SEO
7 Ways To Use Email To Boost Organic Traffic
It’s the bread and butter of your career, but possibly also the bane of your existence.
Calling to targets like a siren’s song, whether they’re in the office down the hall or on a beach vacation across the world, it’s nearly inescapable. And, the modern world couldn’t function without it.
Of course, we’re talking about email marketing.
Typically a softer sell than other types of marketing, it offers incredible ROI, returning on average $36 for every dollar spent.
But, what is it exactly?
According to Wikipedia, email marketing is “the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email.
In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing. It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.”
For digital marketers, this means primarily one thing: directing recipients to a website, either for more information, to make a purchase, or to perform some other action.
In other words, traffic is the name of the game.
But, can you really use email marketing to boost your organic traffic? Of course!
A key part of search engine optimization (SEO) is off-page factors, including social media shares and backlinks.
High-quality traffic will also affect how your site is ranked by Google and other search engines.
And, one way to encourage all of these is through effective email marketing.
So, let’s look at the $10,000 question: HOW do you use email marketing to drive traffic?
Here are seven ways you can increase visits to your website:
1. Target With Accuracy
Bounce rate – it’s a dirty word in online marketing.
And while there is such a thing as email bounce rate (that is, emails that were returned by the recipient’s server), what really matters to digital marketers is website bounce rate, i.e., the percentage of visitors who leave your site without taking action.
This is where email marketing can really shine. Whether you’ve bought your list or compiled it on your own, you should be equipped with some basic information about your audience, which will allow you to run highly targeted campaigns.
To improve traffic, your email campaign should go to people who are genuinely interested in your content, whether because they’ve expressed some interest in the past or your content can help solve a current pain point.
These types of visitors are likely to spend a longer time on your website, which signals to search engines that your website is a good resource. Google will recognize your site’s authority and increase your ranking accordingly.
2. Understand User Intent
Why are your email targets opening your messages? Because you’re offering them something of value and they see some relevancy in what you’ve sent them. (Or maybe you just write the world’s best subject lines.)
There are three main types of user intent and email marketing can be used for all of them:
- Navigational – in which a user is trying to get to a certain site, in which case, congratulations, job done.
- Informational – where a user is looking for information.
- Transactional – when a user is prepared to buy or take another online action.
If you’re also running your organization’s SEO, you’re probably familiar with this concept.
If not, get with whoever is and ask them for the long-tail keywords or descriptive searches that are driving people to your site.
Then, use these to craft email messaging that will connect with your audience.
By providing content that addresses user needs, you’re weeding out low-quality visitors, enhancing your SEO via an improvement in quality visits.
3. Use Newsletters With Exclusive Content
Once you know what your target audience is looking for, you can create content to address it.
And, regular newsletters with exclusive content are a great way to keep your brand at the top of a consumer’s mind.
Show your audience your brand’s value and establish a reputation as a thought leader in the field by sending out a weekly or monthly email with relevant information.
If you have a company blog, this is a great source you can mine for content that your audience won’t get anywhere else. And by clicking on the “read more” in your newsletter, they’re doing exactly what you want – visiting your website.
4. Integrate Email And Social Media
On their own, both email and social media marketing are useful tools. But when combined, the effectiveness of both grow exponentially.
Use your social media presence to invite followers to subscribe to your email list and vice versa.
This will not only build rapport, but will also let you develop more personalized communications.
Include “Share” tags in your emails so recipients can cross-promote content.
Incentive-based referrals are another effective marketing tool you can use to engage with customers, e.g., “Follow us on Facebook for 10% off” or “Send this link to a friend for an exclusive ebook.”
Sharing email content like this can drive both searches and traffic to your website.
5. Personalize Your Email Content
Which email message do you think is going to get a better response: One with a generic opening like “Dear customer,” or one that says “Jeff, we have a special deal just for you!” (Assuming your name is Jeff, otherwise that would just be weird).
As a marketer, you probably already know: that personalized emails have better open rates and click-throughs – and that’s just when they use the recipient’s name.
If you really want to maximize the impact of your emails and drive traffic, you need to be taking advantage of segmentation.
By dividing your list into smaller groups based on specific criteria, you can provide relevant content that is more likely to get clicks.
For example, let’s pretend you’re running an email campaign for a computer store that sells both Macs and PCs.
