Opt-in Email Marketing and SEO, Can it be Done?

First let me say what this article is not. It is not a tutorial on building squeeze pages and then optimizing them for the search engines in order to rule the email marketing world and build an opt-in mailing list of 100,000 subscribers overnight. It is important to understand this before we start off. Now that I’ve said that, here is what I am talking about.

The Opt-in Mailing List and Email Marketing.

It has been said probably more times then I can count that building a list of email subscribers is like having money in the bank. Ok now for the truth. Yes, it is true that having a subscriber base can really help your online sales however let’s take a brutally honest look at it. Today, it’s safe to say most people when filling out and subscribing to items are using dummy email accounts. By dummy email accounts I mean email accounts like hotmail, gmail, yahoo and others. We’ve all gotten tired of emails that proclaim to lengthen my “wee wacky woo hoo.” So instead of getting swamped continually with trash emails like this, we’ve been conditioned to using our dummy email addresses for every subscriber box going. That way I can subscribe to my hearts content knowing that all my emails will be dumped into a trash email account that I periodically empty.

Now internet marketers are not stupid, and they know that a large percentage of their subscriber base within their mailing list is trash. Most have grown accustomed to this but try to justify it in their minds by thinking that if 75% of my mailing list is never going to see my sales pitch then 25 % is better then no subscriber base at all so it’s still worth it. This thought process in the minds of internet marketers has evolved into the following practices.

Pop ups/ Pop Unders or Whatever Else You Want to Call it.

I think it’s safe to say that this is the most common practice to try to grab a subscriber base for email marketing. I don’t know about you but no matter how valid the website is, no matter how much content a webpage has, I hate pop ups/ exit pop ups however you want to name it, it’s all the same. They are really annoying and guess what? They don’t work and when they do, who’s subscribing? That's right Janedoe-@hotmail.com. Again internet marketers are tricking themselves into thinking 25% of something is better then 0% of nothing.

The truth is search engines are cracking down hard on this form of practice. If you want to run any kind of adwords campaign or any other pay per click advertising campaign most search engines will state in their policies that it is against their terms of service if your site has or uses this pop ups. How do they combat it? Simply, by raising your pay per click price on your keywords. So think about it, is it really worth paying $2 or more a click just for 75% of trash email accounts. That’s one expensive mailing list.

The Dreaded “Squeeze Page” and Google.

A squeeze page is simply this. A 1 page mini website that someone optimized for a particular set of keywords, offering something, anything, usually a free ebook of sorts in exchange for an email address. Hence the term “squeeze”. You’ve been squeezed into subscribing to that person's mailing list. It even extends over into affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketers know that since they are only marketing someone else’s product, it’s crucial to gather and keep an opt-in mailing list. This results in what I think a lot of us have experienced. You click on an ad or in a search engine hoping to get information on a topic you are researching, only to find a 1 one page landing page with a subscriber box promising to give you the information your looking for if you only subscribe. You now feel the “squeeze”.  Guess what? If you practice this on your website then that only re-enforces to your visitors to use their dummy email address.

Google is now clamping down hard on this and have made changes that adversely affect many sites, specifically those running PPC campaigns with squeeze pages on the landing pages of their websites. Two things will happen, Google will either disable your campaign altogether or raise your pay per click price. Well a lot of internet marketers try to get around this by studying the ins and outs of Googles terms of service. Based on the new rules regarding squeeze pages, people have changed their approach. Example, here is what one website wrote about on how you should structure current squeeze pages.

Note: I do not recommend this current practice, this is only to illustrate how people think they can get around and try to beat Google at their game.

With the new “rules” you should look at and if possible stick to:

• Squeeze pages that are not a single page website
• The squeeze page content should be between 200 to 300 words.
• There should be links on the page linking to pages of similar content, in your own site and to other sites. Now you don’t need hundreds, just 6 to 8 links in total. Yes, the links do seem to defeat the purpose of the squeeze page but if you place the links at the bottom of the page they will be unobtrusive and should the visitor get to them chances are good that he will not subscribe anyway.
• If you have many visitors clicking away from your squeeze page you should relook your offer and sales pitch.

If you abide to these “rules” your squeeze page should be safe and you will not be receiving any $12 clicks from your PPC campaign. Your page will also be indexed and if you did your SEO correctly you will appear in the generic searches.

While currently this may work, and get around the Google terms of service, let’s take a look it. Truth be told it’s still a “squeeze”, and you will still land up with a lot trash email accounts. Maybe not as many but eventually Google will catch on to you. The idea behind the current method is that instead of blatantly trying to squeeze the visitor for his email address, wet his whistle with some content, and he won’t feel your squeeze as hard. Bottom line is it’s still a squeeze, your visitor will still sense the lack of content and you’ll get his trash email account in return.

The Proper Way to Build a SEO Opt-in Mailing List.

The answer really is very simple. Stop using these cheesy tactics to try and build a subscriber base. Yes you will make sales using the above tactics, but these tactics should not be the whole focus of your landing pages. Instead if want less garbage emails subscribing to your mailing list and less and less clamp down from Google on your adwords campaigns then the answer is simple.

Start giving your visitors what they are looking for. Don’t beat around the bush, stop rehashing old material and don’t “squeeze people” into subscribing because I bet you don’t like it either when it happens to you. Guess what? Your visitors don’t like it as well and neither does Google. Google is trying to clean up the "garbage sites" and I have to say they are doing a pretty good job at it to. If you stop trying to read between the lines in trying to find the next best Google search engine loop hole you’ll be far better off. People want real information and real content. Why not start to provide exactly what your visitor wants. Write several keyword focused articles, build landing page that have content and practice solid SEO techniques. What I mean by all this is take the time to develop your own articles about your niche, focus them around some keywords and optimize that landing page for the search engines. By all means ask for a users email address, but don't try to squeeze them into subscribing, give them the content they are looking for, and you'll find they begin to trust you better and your email marketing potential will begin to grow. Is it a lot of work? You bet. But, if you want to still be around in today’s ever changing SEO world then why not start off right.

By creating content your visitors actually want to read, by providing exactly what people want and create keyword focused rich landing pages you will be rewarded in 3 ways.

• You will get better rankings in Google and other search engines
• Your adwords campaigns will be cheaper and you’ll experience less clamp down from Google (no more $ 12 clicks)
• People will be more inclined to subscribe using their “real email address”

Now I am going to say it’s not easy and it does takes a lot of work. It is true you will get a lot less subscribers and it will take longer to get them. It is true you will probably still have garbage email addresses in your mailing list. But if you want a real subscriber base, one that truly has money within the list, and one with a lot less garbage email addresses and more subscribers from people who genuinely want more content then start building the kind of site people want and they will trust you more and your business will grow as a result.

The future of Email Marketing is changing and the sooner you start providing your visitors what they want, and practice proper SEO on your landing pages the better off you'll be.