SEO for Manufacturing and Industrial Companies
Introduction
Ever wondered how a website’s link pops up at the top of a google search? Or do you want your website to appear on the first 5 results of a google search? SEO plays a major role in that. It drives your target audience to your website.
When you search for something, you click on the websites which appear on the top of the results, right?
Your manufacturing website needs to be search engine optimized for your site ranking, brand visibility, and lead generation, as well as to boost your sales. All your hard work will go in vain if your product does not reach your target audience.
Getting to the top page of a google search is a major priority for manufacturing and industrial companies, especially now when more and more people are relying on the internet and word-of-mouth references to a manufacturing business are decreasing rapidly due to social distancing and digitization.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers have moved dramatically toward online channels, and companies and industries have responded in turn.
According to a survey, respondents from various companies are three times more likely now than before the crisis to say that at least 80 percent of their customer interactions are digital.
Responses to COVID-19 have speeded up the digital transformation and these changes could be here for the long haul. Therefore, it is important for the new and upcoming manufacturing and industrial businesses to know all the basics of SEO and how to increase traffic on their websites.
What do you mean by SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization. In simple terms, it means the process of improving your site to increase its visibility when people search for products or services related to your business in Google, Bing, and other search engines.
If your website is search engine optimized and when people search for the product you are offering, your website will appear at the top of the page!
The search engine’s algorithm looks for various factors to bring up relevant websites for a user such as content, keywords, site usability, backlinks, feedback, etc.
Google’s ranking factors include:
- Content relevance (quality and comprehensiveness)
- Backlinks from authoritative websites
- Mobile device friendliness
- Page load speed
- Site security(HTTPS)
- Social Media signals
Meaning of SEO for Manufacturers Today
In the early 20th century, new clients for various manufacturing businesses came through word-of-mouth references, and business deals used to be entirely physical.
People used to know about the product a manufacturing business produces through references from people and their own experience in the market. People put their entire trust in these references and used them to purchase products from these manufacturing businesses.
But that all changed with the introduction of the internet. When customers got to know how easily they can research a company and its product, sitting at their home and with just a click away, they started relying more on digital word-of-mouth references.
Needless to say, many businesses including manufacturers acted accordingly and many started to digitize their business. It became clear to them how easy it was to advertise your product and make deals easily.
Companies were rushing to build their websites to advertise their product and reach a wider audience around the world.
As more and more manufacturing businesses started conducting businesses online, the competition increased rapidly and soon manufacturers realized that their website should be search engine optimized so that it appears on the first page of a google search result.
Therefore, it has become very important for manufacturing businesses to learn the basics of SEO and how they can improve their ranking on the search results.
Basics of SEO
The content of your manufacturing website should be of high quality and should be relevant to the topic. It should contain information about the company (“about us” page), product details, and prices and have relevant keywords to reach your target audience. The content should be comprehensive.
The content you create communicates your message, educates your readers, and persuades them to purchase your products and services over your competition.
Think about it this way, when people click on your website, they are interested in the product you are offering. If your website’s content is not relevant and poor in quality, people may not trust the website and go somewhere else. Therefore, content is key!
The content of a website is also the most important step for SEO as search engines like google, yahoo and bing compete with each other and all of them want to provide the most relevant search results for a user. Therefore, your content should be the best out there and relevant to the topic.
Having the best keywords suitable for your content can go a long way in improving the SEO for your manufacturing website.
One of the best SEO strategies for your manufacturing website is to gain high-quality backlinks from high-authority websites. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher you are likely to rank on Google.
A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. In simple terms, it is all about credibility. If your website’s link is on a reputable website, it increases the credibility and trust of your website.
Google will rank your website in the search results according to the credibility and trust of your website.
Your website should be mobile-friendly. It should be easy to navigate through the content and the different tabs. If your website is not mobile-friendly, you run the risk of not being found on google searches!
