SEO for Manufacturers: Everything You Need To Know

In the past, most manufacturers relied on word-of-mouth referrals, direct mailings, and industry directories for leads. Today, as younger workers take over engineering and purchasing roles, buyers are increasingly turning to the internet to do their research, and many of those old directories are no longer in print. Forward-thinking companies must ensure they rank well in search engines to capture these sales. SEO for manufacturers means your company doesn’t miss out on opportunities.

What Is SEO for Manufacturers and Why Is It Important?

Websites that appear as the first links in Googe and other search engine results get more visitors, and the sites’ companies in turn get more leads. With manufacturer competition online growing every day, search engine optimization helps businesses stand out. SEO for manufacturing companies involves a collection of sustainable and proven best practices that help you get noticed online, keep your customers engaged, and improve your chance of converting visitors to buyers.

SEO campaigns generate high-value leads and conversions at a lower cost than traditional advertising. These campaigns also expand your customer base by establishing your brand as a thought leader in your industry. This not only generates B2B leads but drives up end-user demand, which in turn increases B2B demand.

How Can Manufacturers Boost Their SEO?

B2B SEO is a bit different than B2C SEO because the person doing the searching is usually the first in a long line of decision-makers rather than the end-user of the product. Because of this, SEO for manufacturers is largely a lead-generation tool.

To be successful, you must think about who your customers are and what kinds of things they may search for that could lead them to purchase from your company. These search terms are keywords. Finding ways to rank well for relevant keywords is central to improving your SEO.

White Hat Link-Building Strategies

Backlinks, links to your website from other sites, are valuable for improving rankings. However, certain forms of link building got a bad reputation because of spammy techniques and unscrupulous “link farms” that existed solely to generate backlinks to sites for SEO purposes. Search engines got wise to these “black hat” techniques and started penalizing those who used them.

Backlinks are still important, though. White hat link-building methods organically build backlinks that add value to users.

The best way to encourage quality backlinks is to create valuable content that other authoritative sites will want to share with their users. The more reputable sites link to your content, the better your search rankings will be.

You can also encourage backlinks by building relationships with other businesses in your industry and getting your site listed in industry directories. Share your expertise by guest posting on other relevant websites. Incorporate external links to other reputable sites in your content.

Blogging

Blogging is a great way to provide informative content that demonstrates what your products do and how they can meet the needs of your business customers. Depending on what you manufacture, it can also be worthwhile to craft content that appeals to the end user to drive up demand for your products.

SEO for manufacturers incorporates keywords naturally into content and requires regular posting.  Search engines prefer fresh content to older content, and blogging is an excellent way to ensure you always have fresh content for the search engines to discover.

If the products you make are complex, your blog is an opportunity to explain expert topics in ways that your potential buyers can understand. Consider writing eBooks to provide more in-depth coverage of these topics.

Other good blogging topics include:

• Industry insights
• Purchasing guides
• Case studies
• Instructional posts and videos
• White papers

If you aren’t sure what to write about, research what your competition is doing.

Refreshing Old Content

SEO content has a longer shelf-life than advertising campaigns; however, SEO for manufacturers requires maintenance to keep content performing well. Periodically review your older content and update it with fresh insights and up-to-date facts and figures. This ensures that your content remains useful to users and helps you maintain your search engine rankings. You may need to reoptimize some content with the keywords you want to rank for.

Auditing Site Content

Site content audits help you spot opportunities to improve the SEO performance of your content. Use tools to monitor performance metrics, such as bounce rate, traffic, and conversion rates.

Identify any content that isn’t performing as well as you want it to. Check that content for outdated information, broken links, proper keyword usage, and mobile-friendliness. Fix any problems you find.

Ongoing SEO Maintenance

SEO for manufacturers requires ongoing maintenance. Create a schedule to ensure you are consistently creating content. Aim to add new content at least once per month.

Sites periodically move or delete content. Links that no longer work frustrate users and drive down search engine rankings. Use a tool, such as Google Search Console, to check for and fix broken links. If you have changed servers, check for any 302 redirects you are using and update them to 301 redirects.

Social Media Management 

Social media provides you with an opportunity to connect with both your B2B customers and the end users of your products. Posting regularly on social media helps build brand awareness and increases your reputation as an authority in your industry.

Share your content on social media and encourage your customers to do the same. This will help drive traffic to your site. However, don’t use your social media solely for self-promotion.

Share content from other people that is relevant to your target audience. In addition to posting content about your products and your brand, highlight positive information about your company, such as any charitable outreach your company does.

How BKA Helps With SEO for Manufacturers

The team of experts at BKA can help with SEO for manufacturers in a variety of ways. Our SEO blog writing services take the burden of producing constant content off your company. You can choose from monthly plans, managed SEO writing services, and self-service options to fit your needs and budget. Additionally, we offer white hat link-building services and will help you keep your content fresh and SEO-optimized. Learn more about what we have to offer.