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Our Honest Guide to SEO for Manufacturers Wants to Help You Get Real, Tangible Results
Did you know that 84% of searchers for manufacturing services say they use the internet as their starting point when finding an industrial company, product, or service?
This means that if you aren’t investing in SEO for your manufacturing company, your online invisibility can be costing you thousands in potential sales.
As an experienced SEO company for manufacturers, we wanted to compile some SEO strategies that actually work for manufacturers and some you should avoid to see growth in your organic traffic, leads, and sales.
Let’s Start with the Basics. What is SEO for Manufacturers?
For manufacturing companies, the goal of search engine optimization is to rank nationally, or even internationally, for products or services you produce and/or sell. Some of the key strategies include refreshing prominent pages with helpful content, optimizing product/service pages that lack substance, turning brochure pages into web pages, obtaining high-quality backlinks from manufacturing directories, and updating outdated websites to improve conversion rates.
Our Guide to Manufacturing SEO: Strategies That Actually Work (And What You Need to Avoid)
Here are three things you should keep in mind to get the most out of your website.
1. Do Focus on National Rankings, But Don’t Overlook Local SEO, Too
Your overall marketing strategy should dictate the initial geographic focus of your SEO efforts. Most manufacturing companies can service customers across the U.S., but for some smaller organizations, it may only make sense to target people in a specific city (or cities) or region.
National Focus
You don’t have to worry about incorporating local terms into the key pages on your website if you solely have a national focus. The key to success with targeting and ranking for terms nationally is to balance broad, very general terms/pages with specific terms/pages that appeal to people looking for a very specific product or service. For example:
- [product or service] company
- [product or service] distributor
- [product or service] supplier
- [product or service] manufacturer
- [product or service] for [x] industry
- [product or service] for [x] products
The search terms can be singular or plural, too. Adding descriptive words to the products or services may result in keyword phrases that have a lower search volume. However, the goal of any search campaign is to gain visitors who are hyper-relevant and in a buying mode. A far more specific search (i.e., someone contacting you to say something like, “I’m looking for a company to do some copper fabricating with a CNC machine”) typically means it’s a better potential prospect for your business.
Local Focus
If you are focused on a specific region or city or see that most of your clients are in your area, it’s a good idea to make sure that is stated on your website. You’d want your location info, ideally, in your header or footer, so it’s prominent on all your pages. You can also create specific pages that target people in that city on your website, such as “custom metal parts in Dallas, TX.”
The next step would be to spend time setting up a Google Business Profile. The profiles are tied to the listings that show up in Google in the local pack and on Google Maps. After you’ve created your profile and filled it out, at the very least, try to get at least 5 reviews on your profile from real customers. It will help build credibility with people and LLMs as they assess your website and business.
2. Do Make Sure Your Priority Pages Have Forms, But Don’t Make Them Complicated
Did you know that, according to ThomasNet, conversion rates for manufacturers sit below 3%? This is often due to the fact that the forms manufacturers use on their sites include a lot of fields, which can hurt your conversion rates (especially if you require more than 6 fields to be filled out).
Since your sales process is pretty intricate, customers may want to get quotes for a custom part or purchase a machine that is highly customized, which may make having a longer form a necessity. However, a long form is better than no form at all, instead of just promoting your email address!
3. Do Showcase Your Products and Inventory, But Don’t Treat Your Site Like a Brochure
We’ve noticed that manufacturers love product brochures. But linking to hundreds of PDFs on your website is not considered a sound marketing strategy. The problem with brochures is that they are usually mass-produced with thin content for hundreds of products, with hardly any differentiating copy. Search engines hate duplicate content, so this can become a problem if not addressed. This will take time, but it’s worth it in the long run if you want to own your niche.
But most importantly, you can’t forget your homepage. It’s typically the first page people see when they find your business, especially given that AI platforms typically only send searchers to business homepages if they recommend them. So be sure your homepage is hitting all the things a searcher would want to know:
- What makes your company different?
- What is your expertise, and are you certified?
- How long have you been in business?
- How quickly can you get them your product?
