How to Use Strategic SEO Email

Content writers know that good search-engine optimization involves targeted keywords that let people find exactly what they need quickly and easily. Smart keyword strategies allow a search that produces results.

No, this isn’t about using email to boost search engine rankings or helping people find a site. This is about creating an email system that helps you work faster and more efficiently while helping your clients to do the same.

It’s a win-win advantage that saves time and money for everyone.

With the increase of web working and using email to communicate back and forth, finding what you need, when you need it, matters a great deal. Minutes count in a day, adding up to hours in a week – and if those hours are spent searching your email, it’s a complete waste of time.

Email can even kill your business.

This searching is a waste of your clients’ time too. You’re not working on their project, you have less time to provide fast customer service, and inefficient email may mean that clients are spending their minutes searching for emails too.

You can set up all the folders in your email that you like. You can use filters, colors tagging and stars to manage your email until the cows come home. Your clients and peers may be doing the same, hoping for just as much as you might be.

What good is shifting email to folders to find what you want later on? You’ll still have to sift through all the communication. A folder labeled “Design Projects” full of emails from various clients isn’t really very helpful, nor is a long list of folders, each named for every client you’ve ever had in your life.

We’re foldering ourselves to death, people.

Besides, how many of us maintain these folder habits and tagging tactics? We all have great intentions to clean the email closet and organize until we can pick and choose in seconds. Fast forward a few months, and that email organization isn’t looking so clean.

It’s an ongoing maintenance thing. Most of us aren’t great about long-term follow-through on tasks like that.

Your email search feature is a search engine just like Google. It relies on keywords you input to looks through hundreds – thousands! – of emails and find a match. You can actually be pretty damned messy and disorganized with your email and still find what you need quickly if you apply great SEO to your email.

In short, harnessing the power of email SEO lets you take efficiency to a whole new level – and saves you a bunch of headaches. Here are some SEO email tips to help you go the distance:

Use a pertinent keyword you can remember easily in the subject line. Think about what you might search for in a few months when you might be looking back in time with a memory that isn’t fresh. “Question about the Auto Blog” isn’t a great subject line. “Sidebar Button Design for Auto Blog” is more relevant.

Insert the recipient’s name at least twice in the email – once in the greeting and once in the conclusion is perfect. We all like to hear our name anyways, and clients especially so. Start emails with, “Hi Ryan,” versus, “Hi,” or “Hey there.” Wrap them up with closings like, “If there’s anything else I can help with, Ryan, feel free to let me know.”

Apply relevant keywords throughout your email communication. In our search to get concise, fast emails zipping around the ‘net, we’ve started to cut out the most important elements. “Did you get that button I sent?” is useless email content. “Hi Ryan, did you get the sidebar button design for your auto blog that I sent you on October 1?” is better.

Try to stay on subject as much as possible. People have a tendency to create long email threads that cover 40 subjects in one back-and-forth marathon session. Starting a new email when a different subject slips into the conversation helps you find that thread when you search. Otherwise, you’ll have to read a long, long conversation to find the information you’re looking for.

Search well. Avoid generic keywords and single-word terms or common keyword phrases. Use targeted, highly relevant keywords in your messages that apply to the client, the project and the situation. For example, searching my email for “drive-by” produces hundreds of returns. That’s no good at all. “Drive-by Charfish Design November 32″ chops the list down to a handful.

Can you think of other great SEO strategies that help you search for emails you need? How do you find what you want six months later? Share what you know and pass on the great tips!