No one wants to spend hours reading the contents of your website if the text is too small and impossible to understand. People nowadays are just a click away from moving to a different website, so do not give them a reason to!
Google marks your website as mobile-friendly and non-mobile friendly. If your text is too small and difficult to navigate, Google will mark it non-mobile-friendly which adversely affects your ranking on the search results.
Therefore, your website should be simple, easy to navigate, and comprehensible.
Page load speed is another basic of SEO. Page load speed is important for user experience as well. Page load speed is the speed at which individual page loads on your website. Different pages can have different speeds due to factors such as images and scripts.
People do not have the patience to wait for 5 seconds for a page to load. There are just too many alternatives on the internet. Imagine if Google’s page loading time was more than 5 seconds and Bing’s page loads in just a second. Which search engine would you use then?
Therefore, your website needs to have a good page loading speed. You would hate it if your content gets ignored due to slow page loading speed!
You can check your website’s loading speed through PageSpeed Insights and work on improving your website’s loading speed.
Imagine if you have made your website and taken into considerations all the factors mentioned above but forgot to focus on your website’s security. Your website has a chance to get attacked by hackers who will place malicious links and ruin the user experience of your website.
No one wants to stay on a website in which there are constant pop-ups and malicious links which take you someplace else when you accidentally click on them. That’s where site security comes in.
Site security(HTTPS) plays another major role in SEO. Online security measures, or a lack of them, can impact your SEO rankings and user experience.
As they say, “Better safe than sorry.” And Google, the world’s largest search engine, has taken that quote to heart.
Google will rank your website negatively if it is not secure. It will place a not-secure msg next to the website’s URL thereby leading to customers not trusting the website which will affect the ranking of your website in search results.
Securing your website using HTTPS will keep your website safe from hackers and keep customers’ trust.
The introduction of social media has helped many manufacturing businesses to advertise their products. It is a very good platform for digital marketing. You can create a page and make regular posts to reach your target audience.
Social Media also plays an important role in SEO. Social Signals refers to the number of likes, shares, and comments your posts receive which improve your website’s ranking in the search results.
A search engine’s chief aim is to provide high-quality, relevant content to users. Search engines search the web for high-quality and relevant content to give to its users, and as more web communication has moved to social media, Google and other search providers have integrated social signals as a ranking signal.
Google’s partnership with Twitter, which added tweets to search results, is further evidence of the growing significance of social media in search rankings.
For manufacturing businesses looking to raise their search rankings, it indicates that a comprehensive social media strategy might be in order – in addition to all of the usual SEO tactics.
In other words, strategies designed to increase social media engagement can also raise your website’s search engine ranking.
SEO Strategies and Tactics for Manufacturers
Now, we know the basics of SEO. Now it is time to put them into use and optimize your website.
SEO for manufacturing is all about thought-leadership. You possess expertise in a certain area. You need to share that knowledge with the world online. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on establishing trust with your potential customer. Quality SEO is all about establishing trust. The best way to establish trust is by helping your audience understand.
Here and some SEO strategies and tactics for manufacturers: –
1. Use Free or Paid SEO tools
Imagine if you already have a website, but you are not getting the kind of response you wanted and your website is not showing up on the first page of a google search result. There arises a need for certain tools to identify the problem in your website and optimize it.
SEO tools investigate the potential of Web pages for high placement on search engine ranking pages. They provide information on backlinks and keywords as well as insights into SEO competition on the Internet.
SEO tools are important to get customers. Wholesale SEO thus helps you accelerate your ranking, update and provide quality SEO service.
No matter how ingenious and creative your website is; if there aren’t sufficient viewers on that particular site, then the product you are offering won’t reach your target audience. SEO tools generally optimize websites to achieve good search engine rankings.
There are many tools like Google AdWords, Mobile-Friendly Test, etc. which helps in optimizing your website.
2. Choose the right Keywords
When you search for something in a search engine, it shows results relevant to the keywords you search for and try to give the best quality content.
