4 Key SEO Strategies for Manufacturers: Driving Qualified Leads to Your Website

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is an essential aspect for manufacturers to improve their visibility, increase brand awareness, and establish themselves as industry thought leaders.

According to HubSpot, 69% of marketers invested in SEO in 2021, highlighting its importance in driving organic traffic and online success.

In this article, we will provide a high level overview of SEO for chief marketing officers in the manufacturing industry, focusing on SEO strategies for manufacturers. For additional information please check out the following guide: 25 Website Must-Haves for Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

The Importance of SEO Strategies for Manufacturers

A wealth of data supports the importance of SEO strategies for manufacturers, including increased website traffic, lead generation, and brand recognition. Let’s highlight some of these key statistics.

• 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine (Search Engine Journal)
• 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results (HubSpot)
• SEO leads have a 14.6% close rate, compared to outbound leads at 1.7% (Search Engine Journal)
• 80% of B2B buyers start their buying journey with a search (Google)
• Manufacturers that prioritize SEO have seen a 15% increase in website traffic and a 14% increase in leads (HubSpot)

If that is not enough, Hubspot offers a wide array of statistics that will blow your mind about the importance of SEO for industrial companies.

Types of SEO

SEO encompasses a wide range of strategies and techniques, with four primary types being On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO, Technical SEO, and Content-Based SEO. In this summary, we will briefly introduce each of these types.

At a Glance:

• On-Page SEO: Focuses on optimizing individual web pages to improve search engine rankings and user experience.
• Off-Page SEO: Involves strategies outside of your website, such as building high-quality backlinks, to improve its authority and search engine rankings.
• Technical SEO: Deals with the technical aspects of a website, ensuring optimal performance, crawlability, and indexing by search engines.
• Content-Based SEO: Also known as Content Marketing, aims to establish your brand as a thought leader and enhance your website’s authority through valuable content.

By understanding the different types of SEO, including On-Page, Off-Page, Technical, and Content-Based SEO, you can implement a well-rounded and comprehensive approach to optimizing your website’s search engine performance.

Getting smart about SEO enables your manufacturing company to maximize its visibility, develop domain authority, and rank higher, more effectively, and faster than your competition.

On-Page and Technical SEO

On-Page SEO and Technical SEO are critical components of a successful SEO strategy. We will cover common key performance indicators (KPIs) for both types of SEO and how to use an agency to optimize them effectively.

While numerous on-page SEO KPIs exist, we recommend regularly reviewing the following key performance indicators, either in-house or in collaboration with your marketing agency, to ensure optimal results:

Here are 10 KPIs that are critical to look for with on-page SEO.

1. Keyword density: The percentage of times a keyword or keyphrase appears on a page compared to the total number of words on the page, used to maintain a balance between readability and optimization for search engines.
2. Title Tag Optimization: Crafting unique, relevant, and concise title tags for each page to describe its content and attract search engine attention accurately.
3. Meta Description Optimization: Write engaging and informative meta descriptions that summarize the page’s content, encourage click-throughs, and improve search engine rankings.
4. Header tags (H1-H6) usage: Properly structuring content using header tags to create a clear hierarchy and enhance the user experience, while also signaling the importance of topics to search engines.
5. Image Optimization: Ensuring images have descriptive alt tags, optimized file sizes, and proper formatting to enhance user experience and boost search engine visibility.
6. URL Structure: Implementing clean, descriptive, and keyword-rich URLs to make it easy for both users and search engines to understand the content of a page.
7. Internal Linking: Strategically linking related pages within your website to improve site navigation, distribute link equity, and boost overall SEO performance.
8. Mobile-friendliness: Ensuring your website is responsive and accessible across various devices, offering a seamless user experience and meeting search engine guidelines.
9. Page Load Speed: Optimizing page elements to reduce loading time, improve user experience, and meet search engine expectations for fast-loading websites.

Content Quality and Uniqueness: Creating high-quality, original content that offers value to users and distinguishes your website from competitors, increasing its relevance and authority in search engine rankings.

While there are numerous technical SEO KPIs to consider, we recommend consistently monitoring the following key performance indicators to ensure the best possible outcomes. You can also check out this checklist on our partner Orbit Media’s website: Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO: Avoid These (Simple) Website Mistakes that Are Killing Your Rankings (w/ Checklist)

Here are 10 key performance indicators (KPIs) that are essential to monitor for technical SEO. This is not an exhaustive list, but it can be used as a checklist to ensure that your website is optimized for search engines.