By segmenting your list into those with Macs and those with PCs, you can ensure your content is pertinent to the recipient.
You could do a shotgun approach, but the amount of people interested in both is probably minimal, so you start to run the risk of becoming annoying and driving unsubscribes.
And even if your audience doesn’t open your email, your brand name will still be in the back of their mind, so the next time they do a web search, you’ll be familiar and more likely to receive a click.
6. Conduct A/B Testing With SEO Keywords
We touched on this briefly in number two, but it bears repeating; your email campaigns should be using A/B testing, just like your landing pages and other content.
You should be trying out different versions of emails using SEO keywords to determine which get the best results.
Experiment with placing your brand’s most popular search terms in subject lines, preview text, and body copy.
What’s great about this is that it works in reverse too – finding you’re getting great results with a certain keyword in emails? Try adding it to your SEO terms and it will help drive traffic to your site.
7. Ask For Reviews
Every brand will claim it’s the best in its field. But consumers know this and take it with a grain of salt.
Reviews, on the other hand, have a much larger influence on decisions because they give legitimacy to your marketing claims.
After all, 98% of consumers read reviews. People tend to trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
And smart marketers like you know email marketing is a great way to solicit them.
One of the most effective times to send them is post-purchase when the newness of your solution is still fresh in the customer’s mind.
Personalize your emails and include links to review sites to make it easy. Keep your email short, and you’re much more likely to get a response.
If you’re doing email marketing for a local business, asking for reviews is especially helpful. They will not only impact your ranking in local search results, but they also let customers feel like they’re helping someone in their community.
Email Marketing And SEO Go Hand-In-Hand
Your digital marketing channels are all pieces of a much larger campaign.
They’re all connected and by taking a holistic view, you can use them to your advantage and help each perform better.
If you improve the quality of your email marketing, you’ll drive more qualified traffic to your website.
You can also direct targets to specific pages where they’re more likely to have longer visits and engage with your content. This, in turn, increases their likelihood of converting.
Sending your content via emails also earns more shares and attracts more visitors. It encourages other sites to backlink to your content, thereby boosting your credibility.
And all of these working together help make your SEO efforts more effective.
More Resources:
Featured Image: NicoElNino/Shutterstock
SEO
Expert Embedding Techniques for SEO Success
AI Overviews are here, and they’re making a big impact in the world of SEO. Are you up to speed on how to maximize their impact?
Watch on-demand as we dive into the fascinating world of Google AI Overviews and their functionality, exploring the concept of embeddings and demystifying the complex processes behind them.
We covered which measures play a crucial role in how Google AI assesses the relevance of different pieces of content, helping to rank and select the most pertinent information for AI-generated responses.
You’ll see:
- An understanding of the technical side of embeddings & how they work, enabling efficient information retrieval and comparison.
- Insights into AI Content curation, including the criteria and algorithms used to rank and choose the most relevant snippets for AI-generated overviews.
- A visualization of the step-by-step process of how AI overviews are constructed, with a clear perspective on the decision-making process behind AI-generated content.
With Scott Stouffer from Market Brew, we explored their AI Overviews Visualizer, a tool that deconstructs AI Overviews and provides an inside look at how Snippets and AI Overviews are curated.
If you’re looking to clarify misconceptions around AI, or looking to face the challenge of optimizing your own content for the AI Overview revolution, then be sure to watch this webinar.
View the slides below, or check out the full presentation for all the details.
Join Us For Our Next Webinar!
[Expert Panel] How Agencies Leverage AI Tools To Drive ROI
Join us as we discuss the importance of AI to your performance as an agency or small business, and how you can use it successfully.
SEO
7 Strategies to Lower Cost-Per-Lead
SEO for personal injury law firms is notorious for how expensive and competitive it can be. Even with paid ads, it’s common for every click from the ad to your website to cost hundreds of dollars:
When spending this kind of money per click, the cost of gaining new cases can quickly skyrocket. Since SEO focuses on improving your visibility in the unpaid areas of search engines, you can cut costs and get more leads if you’re savvy enough.
Here are the strategies I’ve used to help new and boutique injury and accident law firms compete with the big guns for a fraction of the cost.
Recommendation
Unlike many other local service businesses, personal injury law firms need to work harder to earn trust and credibility online.
