This Step-By-Step SEO Process Increases Revenue For Manufacturing Companies.
For most major and minor players in the manufacturing industry, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is still shrouded in mystery. Understandably, SEO rules and best practices are constantly evolving and shifting as new trends and technologies come and go.
Each year, companies spend over $79 billion on SEO. Marketers using SEO to market their brand often have a competitive advantage over their counterparts who prefer zero or traditional marketing methods.
As a manufacturer in an increasingly competitive market, getting your target audience's attention and loyalty often requires having a stronghold in digital marketing, especially SEO. You can leverage the power of SEO to:
Increase website traffic
Increase brand awareness
Rank high on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), etc.
But what is SEO for manufacturers, and why do you need it? This article explains SEO for manufacturers and how to leverage SEO to increase revenue for your manufacturing company.
Understand The Basics of SEO for Manufacturers
What is SEO?
SEO for manufacturers is the process of sourcing and attracting high-quality traffic to your website with the intent of converting that traffic to leads. Fortunately, SEO best practices and tactics for manufacturers don't differ much from any other industry.
Why Do Manufacturers Need SEO?
Manufacturers know that traditional marketing strategies don't suffice to compete in the digital space. Competition is stiff, and SEO for manufacturers is among the best ways to increase your online presence and SERPs rankings.
Below are the benefits of SEO for manufacturers:
Long-Term Returns on Investment (ROI)
Increased organic traffic
Increased brand awareness
Increased trust from your target audience
You gain authority in the industry
Quality leads.
More importantly, SEO for manufacturers can help you increase revenue. As your site draws in more quality traffic from search engines, you start to reap the benefits of more inbound leads. These inbound leads–combined with a practical sales approach–can lead to more sales and increased revenue.
Step-by-Step Process to Increase Revenue
General SEO best practices and tactics cut across all industries. However, in some cases, SEO can slightly differ for manufacturers, especially when it comes to the implementation of best practices. Below are some expert-approved SEO best practices and tactics compiled and intended for manufacturers.
Define What's Possible
Do you understand your SEO traffic potential?
One of the fundamental keys to successful SEO is effortless expectation setting. Understanding your limits and what you can accomplish with your SEO can help you succeed in digital marketing.
In most cases, this requires taking a look at what other competitors are doing with their SEO efforts. You need to discover what keywords other manufacturers are targeting, the content type they post on their sites and whether they are active on their socials.
Defining what's possible and working for your competitors should be a sufficient motivating factor to develop your SEO strategy for success. By discerning what you can achieve with SEO, you can create a competitive advantage and offer a unique selling point. You can use realistic expectations as your goals for your SEO strategy.
Set The Foundation
Is your website optimized for SEO?
Below are simple steps to set the foundation by optimizing your website for SEO.
Analyze all of your site data
A single data piece doesn't tell much. However, collecting lots of site data reveals a pattern. For instance, you may have a problem and need to make adjustments if many people visit your website and fail to click your Call To Action (CTA).
You can use Google Search Console traffic data, and user behavior reports to paint a clear picture. Analyze your site data for specific patterns that you can, in turn, eliminate or improve on.
Conduct thorough keyword research (Read further)
Produce long and value-rich content
According to Buffer, 1,600 words is the ideal blog post length. A well-optimized website should have reasonably sufficient content without compromising quality and appearing forced.
Length isn't everything when content-optimizing your website. However, it sends a message to Google that you're providing more info.
Optimize for on-page and off-page SEO
Optimize your website for mobile users
Speed up the pages.
The basics for some can be building a website from scratch. You can outsource your SEO to a reliable digital marketing agency if you need help handling the basics of optimizing your website.
Do Keyword Research (Target Industry-Specific Keywords)
Keywords play a vital role in SEO for manufacturers. Keywords indicate the main topic of your website content. They also make it easy for your target audience to find your content upon conducting an internet search. As such, it is important to ensure your keywords align with your target audience's search intent.
Ensure you do a thorough keyword research analysis as part of your editorial planning process. Doing the proper keyword research can help you uncover new topics and related content pieces around a particular theme, and ensure there is no content burnout.
