What to Expect When Engaging a Manufacturing SEO Agency

Let’s consider the various ways a seasoned agency will support you in delivering a compelling SEO strategy for your manufacturing operation:

Competitor Assessment

As mentioned earlier, the manufacturing industry is relatively late to the digital marketing arena, so any lack of activity from your competitors presents an opportunity for you to leap ahead. So, the first step your manufacturing SEO agency should take is understanding how you compare to your competitors in the search engine landscape. However, it’s important to note that the companies you traditionally vie with for business may not necessarily be the ones you need to outperform on search engines. “Search engine optimization agencies typically start by running a few searches for products similar to the ones their manufacturing client makes, or the services they offer, to see who is ranking both organically (in the listings below the paid advertisements) and who is running advertisements on those same terms through Google Ads,” explains Henry. “That will provide a precise picture of where the organization currently stands in Google’s eyes.”

Keyword Research

Mastering manufacturing SEO requires thorough keyword research and identifying the best ones for your website. Only by including relevant keywords on your website can you let Google know what those pages are about. Your agency will utilize a keyword planning solution to identify the optimum keywords for your organization. They’ll also ensure that the keywords you select are relevant to the different sections of your website. For example, on your product pages, you need to focus on keywords directly related to your products and the industries you serve. In your blog section, you need to include keywords that relate to user pain points, specific aspects of the manufacturing process, or general information about your industry. “In identifying keywords for our clients, we prioritize keyword relevance and consider people’s search intent. What problem are they trying to solve by searching for that word? If you select keywords that don’t match the page’s content, users won’t stay on the page because it isn’t what they were searching for,” notes Henry. “We also look up and ensure we include long-tail keywords, which are frequently asked questions related to the client’s industry.” Other critical factors your agency will address are keyword difficulty and search volume. Keyword difficulty provides you with an estimation of SEO competition, i.e., how the most effective pages currently rank for a specific keyword and what you need to do to beat them. Most SEO tools will give you these scores for every keyword you search for. Keyword search volume is the estimated number of monthly searches for a particular keyword in a given search engine. Ideally, manufacturing companies should prioritize keywords with lower difficulty and higher search volumes. Once you’ve compiled your list of keywords, your search engine optimization agency can start tracking your keyword ranking using a keyword rank checker. “By starting to monitor an organization’s position before beginning to optimize their website pages, we can compare their pages’ positions before and after optimization so we can continually evaluate the performance of their SEO strategy,” says Henry.

Balance Content Optimization and Net New Content Development

Armed with a list of keywords that align with your industry, you and your agency can start working together to optimize your existing website pages to drive more traffic. “One question manufacturing companies often ask us is whether they should start from scratch with new search-engine-optimized content or to revisit and optimize existing content for SEO,” notes Henry. “Ideally, the two should be given equal weight. It’s a good idea to optimize website content that’s ‘evergreen,’ but it needs to be supplemented with a regular stream of new content that speaks to evolving industry dynamics and the most pressing challenges manufacturers are currently facing,” he explains. Other reasons why you should add timely, high-quality new content to your website include:

• Search engines prioritize websites that regularly publish new, engaging content, as it signals that the organization is an authority on a topic or a series of topics.
• It provides you with an opportunity to begin introducing keywords you haven’t previously focused on without redesigning your entire website.

Henry also stresses the importance of creating individual pages for each product or service you offer rather than trying to include everything on a single page. “Creating individual pages for each product and service, each with a specific content focus, makes it much easier for search engines to find and rank a page. It also improves the likelihood of somebody contacting you because their search has led them to a page with highly relevant content.”

Content Strategy and Content Creation

In parallel to optimizing your existing web pages, your search engine optimization agency will formulate a content strategy and calendar for new content assets. The best content strategies for manufacturers include an array of form factors, such as:

• Blog posts.
• Audio and video content.
• Long-form content assets, like guides and technical white papers.
• Case studies.
• Details of the products you manufacture (including photos and graphics).
• Interactive product configurators.
• Industry reports and roundups of other industry news sources, like manufacturing websites.
• Insights into manufacturing processes.
• Guides for selecting the right products.
• Competitor comparisons.

Your agency will guide you to ensure that you create unique copy for each of your pages and that you use language that’s both informative and descriptive to appeal to both search engines and site visitors. They’ll also provide guidance on the strategic placement of keywords and phrases on each page, like page titles, meta descriptions, and headings.

Link Building

Manufacturing SEO agencies will also look for opportunities to improve your rankings in search results by reaching out to other websites and asking them to link to your content. These links, known as backlinks, are a vital aspect of search engine optimization. That’s because when relevant, reputable sites link to your content, search engines assume your site is equally reputable, so they’ll rank you higher in search results. It’s important to be selective about which sites you try to earn backlinks from. The best sites to target are manufacturing-related ones that provide balanced and authoritative insights, news, and advice on current industry topics.

Local SEO

If your target audience is physically close to your manufacturing operation’s location, you can enhance your SEO strategy with additional tactics to ensure your site and content are optimized for a local audience. Your manufacturing SEO partner can help you in this respect by:

• Creating a Google My Business account.
• Specifying the areas you serve on your website and even creating a web page for each location.
• Ensuring you’re listed on other local citations, such as your local Chamber.

Technical SEO

Your agency should be well-positioned to help you implement technical site improvements that will make it easier for both users and search engine bots to navigate. These actions may include:

• Creating a sitemap and submitting all your important pages.
• Confirming your primary pages aren’t blocked from indexing in robots.txt.
• Ensuring your pages are accessible from your main navigation in approximately 3-4 clicks.
• Boosting cross-discovery capabilities by linking between related pages.
• Optimizing load times on individual web pages.

Mobile Optimization

Today, people routinely access the internet while on-the-go, so it’s vital that your website is mobile-friendly. Your agency can use Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to quickly assess your site’s mobile performance.