This applies to earning trust from humans and search engines alike. Google has a 170-page document called the Search Quality Rater Guidelines. This document contains two frameworks law firms can use to help Google and website visitors trust them more.
The first is “your money or your life,” or YMYL. Google uses this term to describe topics that may present a high risk of harm to searchers. Generally, any health, finances, safety, or welfare information falls into this category. Legal information is also a YMYL topic since acting on the wrong information could cause serious damage or harm to searchers.
The second framework is EEAT, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
This framework applies more broadly to all industries and is about sharing genuine information written by experts and authorities for a given topic. Both YMYL and EEAT consider the extent to which content is accurate, honest, safe, and reliable, with the ultimate goal of delivering trustworthy information.
Here are the things I implement for my personal injury clients as a priority to improve the trustworthiness of their online presence:
- Prominently display star ratings from third-party platforms, like Google or FaceBook reviews.
- Show your accreditations, certifications, awards, and the stats on cases you’ve won.
- If government-issued ratings or licenses apply to your practice areas, show those too.
- Add contact information like your phone number and address in the footer of every page.
- Share details of every member of your firm, highlighting their expertise and cases they’ve won.
- Add links to your professional profiles online, including social media and law-related listings.
- Include photos of your team and offices, results, case studies, and success stories.
Generally speaking, your Google Business listing can account for over 50% of the leads you get from search engines. That’s because it can display prominently in the maps pack, like so: 
Without a Google Business listing, your firm will not show up here or within Google Maps since it is managed completely separately from your website. Think of your Google listing like a social profile, but optimize it like a website. Make sure you create one of these for each location where you have an on-the-ground presence, ideally an established office.
Take the time to fill out all the details it asks for, especially:
- Your firm’s name, address, and phone number
- Your services with a description of each
- Images of your premises, inside and outside the office
And anything else you see in these sections: 
Also, make it a regular habit to ask your clients for reviews.
Reviews are crucial for law firms. They are the number one deciding factor when someone is ready to choose a law firm to work with. While you can send automated text messages with a link to your Google profile, you’ll likely have a higher success rate if you ask clients in person while they’re in your office or by calling them.
I’ve also seen success when adding a request for a review on thank you pages.
For instance, if you ever send an electronic contract or invoice out to clients, once they’ve signed or paid, you can send them to a thank you page that also asks for a review. Here’s my favorite example of this from a local accountant. You can emulate this concept for your own website too:
Recommendation
The most common way that people search for legal services is by searching for things like “personal injury lawyer near me” or “car accident lawyer new york”.
For instance, take a look at the monthly search volume on these “near me” keywords for an injury and accident lawyer:
People also commonly search at a state, city, and even suburb level for many legal services, especially if it’s an area of law that differs based on someone’s location. To optimize your website architecture for location keywords like these, it’s best practice to create dedicated pages for each location and then add sub-pages for each of your practice areas in that location.
For example, here’s what that would look like:
The corresponding URL structure would look like this:
- /new-york
- /new-york/car-accident-lawyer
- /new-york/personal-injury-lawyer
- /new-york/work-injury-lawyer
Pro Tip:
Check out my guide on franchise SEO for local and national growth strategies if you have many offices nationwide.
A topic hub is a way to organize and link between related articles on a website. It’s sometimes referred to as a topic cluster because it groups together pages that are related to the same subject matter.
If you run a small firm or your marketing budget is tight, I recommend focusing on a single area of law and turning your website into a topical hub. You can do this by publishing different types of content, such as how-to guides, answering common questions, and creating landing pages for each of your services.
For example, if you currently offer services for immigration law, criminal defense, and personal injury compensation, each appeals to very different audience segments. They’re also very competitive when it comes to marketing, so focusing your efforts on one of these is ideal to make your budget go further.
Most areas of law are naturally suited to building out topic clusters. Every practice area tends to follow a similar pattern in how people search at different stages in their journey.
- Top-of-funnel: When people are very early in their journey, and unaware of what type of lawyer they need, they ask a lot of high-level questions like “what is a car accident attorney”.
- Mid-funnel: When people are in the middle of their journey, they tend to ask more nuanced questions or look for more detailed information, like “average settlement for neck injury”.