The best searchable site content focuses on specific topics and keywords. There are different levels of ranking specific keywords and search volumes attributed to individual phrases and keywords.
Therefore, create a plan where you target low-volume low-difficulty keywords and high-volume high-difficulty keywords. The result is a balanced long-term keyword approach.
In addition, keyword research is typically bucketed into long-tail and short-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are typically high in volume and scoring difficulty. On the other hand, niche long-tail keywords can produce a low volume of total search traffic but align with the visitor's search directly. The site visitors you gain from long-tail keyword searches tend to be higher value since they want detailed answers to their detailed queries.
When conducting keyword research, pay attention to phrases users are searching for, as well as similar search phrases. Combine your findings with industry-specific terms. This may highlight the need to create authoritative content around industry-specific keywords and phrases.
Create Authoritative Content
Doing keyword research can only be successful with a proper content strategy. The content you place on your website is your first point of contact with your target audience. You can use content to gain authority in the industry, convince prospects to buy your service or product, build brand awareness, etc.
Once you've figured out a proper keyword strategy, creating keyword-specific content is simple. It is important to ensure you create useful and reasonable content. Avoid irrelevant content simply because you feel like SEO requires quantity content over quality.
SEO content can be a blog post or article related to your manufacturing business' service or product, making it easy for SEO to locate keywords in your website content. SEO-optimized content translates to increased traffic. This can help you improve sales conversion since most prospects are already searching for your service or product.
Below are best practices for creating SEO-optimized content for your manufacturing business:
Create content for your buyer persona
Create content for your visitors' search intent
Don't be afraid to go in-depth with the specific topic
Create content to answer specific questions your prospects are asking
Create content to show how your products are used
Earn links from external sources. Create content for guest posting on other websites to increase traffic
Create an editorial content calendar to ensure consistency in posting content
Know your audience and follow their behavior patterns. This helps you deliver content speaking directly to their pain points and why you're the ideal solution provider.
Build Link Strategies
If you have a partner in the manufacturing industry, you can consult them about adding a link to your website on theirs. This kind of synergy helps show Google you run a high-quality website. It can also direct more traffic to your website and business. In addition, it comes with the added benefits of increased brand awareness and recognition.
However, before building link connections, you need to ensure you have a link-worthy website. A content-rich, unbiased, authoritative site that helps address visitors' concerns can easily attract links from other sites, thus improving your SEO. Strive to do a guest post from time to time to increase your credibility across different audiences.
SEO Reports
Once you have accomplished the above steps and best practices, the next and most important step is to track your progress. Tracking key metrics helps you pinpoint where SEO is going wrong.
SEO is a dynamic and fast-paced sector. It can be frustrating, especially if you're relying on outdated SEO tactics that no longer work. As such, it is important to constantly learn emerging trends and compare them to your analysis of your current SEO strategy.
Below are Key Performance Indicators to track:
Organic traffic (how many visitors come to your website)
Search rankings
Search Visibility
Links/ Backlinks
Organic Click-Through-Rate
Branded Traffic
Website bounce rate
Average session duration (how long visitors spend on your website on average)
Cost Per Click.
You can also track your Return on Investment if you invested in any digital marketing agency or SEO tools in your SEO campaign. This will help you determine whether the net income is worth your investment in SEO.
You can use Google Analytics, Google Looker Studio, and Google Search Console to help you effectively track your SEO approach.
Key Takeaways
Are you planning an SEO strategy for your manufacturing business? Understanding the benefits of SEO for manufacturers can be a solid motivation to invest in a proper SEO strategy.
SEO for manufacturers shares some similarities across other industries. To succeed in SEO for manufacturers, you need to optimize your website for SEO.
Best practices to increase SEO efforts include proper keyword research, consistently creating authoritative content, and building link connections. More importantly, ensure you track your progress. Tracking your SEO helps you discover opportunities for improvement or make relevant changes. It is worth noting that SEO is a long-term approach, meaning you shouldn't expect to see results overnight. However, when you do, SEO can be the greatest tool to market your manufacturing business, increase brand awareness, increase potential leads, and increase revenue through sales.