John SammonAuthor:John Sammon
Updated on 3/30/2023

In 2011, we opened our doors to help companies grow their business via SEO. Some of our first SEO clients were manufacturing companies. Being located in the Midwest, we are surrounded by a variety of manufacturing companies operating in a number of different industries.

In working with our first handful of retainer clients, we uncovered many tactics and strategies that quickly brought more relevant traffic, leads and sales from search engines from people looking for their services across the country. This success led to more referrals or our business and we’ve continued to grow since that point in time.

Below we offer guidance to help your manufacturing organization with SEO in a variety of different ways.  We aim to inform and educate you on common questions and challenges we’ve uncovered over the years. However, if you’re looking to partner up with an agency to help with your SEO efforts, please contact us using the form on our site.

Frequently Asked Questions on Manufacturing SEO

What is SEO for Manufacturers?
As an acronym for search engine optimization, it is the practice of executing a variety of specific digital marketing activities to help your website gain a better presence in Google, Bing and Yahoo (some of the popular search engines). For manufacturing clients, the goal is to rank nationally or even internationally for products or services you produce and/or sell. A successful SEO campaign will bring customers to your website searching for your products or services and for them to contact you.

SEO for manufacturersIs SEO the right fit for my business?
One of the best parts about SEO is that no matter what your niche is, it can offer great opportunities to draw people in that are looking for your products or services.

How do I know what keywords to target?
You’ll want to do some homework on this. The good news is that there are plenty of tools out there to help you assess opportunities. Here are three tools to look at:

  1. Google Keyword Planner – Requires signing up for Google Ads but doesn’t mandate spending money or running ads to see general search volume for keywords. If you run a campaign, you’ll get more specific data.
  2. SE Ranking – Signing up is a mandate to use this tool, however, they give you a 14 day trial to assess it. It’s worth the commitment as you can put in keyword phrases into their system and also get an idea of where you rank for that specific term (at a minimum).
  3. Google Trends – Shows search trends over time and peak times of the year for search volume

Manufacturing Company Keyword Research Tips
In SEO, you’ll want to be very careful about the terms that you target. If you try to target rank for too broad of keyword phrases, you could either wind up failing to draw the right audience to your website or to rank in general because of the competition level of those terms. If you start to experiment with the SEO research websites listed above, here are a few things to search for and possibly target:

  • [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 the descriptive words to the products or services may result in keyword phrases that have lower search volume. However, the goal with any search campaign is gaining visitors that are relevant and are in a buying mode.

My competitors aren’t active in digital marketing – why should I start?
We’ve found that the manufacturing industry is a late adopter of digital marketing and the primary purpose of manufacturing company websites is to serve as a portfolio website that they can refer potential customers too.Your competitor’s lack of activity is an opportunity for you.

Another thing to consider is your competitors in the search engine landscape. The competitors that you closely watch may not be the ones that you have to battle for position on search engines. Try doing a few searches for products you make or services that you offer. Note who is ranking both organically (listings below the paid ads) and who is running ads on these terms via Google Ads.

Where do I start?
Researching SEO can be intimidating, especially if you are just starting out. You’ll quite often find a mix of recommendations that talk about recent changes to search engine algorithms and established best practices. It’s enough to make your head spin because there’s so much to take in.

For most companies in the manufacturing industry, the best place to start is your website and the content on the website. Search engines like content because it helps them understand if you are an authority on a topic or a series of topics. A topic can be considered one of your products or services.Here are a few areas of your website to consider adding content or new pages to:

  • Add content to your homepage. Here are things to expand upon on this page:
    • What makes your company different – in manufacturing it’s usually the expertise, customer service, how quickly you can get them your product and or level of customization of the product that you offer.
    • The history of your company
    • Your team and leadership
    • Photos of your facility/team
  • Add your phone number to the top right corner of your website header (across the site)
  • Include a link to a contact us page in copy pages across the site. It’s also key to include it in the main navigation of your website (You’ll get bonus points if you have a form on there)
  • Create an about us page and post pictures of your leadership at your organization. If one of your differentiation points is your expertise, this will be critical
  • Create new pages for each type of product or service that you offer. Quite often we see companies list these things on one page. We recommend this because it’s easier for a search engine to find and rank a page if it has specific content on it. It’s also improves the probability that someone will contact you because their search has led them to a page with hyper-relevant content.

A lot of our site is product specifications and data. How do you go about adding more content to those pages?

We have a great in-house staff of copywriters who have experience working with manufacturing clients and crafting copy for sections like these. Our writers have backgrounds in marketing, journalism, communications, and other fields that give them a creative boost to ensure that your content can be optimized strategically.

What types of manufacturers can you help?

Over the years, we have worked with a wide range of manufacturing companies in various niches. From tank manufacturers to metal parts distributors, our experience has helped us learn the ins and outs of various businesses in the industry. We can help manufacturing types such as:

How Our Manufacturing SEO Services Help You Get More Leads

Incorporating a manufacturing-focused SEO strategy into your marketing efforts can reap great rewards, but our company can also correct for many issues websites face which hurt their searchability, and in turn negatively affect their traffic and lead generation.

Common issues that manufacturing websites often contain include:

  • A site that is not mobile friendly or compatible on all device types
  • Key pages that are not targeting keywords that match user search intent
  • A site missing an SSL certificate (non-https URL)
  • Pages with slow load times
  • Missing calls to action essential for generating a user response
  • No way to contact the business
  • Lacking conversion or goal tracking in analytics

By utilizing our expert manufacturing marketing experts, you can eliminate these issues and start to see a significant boost for both your traffic and conversions.

“The Sixth City Team is truly knowledgeable about how SEO works and love what they do. They are natural teachers, excited to share what they know. The recommendations and information we got from them were super helpful in improving our site’s rankings and a few other things.” – Miranda Berner, Berner Air Curtains

Ways We Help Manufacturers with SEO

Here are some of the tactics we consider and later implement when crafting custom strategies for manufacturers:

Evaluate Top Landing Pages

We will go into your Google Analytics profile and see which pages on your website get the most traffic, convert the best, and have the most room for opportunity. From there, we can revamp page copy, add additional keywords, and more.

Tend to Category and Services Pages

We often see that manufacturing websites have little to no page copy on their most important pages that help customers find what they need, whether it be they never had the time, had limitations in how their website was built, or they just weren’t sure what to write. Part of our SEO for manufacturing process includes making sure these pages are optimized properly.

Check Your Local Presence

Have you claimed and optimized your local listings on Google and Bing? Making sure that your business information is properly displayed not only on your website, but across citation websites, social media, and Google Business Profile as well, is an essential SEO tactic.

Assess Data Sheets and PDFs

As a business that needs to value technical aspects of your products, from their size to their range of abilities, you likely are linking to various PDFs that your company creates for your product line. But did you know there is no way to track PDF views in Google Analytics? Not to mention, PDFs don’t give customers the ability to contact you. Ensuring that we address these issues is a top priority of our manufacturing SEO strategies.

Take Time to Build Quality Links

Having a strong backlink profile is essential in the eyes of Google. Our strategists have experience crafting link building strategies to help give your site a boost from quality websites.

Refresh Your Metadata

If it has been a while since you have had your metadata updated on your website, giving them a makeover to include more keywords and more appealing copy can bring more users to your site.

Identify and Track Your Top Keywords

Do you currently know where your website ranks on search engines such as Google? The answer may not be what you think it is, since Google’s personalized search often interferes with most search queries. We will work with you to identify what terms you wish to rank for and utilize reliable software that helps us track your website’s progress in rankings.

Create Useful Content to Help the Sales Process

Your sales team is likely asked a lot of redundant questions, like ordering info, shipping queries, and everything in-between. One great way we can help alleviate that is by creating a frequently asked questions page that users can have as a tool to get the info they need quickly, and save you the hassle.

Design for Conversion

Our team has the ability to make strategic design and development changes to your website that will turn website visitors into customers. From adding pops of color to changing the location of your web forms to be “above the fold” of the page, there are numerous things we can implement to improve your pages.

Establish Proper Goal Tracking

Even if you already have Google Analytics connected to your website, you could be missing out on key data by not having proper goal tracking in place. Our team can enable goal tracking across web forms, phone numbers, and even purchases to help you better analyze your website and marketing efforts.

Why Invest in SEO for Manufacturers?

We understand that deciding to invest in a reliable SEO agency is a big decision, and we realize that you may have worked with other agencies in the past that couldn’t produce results. Here are some things about our agency that may help with your decision:

  • We’re Focused on Measurement and ROI – Simply stated, if we aren’t helping generate more sales for your business, then we aren’t doing our jobs. Our ultimate goal is to prove our return on your investment in our SEO services.
  • We Can Help You Get Lead Source Data – We have developed a unique process that allows us to get more detailed information from your form submissions that can help you assess the success of the work that we are providing.
  • We’re Experienced in B2B – We know that most manufacturers operate business to business, and our experience in doing SEO for other manufacturing clients and similar industries helps us know how to target and appeal to your ideal customers in professional fields.
  • We Have an In-House Team – One of the biggest things that makes our SEO agency different is that we are completely in-house, meaning we do not outsource any of our work. This not only helps us build better client relationships, but also increases the quality of the work we do for your business.

