Do you live in the 21st century? Then SEO should be an integral part of your sales & marketing strategy. Without it, you’re fighting an uphill battle against your competition.
“The best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google search.“
– Anonymous SEO Expert.
How SEO for Manufacturers is Different
Unlike ecommerce or retail sites where the shopping cart is prioritized, SEO for manufacturers involves strategic keyword selection, improving user experience, adjusting website structure, and regularly publishing new content that is helpful for your audience.
While it may seem like a lot at first, with the right approach, SEO can become your top lead magnet. Let’s go a little deeper into what matters most when it comes to manufacturing SEO.
1. Website Structure
While it won’t exactly turn heads, the nerdy back-end stuff is what gets Google crawling your website correctly so it can rank. You simply cannot get steady inbound leads from search engines if the site structure is a mess.
- Bad links – all links on your website should lead to the desired destination. Poor links don’t just reduce your rankings, they hinder the user’s experience. You can take advantage of a free broken link checker tool like Screaming Frog to identify these problems.
- Metadata – metadata is something your client doesn’t always see but the search engine does. These little pieces of data describe what your website is all about, helping the search engine list it when a user makes a related request. Meta titles, meta tags, and meta descriptions must be optimized to achieve higher rankings.
2. Performing Keyword Research
Choosing the right keywords is the key to SEO for manufacturers.
Start by getting in the mind of you audience. Are you targeting potential distributors, end-users, or both? Identify exactly who you want to attract to your website before selecting keywords.
While numerous keyword-generating tools exist online today, you need to brainstorm first.
Begin by writing down descriptive two or three-word phrases about your products. Examples from a few different industries may be “RC cars”, “metal fabrication” or “glass bottle manufacturer”. Start with at least 10 of these keyword buckets.
Then you can go on to using different tools to see which keywords are popular, refine your search terms, find out which keywords work for your competition, and much more. Some tools to consider are:
While the tool can do a big chunk of work, you still need to go through each keyword manually to ensure its relevance. Researching which keywords your main competitors are targeting will provide insight into what’s working for them, and what they’ve overlooked.
Then you can use their mistakes and experience to your advantage!
In case your website has been around for a while, it’s easy to figure out which keywords it ranks for to use them for further research. If you’re on the 2nd or 3rd page of Google for a phrase you really like, target the heck out of that phrase with your SEO to bring it to the next level. This low-hanging fruit is much easier to rank for than starting from scratch.
3. Create Useful Content
What does your audience care about? What questions do your sales reps or experts answer the most?
You will always have more success by writing for your audience, as opposed to obsessing over what you think Google wants you to write about.
Not only is content essential for high search rankings, it will also help convey your expertise and increase credibility which can turn more browsers into buyers. As a manufacturer, you have an excellent opportunity to capitalize on high-quality content because the industrial sector is often behind the curve on digital marketing.
Your potential clients are looking for information online. Give it to them.
Sprinkle the content with your target keywords and you are on your way to success.
- What can you educate them about on the industry or your product?
- Which misconceptions do they have about your products?
- Do they need help with the buying process?
Cater to the seeker’s hunger for advice and information with your articles. Several things to consider when creating content are:
- Size – search engines don’t favor small articles since they aren’t likely to provide sufficient value. Generally you want your posts to be at least 1,000 words. But if your topic doesn’t need it, keep it short rather than adding fluff.
- Structure – articles must be easy to skim through so they should have bullet points and headings.
- Keywords – use keywords sparingly to avoid overstuffing. You can dedicate one article to one keyword.
4. Improve User Experience
SEO isn’t just about making your website appealing to the search engine. It’s also about making users happy. These two efforts go hand in hand.
To ensure excellent user experience, you have to work on the structure of your website. If visitors aren’t happy with what your website has to offer, they’ll simply leave. This won’t just affect your ability to retain potential clients but boost your bounce rate and hinder rankings.
- Mobile-friendliness – the website has to be easy to navigate on mobile gadgets.
- Easy navigation – if a ten-year-old kid can navigate your website, your designer has done a great job. When people are pressed for time, they need clarity and simplicity.
- Loading speed – slow-loading websites have high bounce rates. Users are likelier to go on to the next search result rather than wait for your website to load. Check the speed of your webpages for free at GTmetrix.com. It’s possible to adjust the loading speed by reevaluating plugins, cutting image size, rethinking videos, and compressing content.
SEO for Manufacturers – Bring Your Sales to the Next Level
While industrial SEO may be time-consuming, when done right, it has an impressive ROI. SEO traffic and organic search traffic is a great way to reach new potential customers that are searching for your exact products or service. SEO is the gift that keeps on giving, and in the case of organic traffic and leads you can really take hold of the market with a solid SEO strategy.
Key Marketing Group has a process that is tried and true. Our customers are paired with an SEO Specialist from our team as well as an Account Manager for optimum communication and implementation. We take a customized approach to your address your specific SEO needs. Manufacturing SEO can be daunting with competitors all working to rank for the same terms, but it helps to have search Engine Optimization experts on your team!
Besides driving traffic to your website and helping you acquire clients, SEO for manufacturing improves brand awareness and improves user experience. The inbound marketing strategy for a large manufacturing company should include search engine optimization at the top of the list. If done consistently for a long period of time, the consistency of sales will vastly improve. Whether you are selling to B2B buyers or B2C, it is imperative to get in front of your customer using a comprehensive SEO Strategy.
Leave it to the SEO Experts
Even though it is possible to achieve some SEO results on your own, an inexperienced person doing SEO may be doing more harm than good. An experienced manufacturing SEO agency can do a much faster and more efficient job while repairing past SEO mistakes.
At Key Marketing Group, SEO is all we do. Of course, search engine optimization does require knowledge and experience in website development, we have dedicated website development staff on our team. SEO is our primary focus, and we have been able to deliver extraordinary results to our clients because we are hyper-focused on driving organic traffic.
Learn more about what SEO for Manufactures at Key Marketing Group can do for your business by checking out our SEO Blueprint!
