How to Use Email Subscription to Grow Readership - SCHOOLCONTENTS.info

How to Use Email Subscription to Grow Readership

Subscribing to email helps in ranking
 Using email to gain readership and followers has never been this needed. That's the bad news. Expect you're capturing and retaining your website visitors through email subscriptions and related mediums, sooner or later, the competition will crush you.

Google and other search engines are helping your blog from the start. Writing quality posts without traffic is more than useless. Here is where search engines come in. They send you traffic and once you have your visitors, it's your job to retain them before another person does.

How do you retain them?

By telling stories and jokes? By designing your website very professionally? By giving them takeaways?

Maybe none of the above.

You can only retain these people, further and more importantly, by a promise to give them more of what they've come for. If they loved what you've already shared, they'd voluntarily ask for more. Yet, you need to be ready for them before they come. This is where an email subscription comes in.

How does this work?

You ask visitors and readers to submit their emails to you so they can be receiving your future posts. They enter their emails and in return, each time you drop new posts, they get email messages containing the links back to your fresh content.

Of course, all bloggers should know how this works by now. This is the best bet for most professional content writers. This is the best way their readers are taken back to their works from time to time.

But there is one thing most have not got!

Email subscription is a ranking factor. The more active people on your list, the higher your posts, and ranking.

Why is Email Subscription Important to Ranking

You might I've read elsewhere that email subscription is not a ranking factor. I had also not read anywhere that Google stated it, as a ranking determinant. Yet, I have proof, from my end, that the bigger your email list, the higher you rank in Google and other search engines. I don't mean the higher the traffic, I mean the ranking!

Don't believe it?

If no, answer this simple question. Why does Google rank our posts?

I know you have hundreds of reasons in your head. Google also gives 200 ranking factors. But all comes back to one thing I discussed in my post, "How Google Truly Ranks Posts Up to No. 1 Position"

It's all about users' experiences.

In short, if people love your posts, search engines won't care otherwise. The length of a post won't matter again. Domain age will be secondary. Authority will be less important. What search engines reckon with is whether their users enjoy the content or otherwise.

Now, how does the email subscription factor in here? Let's do simple Math.

You have 3000 people actively receiving your posts' links each time you drop them. These people will open are read your posts, and probably, within a few hours, you drop them.

Compared this with another person with no email list or a few subscribers but posted the same content. He has nobody or a few people to click links to read his posts within the first few hours. He only depends on what Google and other search engines refer to him.

By practice, search engines are able to track the sources of our traffic. They can track how long people spend on your pages. They can see what a reader does after reading your post. Did he share? Did he subscribe? Did he print? Did he read to the end or bounce back for a better result?

So, how do you achieve a higher ranking with the simple act of email subscriptions by readers?

1. Subscription is a Good User Experience Signal

Once a search engine sends someone to you to read your post, then, he subscribes. He has just sent Google - feedback, "your content and your blog are worth visiting".

This is why Google and other search engines usually send us back to a blog we had once enjoyed its posts immediately we search for other terms the blog has. Our actions/browsing histories had been tracked and can be used to feed us results on the next search.

2. Subscription Gives Returning Visitors

Once you have people on your list, they will continually be receiving your new posts and come back to your blog. With this, Google sees reasons to rank posts that more people have read and loved than what a few people have just read.

This is the reason why most news houses will rush at sending out breaking news. Aside from doing their job of timely posting of news, they want to retain top ranking for that news if they can get very many people to read it as soon as possible.

In this case, timing is not the only factor, the number of readers and their feedback help their rankings for such news.

3. Email Subscription Helps With Long-Term Relationship

In most cases, bloggers like me only want people to come back to their blogs. That's our primary reason to ask people to join the lists. This can be your sole reason if you're just starting out. But if you're well established in the industry, you will love you've worked hard to acquire such a number of subscribers.

You may, in the future, want to raise your game. Some bloggers later create courses that they decide to sell. Some may have third-parties products to promote. Some will want to organize seminars and workshops.

If you must get to this level, your email list consists of ready-made prospects. It won't take sweat to convert these people to buyers - just because they've trusted you already.

A Case Study of Why You Should Consider Email Subscription as a Ranking Factor

As an education consultant, when I created the blog to update students on the latest admission news, I sent some SMS containing links to subscribe to my blog posts. My 150 existing clients got the texts.

They joined the email list directly through the messages. Then, I kept updating my blog with new posts. Each time I did that, they received emails, then, links to read details on the blog.

