Are you leveraging SEO to boost your website’s traffic and conversion online? Many manufacturing organizations have yet to meet their full online potential because they continue to put SEO on the back burner. As a manufacturer, SEO is a critical digital marketing tactic that
E-commerce continues to grow within the manufacturing industry despite manufacturers not moving more attention to their online presence. There is no better time than now to start creating and implementing an SEO strategy for your manufacturing company. SEO does take time to start seeing results, so delaying anymore will continue to place you at a disadvantage.
In this guide, you’ll learn about SEO for manufacturers and its importance, along with how to get started.
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is a form of digital marketing that focuses on growing a website’s visibility. Your manufacturing website is one of the thousands currently circulating the internet and appearing on search results. The focal point of SEO is to be the first website to appear on a search engine result page for specific keywords or key phrases.
But why does search ranking matter?
Google is the biggest search engine on the internet that many people trust when doing product development and manufacturing research. There are, on average, over 5 billion different Google searches a day.
With billions of daily searches considered, your website needs to appear near the top of the results page. By appearing at the top of the search engine results page, you’re giving your business a game-changing competitive advantage. People rely on Google to provide authoritative and reliable resources for search terms that search engine optimization helps build.
Benefits of SEO
There are many benefits that SEO can bring to your manufacturing website that will continue to pay off for years. Search engine optimization requires being incredibly patient and diligent to be successful, but fortunately, luck favors consistency.
Visibility
Did you know most people performing a search on Google will not even look at the second page? First-page ranking for specific keywords or key phrases is essential for giving your website the chance to be seen by your target audience. More often than not, your target audience is searching relevant keywords that you can rank for and be the first name they see and start building trust instantly.
Reach
SEO for manufacturers allows you to reach both specific and broad audiences. Instead of spending large sums of money on paid searches, your target audience will come to you. Successful SEO for manufacturers will help spread brand awareness for your organization.
Improves Organic Search
When trying to do SEO, any significant volume of website traffic doesn’t necessarily equate to success. How many website visitors are qualified customers who will benefit from working with your manufacturing company? By improving your organic search, you drastically increase the likelihood of getting the right people to your website and contacting your business.
High Rate of ROI
SEO is a great way to get the most out of your investment because the results are effective more than one time. Unlike SEO, many traditional forms of marketing are great at bringing in customers at a time. There could be more than one person searching for your business, and Search engine optimization continues to work over time. Having sustained first-page ranking results will give your business continued website traffic that converts into customers.
How Does SEO Work?
The ultimate goal of the search engine is to provide the most relevant results to the user’s search terms. To give the user the best experience possible, search engines take three different steps for every search.
- Crawling
The search engine will send crawlers across the internet to find relevant content to the user’s search term. Crawlers start with finding web pages with links they can use to find more pages. After the crawlers find the most relevant web pages, they store them in a giant database.
- Indexing
After the crawlers search the internet for the best and most relevant web pages, it needs to be sorted and stored. The indexing database will hold onto these web pages to provide searchers with specific search terms.
- Ranking
The ranking depends on a scale of most to least relevant, with the most relevant web pages appearing first for that specific term. Once a user searches for something, the search engine will sort through the index to find the results. Then they will list the results in order of most relevant to the user’s search terms.
Knowing how search engines operate helps SEO specialists understand the suitable approaches to get higher rankings. SEO for manufacturers works by adding content relevant to possible keywords your target audience will likely use in a search engine.
By creating relevant content and optimizing the site, the search engine will see that your website may provide a solution to the user’s search. The more quality and relevant content a website has, the more likely the search engine will move the website closer to the top of the search results pages.
SEO vs. Other Digital Marketing Methods
One interesting aspect of search engine optimization compared to other digital marketing strategies is its pairing. Digital marketers love to use more than one method to promote businesses online to get the best results possible. However, some digital marketing methods do not support other ways, as well as SEO.
