SEO for Manufacturing Companies: A Guide To Improving Your Online Visibility

Manufacturers face the challenge of targeting highly specific consumers when they want to optimize their websites. The nature of their business means they draw from a smaller pool of potential clients and consumers when compared to their B2C counterparts. Optimizing your website to rank high in search results means working with the terms people punch into search bars like Google.

When you’re a manufacturing company, your clients are using highly specific jargon that a typical marketing agency might not have the background to deliver. Your best bet is to outsource to digital marketing experts who are experienced with working with manufacturing companies. Web optimization is a full time job, and as a manufacturer, you already have enough on your plate.

Though manufacturers work in a highly technical field, the industry lags when it comes to adopting the best practices of digital marketing. This is a challenge, but it’s an also an opportunity to outperform other manufacturers by entering the future of commerce sooner.

You need to ask yourself these questions about SEO for manufacturers:

1. What terms does a potential client search for when they need your manufacturing services? 

Let’s suppose you manufacture electrical cables. Someone wants to search for cable manufacturers on Google. Are they interested in, for example “custom composite cables” or “coiled air lines”? Data and analytics can help answer these questions for you, assuming you know how to navigate the tools used to research this information.

2. What Questions to Potential Clients Have About My Manufacturing Service?

Let’s stick with the cable manufacturer example. Do your potential clients want to know which cable they need for a certain job? Do they want a way of figuring out how much they should buy? Answering these questions through optimized blogs and articles among other media forms is a digital technique called content marketing.

Content Marketing for Manufacturing Companies

Content marketing is not sales copy. Instead, it builds your authority by providing informative, engaging material about your industry. Experts who can answer any question about manufacturing can work with marketing agencies who know how to do search term research as explained in point #1 to create effective content marketing.

3. How Does My Industry Evolve?

Some manufacturers want to emphasize different goods to their consumers depending on certain variables. Maybe you ramp up your manufacturing for a certain good during winter. Maybe you want to promote certain goods to certain regions based on factors like soil type, humidity, or any relevant technical concern.

Search Engine Optimization based on geography and season is a powerful tool manufacturers can use to help scoop up more business, and stay current and relevant in search results.

1. Implement Your SEO Analytics System As Soon As Possible

Once you implement your SEO analytics, you’ll be able to gather data to make informed decisions about your design and content. You’ll be able to identify points in your experience where traffic suddenly dropped off, and expert digital marketers can help you diagnose this problem.

You can track action items on your website such as:

• Lead forms
• Newsletter signups
• Actual purchases and orders
• Whitepaper downloads

…and more.

2. Make Link-Building a Priority

Backlinks are an incoming hyperlink from one web page to another website. These are a valuable factor of search engine optimization. Backlinks are one of the most important aspects of optimization aside from content. You can get them by reaching out to blogs or other websites in your niche, and write a guest post. You can use Moz’s Link Explorer to learn where other manufacturing websites and competitors are getting their backlinks. However, don’t bother buying them because they tend to be low quality, and can damage your SEO.

3. Check Your Manufacturing Website for Duplicate Content

Duplicate content can damage your manufacturing company’s website’s rank. That means each page needs to be unique across your website. Unless there is a good reason for it, search engines don’t like to see duplicate content, and often register it as spam. This is extra important when you are writing your meta titles and meta descriptions. You can use Google Webmaster tools. Go to Search Appearance > HTML improvements, enlist the help of marketing experts who can help you run constant checks on issues of this kind.

4. Optimize Your Manufacturing Company Website’s URLS

URLs help search engines interpret what a webpage is about.

• Here’s an example of a URL that does not work: /fjgh8290ja
• Here’s an example of what that would be better: /cables

Use hyphens for URLs that are more than one work. Google ignores underscores. Your URLs should not be long.

5. Create a Blog About Manufacturing to Build Your Authority

Blogs are one of the most powerful and effective ways to drive your Search Engine Optimization. Your blog can offer breakdowns on your products, explain the services you offer, and answer the most common questions. They encourage people to link to your website, which is a valuable part of building SEO.

When you write a blog, write for human beings, not search engines. No SEO tip, trick or hack is better than being the material people need to see. Google and other major search engines are constantly updating their algorithms to prioritize genuinely helpful material. Don’t get bogged down with trying to game a system or search engine spider. Just focus on being useful, clear and simple.