
• Then, craft personalized email campaigns targeting industry influencers, bloggers, and websites that share your content’s theme. Share your content with them, and if they find it valuable enough, they might reference it in the future.
• Go further and segment your email list. Find influencers or active sharers within your subscriber base. Offer them a sneak peek of your content to encourage early sharing.
• Personalize your message, and explain why your content is relevant to receivers’ interests or how it could benefit their followers. Personal touches can make a big difference.
• After sharing your content, don’t forget to follow up and remind influencers of your shared interests without being pushy. It shows you value their input and feedback.

Take, as an example, a case study where over 6,000 relevant backlinks were built in 1.5 years through cold email outreach. This campaign utilized tools like Hunter for email finding and Ahrefs for SEO data, focusing on personalization and targeting. As a result, there was a substantial increase in backlinks and a 2.3 times increase in organic traffic.

Getting new content ideas

Your subscribers might create content for you or at least provide you with the base for your content strategy. That is why asking your newsletter subscribers for reviews and testimonials isn’t just for making you feel good — it’s a strategy to boost your SEO and content. 

The user-generated content can be transformed into detailed blog posts, case studies, success stories, or interviews. When your content gets shared by the people featured in it, Google takes notice. It sees your website as credible and authoritative, which improves your SEO.

Sending better social signals

Google has yet to disclose (if ever) the direct impact of social signals on search rankings. However, the indirect effects are widely recognized among SEO experts — a strong social presence increases visibility, drives more website traffic, and boosts engagement rates. All of this enhances your SEO performance.

To maximize these benefits, embed social sharing buttons and compelling snippets in your emails to encourage readers to share. Add a clear call-to-action (CTA) that prompts readers to repost or resend your content so you can amplify its visibility. With more shares organic content spread can lead to a significant uptick in website traffic. As social engagement increases, so does your content’s relevance in the eyes of Google or other search engines, leading to better search engine rankings.

Improving brand awareness and reputation

Every email reinforces your brand’s identity, values, and unique selling points. That’s why finding the right voice and identity for your email strategy is so important — consistency builds trust and strengthens your connection with subscribers. This kind of relationship turns casual readers into loyal followers — and, eventually, vocal brand advocates.

However, the impact of a good email marketing strategy goes beyond the inbox. Recognition sparks curiosity, and curiosity usually leads us to Google. Thus, your curious subscribers turn to search engines to learn more about your offerings or the latest updates. This sends positive signals to search engines, indicating that your brand is sought after by users. Over time, these signals can boost search engine rankings, making your website more visible to potential customers.

Getting feedback

Why is feedback through email marketing so crucial for SEO? Here’s a breakdown:

• Discovering new keywords

Despite thorough keyword research, there’s always room for discovery. Sometimes, feedback from customers reveals that they describe your products or services in a certain way you hadn’t considered. That provides you with new relevant keywords and new ways of aligning your content with your audience’s language and search habits.

• Enhancing user experience

If visitors find your site difficult to navigate or slow to load, they’re likely to leave, negatively impacting your SEO. Yes, that kind of feedback is not something you want to see in your inbox, but it helps you pinpoint all the problems users face. This direct input from your audience allows you to make targeted changes, thus improving the overall user experience and your site’s SEO performance.

Best practices for combining SEO and email marketing

Combining SEO and email marketing might sound like you’re mixing oil and water, but it’s more like peanut butter and jelly – they complement each other. Here are some easy-to-follow steps and the best email marketing tips to help you blend the two, whether you’re just starting out or looking to enhance your existing strategies.

Align your email with keywords 

Think about what your subscribers might be searching for online, and use those terms in your emails. The same goes for any keywords — try to incorporate them into your subject lines, body content, and even CTAs. While it might seem lucrative to just sprinkle them here and there without thought, remember that your content should be valuable and qualitative. 

Encourage subscribers to share 

Include social sharing buttons or “Forward to a Friend” links in your email newsletters. Encourage your readers to share your content — this can indirectly boost your SEO by increasing your content’s reach and bringing more visitors to your site.

Link to your website

Whenever it makes sense, include links back to your website in your emails. Product mentions, services, blog posts — almost anything goes here. Then again, don’t forget about the relevance — make sure you’re linking to content that adds value to your reader’s experience.

Personalize your email campaigns

Segment your email list and personalize your messages based on user behavior and preferences. This increases engagement, which is a signal to search engines that your site is delivering value, thereby improving your SEO rankings. You can try different email personalization techniques to see what works best for you. 

Use analytics to refine email and SEO strategies

Your email analytics help you track what is resonating with your audience, so adapt your strategy based on the insights you’ll get from the data. The same goes for SEO metrics — use it to identify which topics are driving traffic to your site, and then tailor your email content to reflect that. 

Create special landing pages for email campaigns

Create custom landing pages for your campaigns that link to your email messages. Optimize your pages for both conversion and search engines with clear, keyword-rich content. Of course, it should be aligned with the messages in your emails.

By following these steps, you are sending out better emails, optimizing your content for search engines, and creating a digital marketing strategy.

How to measure success across channels?

With the right tools and techniques, you can get a clear picture of how your combined strategies are performing, and yes, this approach is right on trend with the latest in marketing trends.

Tracking conversions

Whether it’s signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or filling out a contact form, conversions are the gold standard for measuring success. Tools like Google Analytics allow you to track users’ paths from email clicks to website actions. Setting up goals in Google Analytics can give you direct insights into how well your email campaigns drive users to complete desired actions on your site.

Email metrics

While open and click-through rates are essential metrics for any email marketer, a deeper dive might provide you with more insights. Look at the behavior of users after they click through: How long do they stay on your site? Which pages do they visit? Do they bounce or engage? Follow your customer journey to get a better idea of what is working and what content is in dire need of improvement. 

SEO performance

Track visibility in search rankings and engagement on your site with tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs — this should be among your regular SEO practices.  Evaluate your pages’ rank for target keywords and changes in your organic search traffic trends. This data, matched with your email analytics, will help you understand if your email content effectively aligns with your SEO strategy and connects with your high-ranking pages.

Staying ahead with marketing trends

Always keep up with marketing trends to make sure you are ahead of the SEO and email marketing game. This would require a willingness to adapt, welcome both the changes and challenges, but in the end, help you drive your content marketing strategy towards data-driven decision-making personalization, and automation. By keeping an eye on both the micro (individual email and SEO metrics) and macro (overall campaign performance) aspects of your strategy, you’ll see not only where you’re succeeding but also where there’s room for improvement.

Final thoughts

By merging email marketing with SEO, you create a journey that takes potential customers from their inbox to your website. With valuable and interesting content, personal touches here and there, and motivational offers, you can create a loyal subscriber base that can turn into a client base. But keep in mind that the main goal here is not just to capture attention but to keep it.

This article was originally published in February 2024 and was updated in March 2025 to make it more relevant and comprehensive.