Pay-Per-Click
Many digital marketers turn to pay-per-click advertising first as their primary form of online marketing. Pay-per-click advertising is excellent for producing rapid results but does come at a high cost. As the name insists, pay-per-click requires paying money every time someone clicks on your business’s advertisement. The pay-per-click ad may be featured on Google or other search engines in addition to social media advertising platforms. The results are never guaranteed, and typically, unless you’re a pay-per-click expert, you will spend a lot of money upfront.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a powerful way to connect with your audience and grow your manufacturing brand. It shows target audiences that your business has a personality and encourages them to interact with your brand. Many platforms have their social media advertising features to run pay-per-click advertising campaigns. There are different social media platforms that you can run advertisements through, like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and Linkedin ads.
Unfortunately, social media marketing is extremely limited to the individual platforms that the accounts are active. Many businesses don’t rely on social media because they know their accounts could get banned, which would risk their business. Additionally, social media marketing is limiting because the reach doesn’t go beyond the platforms.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a powerful way to promote your business, build customer loyalty, and reach your target audience in a more individualized way. Companies that use email marketing often yield excellent results when done correctly, requiring less effort than social media marketing. However, email marketing requires highly technical skills that many people do not have time to learn or do themselves.
To succeed at email marketing, you must be a jack of all trades, capable of copywriting, data analysis, and graphic design at the minimum. Email marketing is difficult initially and takes a long time to build momentum. Many people are resistant to indulging in sales emails, or they get sent to the spam box more often than not.
Content Marketing
A standard digital marketing strategy that many businesses utilize is content marketing. Content marketing involves strategically creating and sharing online content that serves a specific purpose. The intention behind this content is to push a prospective lead to move down a sales funnel or stimulate interest in a brand.
Search engine optimization and content marketing pair well together because SEO requires keyword research and creating relevant content that attracts your target audience. Industrial and manufacturing companies can significantly benefit from creating a content marketing and SEO strategy for your online website.
The unique aspect of SEO is that it can complement any of these digital marketing methods. SEO for manufacturing or industrial companies can help generate more traffic and better results for those that do other digital marketing strategies.
Why SEO Matters to Manufacturers
Manufacturers will significantly benefit from implementing SEO strategies in their digital marketing efforts. As a manufacturer, you can implement SEO to drive more traffic to your website and convert that traffic into quality leads. Since manufacturing is in the B2B niche, your company will need to focus on targeting the right audience to succeed.
Depending on your manufacturing business offering, the decision-maker you need to connect with could be anyone in a leadership or management position. These people are often in stressful roles and don’t have time to sort through every page on a search term.
Many rarely go past the first few pages on a search before using a different term. Focusing on this target audience will drive more leads to your business that are qualified to be good prospects.
Additionally, SEO produces some of the most sustainable results compared to the other digital marketing methods. Successful SEO needs to be consistent, but it does not need to be intensive if you’re not ready to dive deep. SEO can be straightforward but still rewarding because you’ll have a chance to position your business as an industry authority.
Manufacturing SEO Strategies
There are several different approaches to developing SEO techniques that produce results. The best practice is to start with one area at a time and add other responsibilities. This will ensure you don’t become overwhelmed and give up before the results start.
Here are some areas you can focus on to optimize your search rankings on Google’s search engine.
Keyword Research
Doing keyword and keyphrase research is the heart and soul of SEO. Keyword research typically involves using a search engine analysis tool to find popular search terms for your industry and audience.
How can you grow in search rankings if you’re unsure what your audience is searching for online? Once you’ve identified some keywords or keyphrases, you can build a content marketing strategy to create the content your audience needs and drive more traffic.
On/Off-Page SEO
The main point of on-page SEO is to help Google search engine crawlers better index your website. Typically on-page SEO is done by optimizing the entire website through content, titles and tags, headings, meta descriptions, and keywords.
Off-page SEO can be a bit more complex than on-page because it requires leveraging resources outside your website to enhance search ranking. A highly effective off-page SEO strategy involves getting other highly authoritative websites linked to your website.
