SEO For Manufacturers – An A-Z Guide On What You Need To Know

Search Engine Optimization or SEO refers to a suite of techniques that people use to improve the odds of search engines recommending their web pages to users. The methods used in SEO practices aim to enhance websites in ways that search engine algorithms favor, which means that optimized websites are more likely to be identified as useful, authoritative, and high-quality.

At a glance, it may seem like SEO is all about spending all your energy jumping through hoops for search engines, optimizing web pages is more about improving the user experience. If optimization works to garner a search engine’s favor, it’s because the website has demonstrated the most effective ways a visitor can interact with the elements on each page. Excellent SEO will optimize your entire web presence, including your social media. When applied to the manufacturing industry, SEO can make a manufacturer’s website more relevant to its visitors and far more convenient to use.

Unfortunately, the hustle and bustle that comes with operating a manufacturing company might keep owners and managers from thinking about advertisements and search results. Many small business owners don’t have time for things like search engine optimization, but that doesn’t make SEO any less important. SEO for manufacturers is just as important as it is for small retail businesses, restaurants, or just about any other business that exists in 2023. 

In this article, we’re going to discuss the basics of SEO for manufacturers, as well as a few tips on how to maintain SEO for manufacturing companies. In addition, we’ll provide you with some insights into what a great SEO strategy (and execution) can do for your company.

Let’s take a look at search engine optimization for manufacturers.

SEO for Manufacturers: Understanding The Process

In this section, we’re going to take you through some of the most important factors in optimizing your web pages, website, and social media accounts. While we’ll tailor this guide toward manufacturing businesses in most instances, we’d also like to note that these tips and guidelines are applicable to businesses in almost any industry. 

Part of the beauty of SEO is that the concept and general practices remain quite uniform for most businesses. The main differences in SEO techniques come into play when you’re creating brand-specific content and setting up your pages for the right sort of conversions. We’ll get to that in a minute, though. First, let’s talk about what search engine optimization is and why it’s valuable.

SEO is the marketing effort used to make your site more visible on search engines. It requires work in numerous areas that have their own individual benefits, but all of the work revolves around exposing your site to new and interested customers. For example, your social media accounts and PPC advertising efforts have independent value, but they’re both used to direct users to your actual website in order to generate sales.

In that way, those two avenues benefit your search engine optimization because any source of relevant web traffic is good for your SEO rankings. The broadest way to expose your company to new customers, though, is through search engines. That’s where most people go when they have a specific need to address online. Someone with no knowledge of construction services in their area, for example, might search “how much does construction cost in Albuquerque, NM?” Instead of going on social media for answers, people use search engines for most of their general questions. Ranking well in those search queries is a powerful way to draw business for your company and start boosting your bottom line.

How The Search Engine Works

But how can you get your site to inch up the search results and land at the top?

To answer that question, we need to provide a little bit of information about the search engine algorithm. Google’s search algorithm is very sophisticated. The company also keeps details about its algorithm very close to the chest, but we can deduce several things about how it works based on the results we see in the SERPs (search engine results pages).

The algorithm operates based on a number of factors that determine how relevant a website is in reference to the particular search at hand. Generally speaking, Google catalogs websites based on how helpful they will be to internet users.

All of the factors that play a role in optimization work to display your site’s worth when it comes to helping a user get answers. This is because Google’s main purpose is to provide valuable information in relation to what people want to know. If this wasn’t the foundation of Google and searches suddenly ceased to provide decent results, users might switch over to Bing.

Understandably, that would be bad for Google, so they invest a lot of money into technology to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Before you get caught up in all of the finer details of optimization, remember that the primary goal is to provide valuable resources to your users. If you can do that, you’ll see your results improve a lot. After you’ve understood the basics of SEO, it always helps to put those fine details into action because there are a lot of other websites producing useful information just like you want to do. Businesses with successful SEO strategies work to discover what makes them unique compared to other businesses within the same industry. Using that unique factor, they make use of the fine SEO details mentioned above to stand out among the crowd of manufacturing brands.

There are more than 200 search factors to consider, but let’s take a look at the most crucial ones and how to apply them.

What is SEO for Manufacturers and Why Customize?

