How SEO Can Drive Success for Manufacturing Marketing
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Manufacturing companies need a strong online presence to remain competitive and drive leads and sales. The buying process has evolved: traditional marketing and trade shows aren’t enough anymore. Manufacturing, pharma/biotech, and transportation companies report the largest underperformance gap in Martech solutions. Potential customers are researching products and suppliers online before purchasing, which opens a big opportunity for manufacturers to tap into new audiences, build trust, and drive leads using search engine optimization.
In this guide on how SEO can drive success for manufacturing, I will discuss the benefits of SEO, key strategies to get started, how to measure success, and real-life examples of our work with manufacturing companies.
Table of Contents
What is Manufacturing SEO?
The Benefits of SEO for Manufacturers
Key Strategies for Manufacturing SEO
Measuring SEO Success in the Manufacturing Industry
Optimize Your Manufacturing Website Through SEO
What is Manufacturing SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of optimizing your company’s website to appear in organic search results to attract relevant traffic and turn users into customers. Using SEO in the B2B industry is becoming increasingly important; 50% of B2B marketers planned to increase SEO budgets in 2024 and an additional 43% planned on investing the same amount as they did before. The question is: is your manufacturing business up-to-date with the rest of the industry?
The Benefits of SEO for Manufacturers
Manufacturers face unique challenges compared to other industries: long sales cycles, very niche audiences, and complex products. We understand those can be hard to market, and traditional marketing efforts may fall short when driving visibility and engagement for your target audiences. This is where digital marketing, specifically SEO, comes in:
Reach a Niche Audience
Manufacturing marketers typically cater to a specific market. With SEO, manufacturing companies can target high-intent keywords for their target audience, whether it’s B2B buyers searching for equipment or engineers looking for technical specifications. Aligning your content with the queries your audience is searching for ensures that your website is visible to the right people.
Compete in a Crowded Industry
In a market with increased competition, manufacturers need to differentiate themselves to stand out. SEO can help improve your website’s visibility in search results, even when competing against larger companies.
Build Trust With Your Audience
Manufacturers typically deal with long sales cycles (although digital efforts are shortening them), so building trust is key in closing the sale. Customers will take time to research products and companies before making a decision. High-quality, optimized content can help them move toward a decision.
Get Long-lasting Results
Although SEO doesn’t offer immediate results like paid media strategies, it provides long-lasting results when done right. With long sales cycles, this sustained organic growth is crucial. SEO can help marketing teams build a cost-effective digital marketing strategy to deliver qualified leads.
Key Strategies for Manufacturing SEO
Keyword Research for Niche Audiences
To appear in search results for your target audiences, you must figure out what they are searching for and how they are searching. Google’s search algorithms will look at a variety of factors, including the query, relevance of the pages, expertise, and location.
When doing it correctly, the keyword research process will help you identify industry-specific keywords and the technical terms your potential customers are searching for. It’s also important to research what kind of content appears for the keywords.
For example, let’s look at the keyword “industrial robot”. In looking at the SERP, it may seem like users searching this may be looking to buy a robot. However, the majority of the Top 10 results are purely informational:
It’s important to not only drive traffic but attract the right traffic. Some long-tail keywords may have low volume, such as a specific product name, but those searches may come from users who are further along in the buying process than people searching for more general, higher-volume terms.
A few keyword research tools to start with include Ahrefs and Semrush, as well as Google Search Console, which will provide real data about what keywords you appear for and how many people click on your website after searching for a certain term.
On-Page SEO Best Practices
Your website has to be set up well to rank for relevant keywords and to help users convert once they arrive at your website. For users who are closer to converting, manufacturing websites should optimize product pages and internal search abilities. Part of the keyword research process should be looking into what questions people are asking about products so you can include that information on the respective pages.
Let’s take a look at this product page from Generator Interlock Kit:
The product page offers information about the product features and requirements and provides contact information for people who are interested and have questions.
It’s also important to include visual content of your products; after all, who wants to buy something without knowing what it looks like? The example includes pictures, a video, and a PDF with installation instructions.
Along with providing helpful content with target keywords, you can also use meta tags and structured data to further optimize your page for search results.
Meta titles are a ranking factor, so it’s important to provide information on what the page is, such as a product name or a blog title, along with your company name. We recommend keeping page titles under 60 characters so none of it gets cut off in search results. Meta descriptions are not a ranking factor but can improve clickthrough rates since they provide further information on what the page is about. These should be 155 characters or less.