- Do you offer custom parts or services?
- What’s the history of your company?
- Where are you located, and where do you ship?
4. Do Build Your Site’s Authority with Backlinks, But Never, Ever Buy Them
Back in the day, getting more credible links for your website was as easy as making a profile on Yelp, MapQuest, or the Yellow Pages. You could sign up for free, enter a few key details, and within minutes, you had a live profile that linked to your website.
Nowadays, it’s not quite that simple. A lot of these free profile sites have not only lost value to search engines, but they’ve also become pay-to-play. This is why you need to dedicate your time to link building elsewhere. Two worthwhile link-building strategies manufacturers should spend time on include:
- Use your expertise to help reporters – Have you ever heard of HARO? It stands for Help A Reporter Out, and it was one of the earliest reporter request tools that allowed business owners and marketers to respond to pitches by journalists. HARO is still around and a great free tool, but there are also a few more we’d recommend you try out, such as Source of Sources and MentionMatch (previously Help a B2B Writer). These three sites are not only all free, but you can sign up for email alerts when someone in your niche is asking a question. All you have to do is email your response alongside your name, title, and website link.
- Check manufacturing directories and mentions – If your manufacturing business has been around for a while, you may have set up some directory listings back in the day. An easy thing you can do is search on Google for mentions of your business name, see what profiles and/or articles show up (ex., ThomasNet), and click on them to see if your website is linked somewhere on the page. This is a tactic called “unlinked mentions,” and it can be pretty successful if you have the time to compile a list of sites where you are named but not linked and manually contact them asking for proper attribution.
Pro tip: All this being said, we know link building can be daunting and time-consuming. But please promise us that you’ll never buy links in bulk, as it can lead to a manual penalty from Google, which could wipe your site out entirely from search engines.
So, Why Even Consider SEO For Your Manufacturing Business?
There are many options to help you try to market your business both traditionally and online. Studies have shown that SEO is the best-performing channel for manufacturing companies. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- SEO leads are typically more qualified. One of the reasons for this is that people who are performing searches on the internet for specific services and products are already in a “warmer” sales state or further down the process of purchasing.
- It’s measurable and quantifiable. If you have the right tracking system in place, you can not only assess where your calls and leads are coming from, but also see the amount of revenue coming back from each channel.
- It can help overall brand perception. There’s a level of trust and credibility that you receive from being ranked high for products or services that you offer. Searchers in your industry do roughly 12 searches before even clicking on a specific brand’s site, so the more you show up, the higher you can be perceived.
- Manufacturers usually overlook it! The harsh truth is that manufacturers are the last industry to get behind digital marketing. And while referrals and trade shows can keep you afloat, you need a rigid internet marketing strategy to grow. And if your competitors aren’t going it yet, this is something that you can take advantage of.
And if that’s not convincing enough, here are some of our real manufacturing client case studies you should keep in mind:
Our Proof? We’ve Scaled Leads by 540% for Our Manufacturing Clients Using These Strategies.
We understand if you’re skeptical. We hope that a few of our manufacturing case studies can paint a bigger picture for you before you invest in SEO for your manufacturing company.
TYKMA Electrox
We combined SEO with a WordPress website redesign to help this Southern Ohio laser-marking manufacturer see tremendous results. Our work led to 402% overall traffic growth, a 540% increase in search traffic, and 314% more monthly leads.
Valco Valley Tool & Die
This snap button manufacturer had another typical case. They redesigned their website and started seeing traffic fall. Thanks to our SEO work, we helped them bounce back with 114% more monthly visits, 543% more monthly inquiries, and a conversion rate that improved from 1.54% to 4.6%.
Shini USA
Devoted keyword research, content optimization, and a Google Ads campaign helped this plastics recycling manufacturer see a 632% increase in search engine traffic and 129% more online leads month over month.
Continue Learning from Our Blog
As a manufacturing digital marketing company, we know what your company needs when it comes to your investment in not only SEO, but also PPC services, industrial web design, and more. Below are some other articles our team has crafted to help manufacturing companies improve their marketing strategy:
