Building quality backlinks that point to your website is one of the top contributors to high search engine rankings. Links not only raise your rankings – they also bring you increased traffic and help to build your brand. What many online marketers don’t realize is that email marketing is an extremely effective technique for building links.
Link building is difficult and time-consuming because it requires you to build relationships with people who are inclined to link to your content. Email marketing simplifies link building since the people who sign up for your email list are obviously interested in your content and therefore more likely to link to it. The links you get from your email subscribers probably won’t be from major websites, but they’ll provide you with steady links over time that will gradually improve your rankings.
Some ways your email subscribers can share links to your content include through websites, blogs, forums, social networks, comment sections of blogs and websites, and social news sites. If you run a B2B business, you’ll probably have less potential linkers on your email subscriber list than a B2C business because to be able to link to your content, email subscribers must have the ability to publish to the web. Here are some tips for getting those email subscribers to link to your content.
Create Helpful, Informative Content
Create helpful, informative, and thorough content that your email subscribers will want to pass along to others. The more valuable your content, the more likely people are to share it with their community.
Share Embeddable Content
Share embeddable content, such as badges, infographics, and tools, with your email subscriber list. The benefit of sharing embeddable content is that you can control its anchor text and the page of your site that it points to, which is great for SEO.
Do email outreach
Take a look at the domain names of the emails on your list. Ignore emails with the domains of email providers, like Gmail.com, Yahoo.com, and Hotmail.com. Take note of the other domains. Do email outreach, contacting the websites with the highest domain authority. Since people from those sites are already subscribed to your email list, it’ll probably be a lot easier for you to obtain links from them.
Engage with your email subscribers in Social Media
Using their email addresses, find your email subscribers’ blogs, Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, and LinkedIn accounts, so you can engage with them further. It might take a while, but eventually, you’ll get links from those people because they’ll have a positive image of your brand and feel like they “know” you.
Give away something in exchange for a link
Send out an email to your subscribers, letting them know that they’ll receive a gift if they link to you. Items that cost next to nothing to give away include reports and ebooks. Alternatively, you could ask people to review your report or ebook (and link to it) in exchange for a free copy.
Ask People to share/spread your content
Make sure you add social media share buttons to your content, so people are more likely to share it/spread it. Better yet, explicitly ask your readers to share your content. Oftentimes, a strong call to action can make all the difference. Make it easier for people to link to your content by providing them with the URL you’d like them to link to along with the call to action.