- Bottom-of-funnel: When people are ready to hire an attorney, they search for the practice area + “attorney” or “lawyer”. Sometimes they include a location but nothing else. For example, “personal injury lawyer”.
This pattern applies to most areas of law. To apply it to your website, enter your main practice area and a few variations into Keywords Explorer:
Make sure to include a few different variations like how I’ve added different ways people search for lawyers (lawyer, attorney, solicitor) and also for other related terms (compensation, personal injury, settlement).
If you check the Matching terms report, you’ll generally get a big list that you’ll need to filter to make it more manageable when turning it into a content plan.
For example, there are 164,636 different keyword variations of how people search for personal injury lawyers. These generate over 2.4 million searches per month in the US.
You can make the list more manageable by removing keywords with no search volume. Just set the minimum volume to 1:
You can also use the include filter to only see keywords containing your location for your location landing pages:
There are also a number of distinct sub-themes relevant to your area of law. To isolate these, you can use the Cluster by Terms side panel. For instance, looking at our list of injury-related keywords, you can easily spot specific body parts that emerge as sub-themes:
Other sub-themes include:
- How the accident happened (at work, in a car)
- How much compensation someone can get (compensation, average, settlement)
- How severe the injury was (traumatic)
Each of these sub-themes can be turned into a cluster. Here’s what it might look like for the topic of neck injuries:
People tend to ask a lot of questions related to most areas of law. As you go through the exercise of planning out your topic clusters, you should also consider building out a knowledge hub where people can more easily navigate your FAQs and find the answers they’re looking for.
Use the knowledge base exclusively for question-related content. You can find the most popular questions people ask after an accident or injury in the Matching terms > Questions tab:
You can also easily see clusters of keywords for the top-of-funnel and mid-funnel questions people ask by checking the Clusters by Parent Topic report. It groups these keywords into similar themes and each group can likely be covered in a single article.
Here’s an example of how Smith’s Lawyers has created a knowledge base with a search feature and broad categories to allow people to find answers to all their questions more easily.
The easier you make it for people to find answers on your website, the less inclined they are to go back to Google and potentially visit a competitor’s website instead. It also increases their interaction time with your brand, giving you a higher chance of being front-of-mind when they are ready to speak to a lawyer about their case.
Some areas of law lend themselves to certain types of interactive content. An obvious example is a compensation calculator for injury and accident claims. Doing a very quick search, there are over 1,500 keywords on this topic searched over 44,000 times a month in the US.
The best part is how insanely low the competition is on these keywords:
Keyword difficulty is graded on a 100-point scale, so single-digit figures mean there’s virtually no competition to contend with. It’s not all that hard to create a calculator either.
There are many low-cost, no-code tools on the market, like Outgrow, that allow you to create a simple calculator in no time. Other types of interactive content you could consider are:
- Quiz-style questionnaires: great for helping people decide if they need a lawyer for their case.
- Chatbots: to answer people’s questions in real-time.
- Assessments: to pre-qualify leads before they book a meeting with you.
- Calendar or countdown clock: to help people keep track of imminent deadlines.
Backlinks are like the internet’s version of citations. They are typically dark blue, underlined text that connects you to a different page on the internet. In SEO, links play a very important role for a few different reasons:
- Links are how search engines discover new content. Your content may not be discovered if you have no links pointing to it.
- Links are like votes in a popularity contest. The more you have from authoritative websites in your industry, the more they elevate your brand.
- Links also help search engines understand what different websites are about. Getting links from other law-related websites will help build relevancy to your brand.
Think of link building as a scaled-down version of PR. It’s often easier and cheaper to implement. However, it is very time-intensive in most cases. If you’re doing your own SEO, hats off to you!
However, I’d recommend you consider partnering with an agency that specializes in law firm SEO and can handle link building for you. Typically, agencies like these will have existing relationships with law-related websites where they can feature your brand, which will be completely hands-off for you.
For instance, Webris has a database of thousands of legal websites on which they have been able to feature their clients. If you don’t have an existing database to work with and you’re doing SEO yourself, here are some alternative tactics to consider.
Expert quotes
Many journalists and writers benefit from quoting subject-matter experts in their content. You could be such an expert, and every time someone quotes you, ask for a link back to your website. Check out platforms like Muck Rack or SourceBottle, where reporters post callouts for specific experts they’re looking to get quotes from or feature in their articles.