• Crawlability: Ensuring search engine bots can easily access, crawl, and index your website’s content to improve its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
• XML Sitemap: Creating and maintaining an up-to-date XML sitemap that lists all important pages on your website, helping search engines discover and index your content more efficiently.
• Canonicalization: Properly implementing canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues, consolidate link equity, and signal the preferred version of a page to search engines.
• Robots.txt file: Optimizing your robots.txt file to guide search engine crawlers on which pages to crawl or ignore, ensuring efficient use of crawl budget and preventing indexing of irrelevant or sensitive content.
• Structured data markup: Implementing schema markup to provide search engines with additional context about your content, enabling rich results and improving the appearance of your website in SERPs.
• Broken links and 404 errors: Regularly auditing your website to identify and fix broken links or pages returning 404 errors, ensuring a smooth user experience and minimizing negative impacts on SEO.
• HTTPS implementation: Securing your website with HTTPS to protect user data, build trust, and meet search engine requirements for secure connections.
• Redirect chains and loops: Identifying and resolving redirect chains or loops to improve page load times, conserve crawl budget, and ensure search engines can efficiently index your content.
• Core Web Vitals: Monitoring and optimizing Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, and Cumulative Layout Shift) to improve user experience and meet Google’s guidelines for website performance.
• Index coverage report: Regularly reviewing your website’s index coverage report in Google Search Console to identify and resolve indexing issues, ensuring your website’s content is properly indexed and visible in search results.

As demonstrated, the intricacies of SEO can be quite complex. If you were going to tackle this on your own, it can be done, but proceed with caution. Remember, SEO is like baking a cake––it takes time, skill, and a sprinkle of magic (or a staff of nerds that love this stuff as much as we do).

We have dedicated over 10,000 hours to mastering this craft, enabling us to analyze and optimize these factors with precision. So, leave the SEO sorcery to us and focus on what you do best––creating exceptional products.

For your manufacturing company, it is crucial to partner with an agency that possesses the expertise and time you may lack, ensuring your SEO challenges are effectively addressed. Let us be the SEO sidekick to your manufacturing superhero! (or um, something like that).

Off-Page SEO

Off-Page SEO is a vital aspect of search engine optimization that can be particularly challenging and, if not executed correctly, may result in penalties. In this overview, we will explore the key elements of off-page SEO.

Key Points:

Backlinks: Understand how backlinks work and their significance in influencing search engine rankings.

Link-worthy content: Recognize the importance of creating valuable content that naturally attracts high-quality backlinks.

Advanced outreach tactics: Learn about effective techniques to promote your content and boost off-page SEO.

By gaining a solid understanding of backlinks, creating valuable content, and employing advanced outreach tactics, you can effectively enhance your off-page SEO and improve your website’s overall search engine performance.

For more information on backlinks you can also check out this article by our partner Surchability.

Content-Based SEO

Content-Based SEO, or Content Marketing, focuses on positioning your brand as a thought leader while enhancing your website’s authority. In this brief overview, we will delve into the key components of content-based SEO.

Keyword selection: Discover strategies for choosing the most effective keywords to target in your content.

Re-optimization: Understand the importance of regularly reviewing and updating your content to maintain its relevance and effectiveness.

Analytics: Learn about the role of analytics in making informed, data-driven SEO decisions to improve your content marketing efforts.

By implementing targeted keyword selection, continuous re-optimization, and leveraging analytics for data-driven decision-making, you can elevate your content-based SEO and solidify your brand’s position as a thought leader in your industry.

The Critical Piece that Few SEO Agencies Do

There are numerous marketing agencies out there that use the term “partner,” but ultimately, they often fail to be accountable for the crucial aspects of implementing SEO strategies for manufacturers, such as generating revenue and ensuring profitability.

That’s why we emphasize connecting our SEO analytics to monetization. To illustrate our approach, here’s a brief history of a company we’ve been developing digital strategies for over the past decade.

In this example:

You will see our client’s Google Analytics.

As you can see, we were able to increase the visibility of their website by 38.53%, raising the number of views from 1,176,887 to 1,630,330.

While online visibility is crucial, it’s essential to link it to revenue generation. In this same example, the increased traffic resulted in 44,608 conversions, which translated to $13,382,400 in revenue.

Here’s how the calculation was determined: 44,608 conversions multiplied by $300 of revenue per sale equals a total revenue of $13,382,400

Very few SEO agencies hold themselves accountable for this level of revenue generation. It’s common to hear them say, “Our job is to bring traffic to your website; we are not responsible for revenue growth.”

This is where Farotech sets itself apart and truly makes a difference. We break the mold and take full responsibility for turning your website into a revenue-generating machine. We’re not just here to bring traffic; we’re here to bring the cha-ching! (And if you don’t have an actual cash register, we will be just as happy to make your QuickBooks sing, um, either or works for us).

Wrapping it up

SEO is a crucial component of any successful marketing strategy for companies in the industrial industry. By implementing the tactics outlined in this article, you can enhance your website’s visibility, generate leads, and establish yourself as an industry thought leader. And we would love to help you do just that.

Reach Out

Please schedule an appointment with one of our partner growth specialists by clicking on the following link to access our online calendar.