Product structured data can help your products appear in Google’s search features, such as “Popular products” and other Google Shopping features:
Structured data can be implemented in the code of your website or through Google Tag Manager. Learn more in our blog post about all types of schema markup.
Content Marketing for Manufacturing
Websites don’t thrive just off product pages; you also want to develop content that educates users and solves their problems by answering common questions in the industry. One way to do that is to have a blog. A blog can bring in users who may not be ready to buy and are starting in the buying journey, but can still end up converting. Blogs help you establish a presence in the industry, increase brand awareness, and strengthen relationships with potential customers.
Users further down the funnel may be looking for more information about your products and company as a whole, so it’s imperative to have built-out case studies, whitepapers, and even content about your business, such as an “About Us” page. We recommend conducting keyword research for these topics to figure out what questions people are asking and what people are looking for before they convert.
It’s also now important to optimize your content for Large Language Models (LLMs) as more people are using AI tools. Learn more from our article on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
Technical SEO
Along with content and on-page factors, it’s important to make sure your website is healthy from a technical standpoint. Even if your content is top-notch, if your site is too slow to load, people will leave before even getting there!
Some things to consider are:
Site speed: This is how fast your site loads.
Mobile responsiveness/performance: It’s important that websites can adjust the layout of the screen for different-sized devices.
Site structure: This takes into account whether your website is set up for users to navigate easily
XML sitemaps and robots.txt files: These files help search engines understand your site so relevant pages can appear in search results.
Canonicalization: This occurs when Google chooses what the main version of a page is.
Although these are some of the main themes to consider, there is a lot more to look at in terms of technical SEO, so check out our blog post on how we use technical SEO to boost content and rankings.
Local SEO
If your manufacturing company operates in or serves local markets, you must be set up for local SEO success. According to a Google representative, 46% of searches have a local intent. Users who are searching for “where to buy” and “near me” tend to be further down the marketing funnel and can be more likely to convert or purchase.
One way to increase your local visibility is setting up a Google Business Profile listing, which appears on the right side of the search results page:
With Google Business Profile (and Bing’s version called Bing Places), you can improve your visibility in your service areas and offer users links to your website, get directions, or call, as well as other information about your business. Google Business Profile offers over 60 different categories related to manufacturing, from “Auto parts manufacturer” to “Machining manufacturer”. You can also display your products and services, answer customer questions, and label your service areas if you operate in a specific region.
It’s important to not set up the Google Business Profile and not touch it again. Customers use it as a resource and will even ask questions or leave reviews, which are important to interact with.
Want to optimize your listing but not sure where to start? Check out our guide on “How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile”.
Measuring SEO Success in the Manufacturing Industry
All of your SEO efforts will be for naught if you can’t track the success or find opportunities to improve. One way we do this at Workshop Digital is by setting key performance indicators (KPIs) that directly relate to your return on investment (ROI). This could include goals for organic traffic, conversion rates, and leads. It’s also important to ensure your analytics tracking tools are set up to track the performance of your SEO efforts so you can fine-tune your strategies and see growth over time.
What KPIs Should Be Measured for SEO?
To track the success of your SEO efforts, a few metrics to track include:
Organic Traffic: This includes any traffic received from organic search results and from Google Business Profile or Bing Places.
Organic Conversions: Any conversions from organic traffic should be counted in your organic conversion number.
Clickthrough Rate: This is the rate of people seeing vs. clicking on your website in search results.
Keyword Rankings: It’s important to analyze how well you are performing in search results and if there have been any changes.
SEO Case Studies: Manufacturing Industry Success Stories
I’ve been working with manufacturing companies in the SEO realm for over 2 years, and Workshop Digital has worked with them for nearly a decade. But don’t take my word for it; check out some of our results.
Optimize Your Manufacturing Website Through SEO
The manufacturing industry can be extremely competitive, so it’s important to find ways to stand out. A well-planned and executed SEO strategy can lead to higher traffic and, in turn, a higher conversion rate to drive qualified leads. By focusing on keyword research, on-page factors, technical performance, and local searches, manufacturers can build trust and reputation in their field to show their expertise.
SEO is important in order to position yourself for long-term success in the market. A digital marketing agency can provide you with the tools and resources you need to achieve your manufacturing marketing goals. Reach out to us today to learn how we can help you grow.