Backlinking is effective because it shows the search engine that other authoritative websites trust your website. Promoting content on social media is another form of off-page SEO, though it’s not as powerful as backlinking.
Local SEO
Locally-based manufacturing companies will benefit from focusing on location-based SEO strategies. The most significant difference between local and national SEO is that keyword research typically focuses on ranking for a specific area. Local SEO is an essential component of SEO for manufacturing if your target audience is on a particular site. Local SEO can also benefit from manufacturing and industrial companies that service customers nationally.
User Interface
Believe it or not, user interface is critical for search engine optimization to be successful. Do you think a well-designed website will drive and maintain traffic longer than one without proper function and layout? Website design plays a massive role in SEO for manufacturing and industrial companies by ensuring visitors have an aesthetically pleasing and easily navigated website.
3 Actionable Steps to Starting SEO
Getting started with search engine optimization can be intimidating, and many people are unsure of the best starting point. The best place to get started is anywhere, as long as you make an effort.
Keep reading to find out some of the best places to improve your website’s search engine optimization if you’re unsure how to get started.
Mobile Friendly Website
Everyone uses their phones for almost everything in today’s digital world. Ensure your website is optimized for mobile devices not to lose much website traffic every month.
Optimizing your website to be more mobile-friendly includes reducing the time it takes to load a page. Additionally, you will want to ensure the website fits right and has a smooth function on a mobile device. A website that doesn’t suit mobile devices will cause visitors to become irritated and likely to leave the site. Website design is a crucial part of SEO for manufacturers since layout and user interface are critical in mobile-friendly.
Create New Content Frequently
SEO for manufacturing needs high-quality content that speaks to the audience members and places your manufacturing company as a subject authority. Creating thought-leadership content is one of the best places to support your manufacturing company’s search engine optimization.
Thought leadership is a way to demonstrate your expertise in the particular field or industry you serve. Creating optimized thought leadership content shows prospective leads that your manufacturing company is knowledgeable and can be trusted. You will reap the benefits just by doing this small step of creating thought leadership-based content for your target audience.
Check For Broken Links
As mentioned earlier in this guide, backlinking is a crucial part of off-page SEO that yields tremendous results. Having other high-ranking websites link to your website shows your credibility to Google or other search engines. Unfortunately, over time some websites move to a different URL, some shut down, and occasionally human error stands in the way of a solid link and a broken one.
A broken link simply means the hyperlink from your website to the other is broken and no longer valid. Depending on your website, dozens of broken links could hold back real potential. Take some time to sort through each external link and see if it’s broken or make sure the linked website is highly authoritative and credible.
Why Hire A Professional SEO Company
Tackling SEO for manufacturing is not a small task and requires a lot of time every week. For SEO success, the key is to be accurate and, most of all, consistent with all of your efforts. SEO for manufacturing companies is perfect for specialized agencies that will take on the responsibility of growing your search ranking.
Most people don’t know the best place to start, but an agency will guide the way for your manufacturing or industrial company. Deciding to work with an agency is the best way to save money by skipping ineffective tactics and jumping straight into reeling in the results. Additionally, you will have more time to run your manufacturing or industrial company instead of focusing on growing your SEO all day.
Working With Wedgewood Marketing
Many manufacturing or industrial companies prefer to partner with Wedgewood Marketing for all their search engine optimization needs.
Working with Wedgewood will bring you repeated monthly results as your manufacturing website grows in search rankings. Creating this online visibility will give your manufacturing or industrial company the necessary website traffic you need to convert leads and sustainably grow your business.
Wedgewood Marketing is an SEO agency in Charlotte, North Carolina, that provides premiere digital marketing strategies and services to manufacturing companies. SEO for manufacturing companies is immensely time-consuming, and Wedgewood Marketing will take that burden off your shoulders. Our team will create a strategy that makes SEO for your manufacturer a success, saving you time and making you money.
Get the job done right with a team with the experience to produce the results you need to succeed. Contact Wedgewood Marketing today to start your SEO journey for your manufacturing or industrial company!