Months later, 90% of those students will return to me to tell me that my blog has been so helpful. They told me at a search for anything through Google lately, they would notice at least one of my posts ranked for their queries.

90% of 150?

Those people were right, I was right and Google was right for showing them my content each time they searched the net for something. But there was a true brain behind that.

What was it?

After subscribing to my blog, these people would receive an average of seven posts to read from me month after month. Google has tracked (histories) they loved posts from my blog. Their browser is keeping their recent visits. Cookies and caches are still on their devices.

With all that, Google wants to please them anytime they're looking for anything their beloved blog has one or two posts on. Then, the search engine shows them posts from me instead of competitors.

Lesson

In fact, if certain readers look for the same keywords from other devices or other geographical locations, especially those who had not subscribed to or visited my blog before, Google may likely show them the results from their own beloved or subscribed blogs instead of mine.

In this case, the length or quality of my posts may not be the priority of the search engine. They track histories to send users back to what they love most. Don't forget, that users' experience controls Google, not the other way round.

How To Make Visitors Subscribe to Your Blog Voluntarily

If you cunningly lure people to subscribe, it only costs them a few clicks to unsubscribe. Learn to make people subscribe without them feeling there must be a hidden price to pay for their simple actions.

Below is a laid down professional way I have got a thousand emails that receive my content.

1. Write Great Content

No one should state this last in any list. There are millions of blogs sharing the same content you're writing. People want something to differentiate them. They'll subscribe to your posts if they see the need to be following every word you drop.

2. Create a Project of Episodic Posts

If you have a project that you need to carry your readers along with, they will voluntarily subscribe to your email because they don't want to miss each stage of that project's progress. Episodic posts are the best shots if you want people to follow by email. They definitely want to know the end of the story, functions, research, etc if they find it interesting, educative, entertaining, and informative.

3. Place at Least Two Subscription Boxes

You should place at least two subscription boxes or links on your blog. Some visitors will love to subscribe when they complete reading a post. A box below the post will help them immediately.

Some will love to check the sidebar of your blog for a subscription widget. That seems to be the norm on the internet. More often, subscription widgets are found on the left or right of the page. Most visitors already know this and they want to check for it right there.

4. Explain What They Should Do Next

More and more novices are joining the internet. Never should you assume that everybody knows what you know. We all know that after subscribing to blogs, we should check our email inboxes or spam for confirmation links. This, we have to click to confirm that we truly subscribe to the posts and we want future posts sent to us.

Not everybody knows this. And if they forget, remind them.

Why don't you tell them what they should do after subscribing? If you don't guide these people a bit further, you may have thousands of unverified subscribers within a year.

You can add a simple line, "check inbox/spam for the link to confirm your subscription please".

5. Tell Them What They Will Gain

People don't just give you their emails unless they hope to gain something. The quality content he's expecting is the obvious reason anybody will like to subscribe. However, you can add more if you have any.

Briefly state around your Newsletter box/widget what you will be sending them in the future. These may include promos, white papers, research, guides, scholarships, or any other benefits.

With this, you can win more hearts than just placing a newsletter widget that says. "Join our email list", Follow By Email, etc.

6. Add Subscription Links Within Posts

Sometimes, you may be writing a post that requires you to update readers when something is out (later), when a program you're writing on will start when the list will be out, and so on. This will call for readers' concerns. They don't want to miss when the next phase starts.

This is your chance to give a subscription link. Here is one statement for such. "if you're reading this offer late, consider subscribing to this blog to know when the next offer opens", "Submit your email to know when the list of successful candidates is officially out" etc.

Conclusion

It may be hard to convince you how more people subscribing to your posts can be a ranking factor. Especially if you're just a newcomer with no or a few people on your list, newsletters may not convince you yet.

Those who had acquired thousands of subscribers already know the magic of newsletter subscriptions in ranking their content.

Whether we're aware of it or not, a higher number of active subscribers is helping in many ways - retaining your old visitors, giving you immediate prospects if you develop a new course or product to sell, and most importantly feeding Google back on positive user experience.

Do you agree that the more people are subscribing to your blog, the more likely you're going to be ranked? Have you ever experienced a higher ranking as a result of more people joining your list? Do you think you can still maintain more ranking and long-term relationships without an email subscription? Share your experience. Leave a comment below.

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Techie BEC Konsult 7:54 PM (0 minutes ago) to me