Including copies of, or links to, company newsletters on your website can only help your search engine page rankings. Sadly, many organisations dilute the effect by listing them by date or title. To use a soccer analogy: that’s a bit like dribbling the ball to your opponent’s goal mouth, before back-heeling it to your own half.

Well-constructed newsletters are packed with key words and unique content – precisely what search engines focus upon. Newsletters (should) also carry descriptive headlines designed to attract the reader’s attention. So if your newsletter carries keyword-rich articles, using highly descriptive headings, why spoil it by accessing it with a ‘click here for our latest newsletter’-type text link?

As clever as the Internet is, the programs that search the Web for new content are pretty simple. If they come across a text link containing the word ‘newsletter’, they will assume that the word ‘newsletter’ has some relevance. It doesn’t – it’s your newsletter content that’s important. So if your newsletter’s main headline is, “New innovation in left-handed thingamees” that should also be the text link used to access your newsletter. Then, when people go searching for “innovations – left-handed thingamees” they’re more likely to find their way to your article.

Remember also that for a search engine to be able to index your newsletter it must be able to read it. Many search engines can read PDFs – but not all. Your best bet to ensure that your newsletter content gets indexed is to present it in HTML format – as a web page, in other words.

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