Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Why You Should Archive Your Ezines and Newsletters Online

This is an interesting guest post by Trey Pennewell. Not everyone archives their newsletters. Maybe it is time to rethink this important SEO (Search Engine Optimization) issue?



As a publisher of ezines and newsletters, you know that customers
always want more from your services. One way to provide customers
a good service while increasing your search engine rankings is to
place your ezine archives online. By placing these online, you
are giving your readers a value-added service that will set you
apart from other ezines and newsletters. Not only will this
provide value to your customers, but also by placing your
archives online, the search engine spiders are able to "see"
your unique combination of content. Ultimately, having your ezine
archives online will give you higher search rankings and
additional keyword phrase variations that everyone so desperately
wants.

There are some things to consider when making the decision to put
your newsletter archives online.

The first consideration is whether or not your ezine model is a
paid subscription or a free subscription. If your ezine is a pay
subscription, you probably do not want to place all of your
archives online where someone can access them for free. If you
were to do this there would be no need for readers to actually
pay for a subscription. However, you may want to consider placing
a couple of archived issues on a website, so that potential
customers and advertisers can see what it is your publication has
to offer them. Then, you can keep your remaining archives in a
member's only website that is only accessible to your paying
subscribers.


If you offer a free ezine or newsletter, there is little reason
not to offer all of your archives for free online. The reason
that people will want to go ahead and subscribe to your ezine or
newsletter is that they can get the issue as soon as it comes
out. You may want to consider only offering archives online that
are at least a few months old. In other words, do not offer this
month's issue in the archive for a few more months, so that
people will still want to subscribe to your publication to see it
when it is first made available.


Search engine spiders love content on websites. Not only do
spiders like the generic content, but they really like valuable
content such as articles. Quality content is one of the primary
things that search engines look for when providing rankings and
the level of importance of a website. The articles that are
included in your archive will boost your search engine ranking.
Having a higher search engine ranking means that potential
subscribers are able to find you much easier. Being easy to find
and offering a service such as free ezine with archives gives
potential subscribers many reasons to choose your ezine or
newsletter to land in their email box over your competitors.


Having your publications placed in an online archive will
automatically provide you with a good amount of keyword
optimization. For example, if you are publishing an ezine that
mainly talks about home improvement, there is a high likelihood
that many of the articles in your publication will contain the
words "home improvement". Now when a potential subscriber
searches on the Internet for "home improvement," they are much
more likely to be directed to your website and learn that you
provide a valuable subscription on this very topic. If you do not
have your archives online, chances of picking up these new
visitors and subscribers are greatly diminished.


Simply put, having your newsletter archives online is probably
the easiest way to increase your exposure in the search engines
and the easiest way to increase your ezine's subscriber base for
free. It is very inexpensive to provide your archives online, and
it can improve your subscriber's experience, letting him or her
feel good about the service that you are providing to them.


People may have a desire to read your publication, but your ezine
can easily get overlooked due to the excessive number of
publications currently arriving in the subscriber's email box. A
day will come when an individual feels overwhelmed by the number
of publications arriving in their mailbox each day or week. When
this starts to happen, they start canceling subscriptions because
it is simply too much hassle to go through and delete these
newsletters and ezines every week or every month. I have found
myself in that position, so I eliminated the ones that bored me
and only kept one or two subscriptions that really seemed to
offer me the quality content that I wanted in an easy-to-read
format. It was getting to be annoying to go through my email on a
regular basis to filter out the excess ezines and newsletters
that I did not read anyway.


So if you want to set yourself apart from your competitors and
offer this value-added service to your customers, you seriously
need to consider placing your archives online. It is likely that
you will be surprised at the change in your search engine
rankings as well. Again, if you provide a pay subscription do
consider offering a few issues in a free archive, so that you can
at least show potential subscribers and advertisers the quality
of the product you provide.


Follow my advice, and down the road, you will be able to generate
more income from your newsletter, because you will have a much
larger list of subscribers to count as your own.


Trey Pennewell is a writer, who writes about online marketing.
Learn more about our Pay For Results SEO services at:
http://www.linksandtraffic.com/seo-services/search-marketing.html
Trey also manages article approvals at the free article
directory located at: http://www.techcentralpublishing.com

Greg Cryns
Get your FREE "Should I be a freelance writer?" report



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