The needs and desires of businesses of all sizes, locations, and industries vary. If a company is unique in any way, it needs an individualized SEO approach. The manufacturing industry has specific challenges and strengths. Anyone performing SEO for a business in the manufacturing industry would do well to prioritize these aspects in order to tailor SEO for manufacturers. 

Here are some of the key factors we consider for clients in manufacturing.

Page-Loading Speed

Page-loading speed may be more important in manufacturing than in other industries. Manufacturers are busy people looking for the right tools, solutions, and business partners to keep their firms productive. A page that fails to load quickly is not only frustrating but serves as a warning sign to potential B2B clients. Many prospective leads feel that if a single web page can’t load within a reasonable time limit, the manufacturing company in charge of that site isn’t paying close enough attention to the company’s performance to excel in other aspects of business operations.

People expect pages to load within two or three seconds. A page that doesn’t load properly within this time demonstrates a lack of professionalism and speed. This may sound harsh regarding the difference of a second or two, but we’ve seen that it makes all the difference. Page loading is a significant part of any user’s first impression.

Navigation

Manufacturers understand that excellent processes can lead to extraordinary results. The navigation components of a manufacturing page shouldn’t be a puzzle. Pages need to perform their determined functions intuitively and effectively so that each element on a website is easy to locate. Common sense navigation helps users find what they need in only a couple of clicks rather than forcing them to click and scroll through page after page before becoming frustrated and leaving the site altogether. 

A positive, streamlined experience can convince manufacturing audiences to return to a given site without much prompting.

Authority

With SEO for manufacturers, you can build the perceived authority of your brand. An SEO firm may help achieve this by developing quality content that helps your customers find you and keeps them on your site longer. Consumers, regardless of the industry they’re browsing, tend to trust and value companies that provide them with useful, accurate information.

Typically, manufacturing businesses can also draw on a network of business partners to increase the company’s authority level. It’s time to draw on those connections if you have them. When reputable, authoritative websites link to your website, this improves your perceived authority and gives you a ranking boost.

Keyword Research and Strategy

Everything in optimization revolves around the keyword being searched. Without the search phrase, there wouldn’t be any results to compete for.

Make sure that you’re finding the optimal terms for your business so that you can reliably connect with the audience you serve. The keywords you use should be based on what users in your industry and location are searching for, which services they need, and the sort of information they’re requesting. 

It doesn’t do any good to try and rank for search phrases that won’t draw you any new business. A few examples of construction-specific searches would be things like “construction services near me,” “how much does construction cost,” and “how to find the right construction company.”

You also want to make sure that the phrases you’re optimizing for aren’t bogged down with a lot of competition. For a small business, it would be impossible to compete with the largest companies in the world for search rankings. All of your work might improve your results some, but you’d still never wind up in one of the top three or four spots.

Instead, search engine optimization tools allow us to find out very specific details about keywords. Notably, we can find out how much traffic is going to each specific search term and you can look at the kind of competition you’re facing with those terms. The goal is to find keywords that have a lot of traffic and little competition. This way, you can make use of those keywords within the content you publish on your website and draw customers to your pages rather than those of a higher-ranking competitor.

Site Optimization

You’ll notice a lot of SEO information discussing “optimizing for a keyword” without really explaining what that means in any detail. To clarify, when you optimize for a search term, you’re tuning your content with that very specific set of words. Everything from spelling to punctuation should be the same throughout each channel you use the keyword in.

The content you produce should be closely related to the keyword phrase you’re optimizing for, but that’s not really the whole picture. 

Optimization for a specific term requires that you place that keyword at tactical spots throughout the content so that Google can clearly see which topics your content is covering. When you optimize well, Google will assume with confidence that the page in question is dedicated to that term. That way, you’re right in the running for those rankings as Google doesn’t have to make any uninformed guesses about the subject matter of your pages.

In addition to the body of your text, you might also choose to strategically insert your chosen keywords into a page’s meta description, title tag, HTML, headings, subheadings, images, and hyperlinks. It’s also important that these terms are used naturally in the text. Google doesn’t optimize content that has keywords thrown all over the page haphazardly.

Stuffing your content with keywords is a “Black-Hat” SEO method. These methods aim to cheat the algorithm to achieve positive results, and rarely do they ever work. In fact, if you get caught using these methods, your pages could be unindexed from Google’s archives.

Mobile-Friendly Design

Modern websites incorporate responsive designs, which means that the site’s layout adapts according to the device on which it appears. More people are searching for information on mobile devices than they did in the past, and as such, Google now prioritizes mobile-friendly content. 

To improve SEO rankings, making your web pages mobile-friendly is a must. Not only is being accessible to all sorts of users a net positive, but maintaining a mobile-friendly site showcases to potential customers that you operating a manufacturing business that’s up to date on all things technology-related.

High-Quality Content

Content is what drives your ability to be seen online. The more relevant content you have spread throughout your site, the more opportunities you have to rank for search terms. So long as you’re optimizing your pages for the right terms and providing real value, you should have a good shot of seeing improved results. 

In some cases, it can be difficult to know just what kind of content to create, though. This is where keyword research comes in handy once again.

Through your keyword research efforts, you can discover just what your clients are looking for. The search phrases that people use are direct reflections of the kind of content they’re interested in. So, once you find a keyword or set of keywords that will work well for your business site, you can create content centered around those terms.

What results is a piece of content that’s optimized for a specific search phrase and answers the question that’s implied by that search phrase. You should be making content often, considering the fact that keyword trends change all the time. It’s essential to remain ahead of the changes in the SEO landscape and ensure that your content is well-rounded enough to adapt to new practices.

Another way to ensure that you’re producing high-quality content is by demonstrating your values and individual perspectives through writing. Sharing first-hand advice and information is an effective way to stand out among competitors in your industry. Keep in mind, though, you don’t want to wait too long to produce unique content of this type, but you also will want to avoid rushing to produce low-quality writing.

On-page SEO and off-page SEO

You can categorize SEO as on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page refers to all the things that people can do on a website to improve its usefulness and appeal to both search engine algorithms and internet users. This can include things like using keywords to help readers identify the post’s subject, providing high-quality content that people need, and ensuring easy-to-use navigation to make the experience as smooth as possible.

Off-page SEO refers mostly to building a brand’s authority via the links coming in from external websites. The more authority these external websites have, the better results they garner for your business. Off-page SEO has a significant effect on rankings.

At David Taylor Digital, we take care of on-page SEO and off-page SEO for our clients. We do everything we can to give your business the best chance of success and growth. We utilize individual strategies for each client we serve, because we realize that high-quality SEO practices can’t be developed with a cookie-cutter mindset.

Benefits of SEO for Manufacturers

By applying SEO with knowledge of the manufacturing industry, its customers, and its challenges, we can provide high-quality SEO for manufacturers. Work with David Taylor Digital and look forward to the following benefits:

• Increased Authority – with a holistic approach to your web presence, you can impress clients, competitors, and others in your industry with your personalized, professional insights into your website and across social media platforms.
• Relevant Traffic – when SEO is working correctly, the traffic will come to you. With SEO for manufacturers, you can expect more relevant traffic, too.
• More/Faster Conversions – once you get traffic coming to your web pages, you need to do something with it. Our website optimization will make use of the increased traffic by nurturing and converting more visitors.
• Stronger Relationships – we understand that being in business is not just about making sales. We help you develop meaningful, long-term relationships with your customers. Our work promotes brand loyalty and continued business success.
• Cost-effectiveness and Better ROI – unlike a TV or radio ad, your website and social media posts are always “on air.” Unlike billboards, your SEO-optimized content is not limited to particular geographic locations. An SEO strategy for manufacturers can provide wider reach, better results, and more measurability than print and other traditional media.

Need SEO Help?

We will work with you to identify and measure the success of your website after undergoing SEO. We’ll help you determine which metrics are most important and demonstrate the difference that SEO for manufacturers makes. You might want to measure sales figures, engagement, or a response to a call-to-action such as downloading an ebook. We’ll help you keep track of the effects of our efforts over time.

We understand SEO for manufacturing companies. Our knowledge, ability to listen, customization, and dedication to your success can make us a great partner. We give you an advantage over other manufacturing firms with our superior SEO designed for manufacturing companies. Get in touch with David Taylor Digital for the best SEO service for manufacturers and more.