Picking the right keywords and keyword phrases is one of the most important steps in successful SEO for your manufacturing website.
Increasing traffic to your site is a priority, but attracting the right audience is a necessity. Choosing the most effective keywords to connect with your target audience can take time and research, but the results will be worth it.
A few tips to help you choose the right keyword: –
- Think like a customer: Identify your target audience and put yourself into the shoes of a customer when you create your initial list of keywords. Ask yourself, ‘If I wanted to find one of these products or services, what would I type into Google?’
- Use Keyword Research Tools: If you are using Google Ads you can use their keyword tool to research your potential target keywords. With these tools and others like SEMRUSH and Raventools, you can gather data on keyword volume and trends, keyword competition, similar keywords, and more.
- Analyze the results: After choosing your keywords don’t forget to monitor them and analyze the results. There are often trending keywords or phrases, along with new keywords your competitors may be using.
Don’t forget to utilize your keywords wherever possible! Insert your keywords into blog posts, social media posts, and your website’s content. The more you use keywords within your content, the easier it will be for your target audience to find you.
3. Review Your Redirects and Identify Broken Links
If you have a website, I’m sure you’ve put a lot of hard work and long hours into making it a valuable resource for your visitors. But if your links aren’t working, it can derail all of your hard work. Broken links on your website can be harmful in two ways:
They make for a bad user experience – When users click on links and reach dead-end 404 errors, they get frustrated and may never return.
They devalue your SEO efforts – Broken links restrict the flow of link equity throughout your site, which impacts rankings negatively.
To avoid these potential pitfalls, you should periodically check for broken links on your entire website. There are several tools you can use to identify broken links like Google Analytics, Xenu, etc.
4. Regularly Update Your Website with New Content
Technology is advancing every day and the business environment is dynamic. If you do not update or optimize your content according to different changes in the manufacturing industry, the content will stop being relevant anymore.
Because of this your content could need a refresh and new keywords. If you don’t update your website it’s sure to fall in the search engine rankings. Search engines regard websites with the most recent content as the most relevant to web users.
Your content might be gold but if it’s the same content as it was 5 years ago then search engine crawlers might not think it is as relevant anymore.
The redesign also gives you a chance to rethink your keyword targeting and the overall conversion rate of your website. The way people search and how they search has changed dramatically over the last few years, even truer with the explosion of smartphone devices now in use.
5. Optimize your Meta Data
Meta tags are invisible tags that provide data about your page to search engines and website visitors. In short, they make it easier for search engines to determine what your content is about and thus are vital for SEO.
Optimizing the page metadata is especially helpful for the manufacturing sector since the segment is becoming increasingly competitive. To stand out in the eyes of the Google algorithm, optimized metadata is unavoidable in SEO strategy for manufacturing companies.
Out of many available types of metadata, Meta title and Meta description are the two most relevant to SEO.
6. Meta Title
While determining search engine rankings, Google takes into account the right title tag. As shown below, your meta title appears at the top of your search engine listing.
7. Meta Description
Meta descriptions are supposed to provide concise summaries of web pages. They can be of one sentence or short paragraph below the clickable link in Google search results.
Though meta descriptions are not important in determining search results, they are extremely important in attracting your target audience.
They work as ad copies to entice users to click on your site link and persuade them that your page is the more relevant one to their search query.
Conclusion
In the old times, generating industrial business leads used to start with a personal inquiry or digital word of mouth references and used to end with a handshake. Nowadays, a phone call to your business doesn’t even exist without hours and hours of research of various businesses. Due to the covid-19 pandemic as well, most of the consumers are relying on the internet for most of their requirements.
Therefore, it has become the need of the hour to shift to digital marketing as consumers rely on digital word-of-mouth now. New and upcoming manufacturing marketers should know everything about SEO and its importance to make sure their product gets noticed by people and eventually increase their sales.