Guest posting
If you like writing content, you can alternatively create content for other people’s websites and include links back to your site. This approach is more time intensive. To make the effort worth it, reach out to websites with an established audience so you get some additional brand exposure too.
Updating outdated content
If you’re checking out other people’s legal content and you ever notice a mistake or outdated information, you could reach out and offer to help them correct it in exchange for a link to your website.
Naturally, you’ll need to recommend updates for sections of content that relate to your practice areas for this to work and for the link to make sense in the context of the content.
Final thoughts
SEO for personal injury lawyers is one of the most competitive niches. High advertising costs and high competition levels make it difficult for new or small firms to compete against industry giants.
As a new or emerging firm, you can take a more nimble approach and outrank the big firms for low competition keywords they haven’t optimized their websites for. It’s all about doing thorough research to uncover these opportunities in your practice area.
Want to know more? Reach out on LinkedIn.
SEO
Google Ads To Phase Out Enhanced CPC Bidding Strategy
Google has announced plans to discontinue its Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) bidding strategy for search and display ad campaigns.
This change, set to roll out in stages over the coming months, marks the end of an era for one of Google’s earliest smart bidding options.
Dates & Changes
Starting October 2024, new search and display ad campaigns will no longer be able to select Enhanced CPC as a bidding strategy.
However, existing eCPC campaigns will continue to function normally until March 2025.
From March 2025, all remaining search and display ad campaigns using Enhanced CPC will be automatically migrated to manual CPC bidding.
Advertisers who prefer not to change their campaigns before this date will see their bidding strategy default to manual CPC.
Impact On Display Campaigns
No immediate action is required for advertisers running display campaigns with the Maximize Clicks strategy and Enhanced CPC enabled.
These campaigns will automatically transition to the Maximize Clicks bidding strategy in March 2025.
Rationale Behind The Change
Google introduced Enhanced CPC over a decade ago as its first Smart Bidding strategy. The company has since developed more advanced machine learning-driven bidding options, such as Maximize Conversions with an optional target CPA and Maximize Conversion Value with an optional target ROAS.
In an email to affected advertisers, Google stated:
“These strategies have the potential to deliver comparable or superior outcomes. As we transition to these improved strategies, search and display ads campaigns will phase out Enhanced CPC.”
What This Means for Advertisers
This update signals Google’s continued push towards more sophisticated, AI-driven bidding strategies.
In the coming months, advertisers currently relying on Enhanced CPC will need to evaluate their options and potentially adapt their campaign management approaches.
While the change may require some initial adjustments, it also allows advertisers to explore and leverage Google’s more advanced bidding strategies, potentially improving campaign performance and efficiency.
FAQ
What change is Google implementing for Enhanced CPC bidding?
Google will discontinue the Enhanced Cost-Per-Click (eCPC) bidding strategy for search and display ad campaigns.
- New search and display ad campaigns can’t select eCPC starting October 2024.
- Existing campaigns will function with eCPC until March 2025.
- From March 2025, remaining eCPC campaigns will switch to manual CPC bidding.
How will this update impact existing campaigns using Enhanced CPC?
Campaigns using Enhanced CPC will continue as usual until March 2025. After that:
- Search and display ad campaigns employing eCPC will automatically migrate to manual CPC bidding.
- Display campaigns with Maximize Clicks and eCPC enabled will transition to the Maximize Clicks strategy in March 2025.
What are the recommended alternatives to Enhanced CPC?
Google suggests using its more advanced, AI-driven bidding strategies:
- Maximize Conversions – Can include an optional target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition).
- Maximize Conversion Value – Can include an optional target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
These strategies are expected to deliver comparable or superior outcomes compared to Enhanced CPC.
What should advertisers do in preparation for this change?
Advertisers need to evaluate their current reliance on Enhanced CPC and explore alternatives:
- Assess how newer AI-driven bidding strategies can be integrated into their campaigns.
- Consider transitioning some campaigns earlier to adapt to the new strategies gradually.
- Leverage tools and resources provided by Google to maximize performance and efficiency.
This proactive approach will help manage changes smoothly and explore potential performance improvements.
Featured Image: Vladimka production/Shutterstock
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