Over the past few months I've noticed a change in the way search engines are displaying our clients' search results, particularly and specially Google, since Google accounts for about 46% of all searches online (Nielsen/NetRatings).
I would type in our clients' name in the Google search box and the first page would display the client's website URL, as expected, but that's not the most interesting part. They thing that caught my attention was that the additional results were links to our clients' eNewsletters.The second, third, and sometimes fourth results were not the clients' other website pages, but past issues of their eNewsletters. I've always known that eNewsletters help with search ranking, but now I'm seeing this type of search outcome more than ever.
Search engine developers are smart people; they design their page crawlers or spiders (the software used to index new pages) to search not only for keywords , but also for how the keywords are represented within the content.
What does this mean? That the nature of the content of your eNewsletter, its value, and the right keywords are high priority elements to help your business get a top position on search results through your eNewsletters.
Don't take my word for it, try it... type in Google University of Miami Hurricane Club and sure enough, their eNewsletter Inside the U pops right up in the first page results. Of all the pages the University of Miami Hurricane Club has, their eNewsletter issues make it to the top of the results. These are first page results of over 1.3 million results, according to Google.
3 Key Elements Your eNewsletter Program Should Have to Help Your Business Search Ranking
- Key Words: Since most search engines index your pages based on your keywords, make sure that all your eNewsletters include keywords about your business. For example, this eNewsletter at the bottom of the issue includes keywords like "eNewsletter" "Marketing" and "Miami".
- Search Friendly Design: Search engine crawlers are only able to read text and links found within simple HTML design. This means that if your content is part of an image and/or your eNewsletter is mostly images, you are not giving the search engine much content to work with and index.
- Publish Frequently: Search engines are relentlessly looking for new content and indexing new content first. Every eNewsletter issue that you publish gives you another chance at producing better search results.
eNewsletter are a great tool for building and maintaining relationships with customers, but they also should be part of a well-executed search engine optimization strategy.
Marcos J. Menendez
President
Loop Consulting Group, LLC
posted by Loop Consulting Group at 8/15/2007 05:16:00 PM
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