The Types of SEO You Should Be Familiar With

There are four popular branches of SEO that we utilize in our custom campaigns:

  1. On-Page SEO
    This includes everything that you can control and change on a webpage, including page copy, keywords, internal linking, headers (H1, H2s, etc.), metadata, and photos.
  2. Off-Page SEO
    As you can guess, off-page SEO includes everything you do for SEO outside of your website. This includes link building, managing local citations, optimization of local profiles, and more.
  3. Technical SEO
    Technical SEO encompasses aspects of your on-page SEO, such as if your photos are sized properly and optimized, and also factors in the structure of your website, redirects, canonicals, user experience, and overall site speed.
  4. Local SEO
    Local search engine optimization isn’t relevant to most businesses in the manufacturing industry, but it is still good to understand what it is. Local SEO refers to specialized tactics to improve a the local rankings of businesses that have a local focus (ex: gyms, dentists, contractors, etc.). This can include optimizing their local profiles, getting backlinks from other local businesses, and more.
“I’ve worked with Sixth City Marketing for multiple years now for my PPC and SEO needs. They have consistently delivered a high-quality product, are professional, and deeply care about their customers. They listen to my business needs and work with me to help my business grow. I’ve seen a massive improvement in the quality of leads, website visitors, and click-through rate. My website has experienced immediate positive results from suggested website changes, with increased forms completed, increased phone calls, and increased pages per visit. Other PPC companies I’ve worked with just waste ad spend, while Sixth City Marketing makes use of every penny.” – Jennifer Hristovski, SprayWorks

Brands We’ve Helped Through Customized Manufacturing SEO

valco
TYKMA logo
cutting dynamics
shini usa logo
dillon logo

In our work with these businesses and many others, we have accrued the experience needed to effectively increase qualified leads and website traffic for companies within many unique manufacturing sectors.

Our Success Through SEO for Manufacturing Companies

Here are a few of our case studies with current and former clients that prove just how powerful manufacturing SEO can be.

TYKMA Electrox

We provided a custom SEO strategy with a heavy focus on targeted keyword research, alongside a website redesign for this client. Comparing September 2017 to February 1 through March 2 of 2014, we were able to:

  1. Improve overall traffic by 402%
  2. Boost organic traffic by 50%
  3. Improve monthly leads by 314%

Shini USA

For Shini USA, from a mix of PPC, design for conversion, and SEO that included keyword analysis and content optimization, comparing year over year, they received:

  1. 28% more monthly website visits (1,464 vs. 1,142)
  2. 632% boost in SEO traffic (564 vs. 77)
  3. 129% increase in monthly leads (39 vs. 17)

Valco Valley Tool/Die

When we started with Valco many years ago, they had just launched a new website and were experiencing major traffic losses. With our SEO help, a year later, their numbers were very different:

  1. Increased visits per month by 114% (2,910 vs. 1,362)
  2. Monthly online inquiries surged by 543% (135 vs. 21)
  3. Overall conversion rate rose from 1.54% to 4.6%

We Do More Than Just SEO for Manufacturing Companies

A complete campaign from a successful manufacturing marketing agency doesn’t just stop with search engine optimization. For manufacturing industries, it means reaching out to customers in new ways and making it easier than ever for them to find what they need, request parts, create custom orders, inquire about capabilities, and more.

Our manufacturing SEO company can also provide:

  • Website Design and Development
    One of the best ways to help your website convert higher is through a fresh look and design. We have years of experience designing custom websites for specific industries that cater to their preferred customers’ needs. Best yet, we work with you step by step through the phases of planning, designing, and launch.
  • Pay-Per-Click Marketing and Management
    Running a successful paid campaign can be extremely difficult. With our in-house staff of PPC experts, we can deliver custom landing pages, well-written ads, and precise keyword and location targeting to ensure your ads get in front of your ideal customers on Google, Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media outlets.
  • CRM Consulting/Marketing
    Do you use a customer relationship management system such as HubSpot or PipeDrive? As a HubSpot certified partner, we can assist you in setting up workflows, organizing leads, and much more to help your sales team keep up with the leads we bring in through our manufacturing marketing services.
  • Social Media Management
    For manufacturers, social media marketing can be a great way to get the word out on new products, services, and any special events going on in your company such as trade shows. Our team will write posts, schedule them, and conduct maintenance on your social media accounts on your behalf.
  • Email Marketing
    Supplementing our SEO services, we are trained in working with various email platforms such as MailChimp, Constant Contact, HubSpot, and more. From designing a template to match your brand to writing monthly newsletters, we can help you email your current customers, distributors, and more.
“We have been working with the Sixth City team for about 6 years now and they have really helped us build our online presence. We work monthly hand in hand to come up with new campaigns and strategies. They are always thinking of new ways to generate leads and they are there for anything we need. They are also in the process of building our new website and I am so excited about the launch. It looks great! I love working with Sixth City and look forward to it for many more years to come!” – Sarah Wentz, Valco Valley Tool/Die

Contact Our Manufacturing SEO Company Today

When it comes to manufacturing SEO services, no one does it better than Sixth City Marketing. With a deep understanding of the industry and what it takes to reach customers and give them exactly what they need, we promise to take your business to new online heights.

To learn more about our manufacturing SEO agency, our offices in Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Pittsburgh, and what we can accomplish for your company, be sure to contact us today.

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