The Importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Your Manufacturing Business
Your customers use search engines to check out manufacturing companies, research products and services, and see how companies are perceived. The results of those search engines usually dictate the manufacturing companies whose websites they’ll visit and the manufacturing company they end up doing business with.
From a literal standpoint, SEO for manufacturers ensures your website ranks high with search engines on a search engine results page. When that happens, people looking for specific terms relevant to your manufacturing company see you first.
Read on to discover the importance of SEO for manufacturers.
The Basics of Manufacturing SEO
The explanation above is a macro-description of why manufacturing companies should consider optimizing their website and content.
On a micro level, industrial companies that use SEO are looking for specific things:
Boost organic (non-paid) traffic to their website
Generate qualified leads
Improve online presence and competitiveness
Optimize Google Analytics and other keyword research to maximize search results
It’s these outcomes that ultimately drive the importance of doing SEO well if you’re a manufacturing company.
If these sound like goals you’d like to focus on, then we suggest you consider the following SEO insights.
Understanding Search Intent
Sound manufacturing SEO strategy starts with knowing your customers, and more importantly, knowing the search intent they possess.
Every time a search is made on a search engine, you can be assured that the individual is in one of the following situations:
Transactional: Looking to make a purchase.
Commercial Investigative: Exploring & comparing purchase options.
Navigational: Looking for something very specific.
Informational: Exploring a general topic or category (gathering information).
In SEO terms, we call this search intent.
And as you build out your SEO strategy for your manufacturing business, it’s incredibly important that you understand how these different types of intent work, and how you can & should create content around them.
Optimize Transactional Pages for the Right Transactional Keywords
The single most important page on your website is your “transactional” page. It represents the page that’s optimized for your transactional keyword(s). Ultimately, it’s the webpage that brings in visitors looking to make a purchase.
Thus, it’s important to make sure you’re optimizing it correctly. In order to do that, follow these steps:
Target the right transactional keywords.
You can do this with a software tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush, and simply filter your keyword searches by transactional intent. In the example here, we’ve selected Transactional in the keyword intent dropdown found within SEMRush. Once selected, transactional keywords related to the original search term (in this case ‘commercial covers’)Search your competition incognito.
No matter what browser you use, there’s a private browsing setting. Use this to ensure you don’t have any cache or cookies that affect your results. Then, simply type in the transactional keywords and see which competition shows up. These competitors are doing SEO well, so see what you can glean from the pages they’ve already optimized (what content do they provide, how’s the page structured, etc.).Add your own flavor.
If you just copy the keywords and page structure, you won’t be providing anything better than what’s already on the market. To stand out in their industries, it’s important they offer insights into their own unique perspectives. So, ask questions like: how are we different, what is our unique approach, and what aren’t others saying about this? If you ask those questions to yourself, you’ll be more prepared to provide unique, valuable insights.
Consistent & Intentional Content Creation
Once the transactional keyword research has produced highly optimized pages, the next step is to create consistent, ongoing content that uses keyword research.
The SEO strategy is simple: Create meaningful content around keywords that have value and aren’t so difficult you can’t rank for them.
For example, Fractional Marketing Has worked with a particular B2B company for over 7 years, and has produced impressive growth in business and lead generation, including increasing organic website traffic by 109%, year over year.
This company even has a single blog post that’s not designed for “transactions” that still generates leads. The reason this group has been successful though is because of their commitment to ongoing SEO services, and the consistent & intentional content creation that’s been included within them.
Link Acquisition
Another element of any successful SEO for manufacturing companies is backlinks. There are several ways to increase your backlinks.
Probably the easiest method is writing quality content that employs SEO strategies for guest blogs and articles. This way, your backlinks will generate organic traffic and qualified leads, and if the backlink is for a product, the potential customer is well on their way to being a customer.
Internet user intent is rarely to click on a backlink to manufacturing companies or their websites for fun. They almost always will be looking to buy or research the product or service link they clicked on. The more trusted the content with the link is, the more a customer will trust the link source.
Conclusion - What Are You Doing With Manufacturing SEO?
SEO for manufacturers is less of a thing you arrive at and more of a thing you commit to. The more a manufacturing business is committed to its content and technical SEO strategy; the better the chances potential customers will see your content and your target customer will visit.
If you are looking for a sound manufacturing SEO marketing strategy, set up a consultation today.
