Why Manufacturers Need an SEO Agency in 2024

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May 22, 2024

Why Manufacturers Need an SEO Agency in 2024

Jump to:

Understanding the Manufacturing Industry


What is Search Engine Optimization, and Why Does it Matter?


Why Do Manufacturing Companies Need SEO?


Why SEO Matters for Growth


Top 5 Reasons Why Manufacturers Need an SEO Agency


What to Expect When Engaging a Manufacturing SEO Agency


Drive Growth with Cureight: Your Manufacturing SEO Services Partner

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Industrial buyers, engineers, and operations teams use Google and other search engines to research new products and equipment and find new suppliers. Search engine optimization (SEO) helps manufacturing businesses increase their exposure in search results, reach more customers, generate high-quality leads, and grow their revenue. In this guide, we’ll comprehensively explore SEO, including why it makes business sense to engage with a manufacturing SEO agency to plan and execute a successful SEO strategy.

We’ll also provide insights on the core search engine optimization tactics a seasoned agency will employ to drive results.

Understanding the Manufacturing Industry

Manufacturing companies specialize in producing industrial goods such as aircraft, automobiles, chemicals, computers, consumer electronics, heavy machinery, oil and gas, and steel. Manufacturers have faced several headwinds in recent years, including supply chain disruptions, fluctuating demand, economic uncertainty, and workforce shortages. In this uncertain environment, manufacturers need to up their digital marketing efforts to ensure continued profitability.
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What is Search Engine Optimization, and Why Does it Matter?

SEO is a marketing strategy aimed at getting a company’s web pages to show up on organic web searches. There are three main categories of SEO: on-page, off-page, and technical:
  • On-page SEO involves making changes to individual web pages to ensure they rank highly. It typically includes producing and promoting relevant, keyword-focused content like blog posts and white papers and crafting effective meta descriptions, title tags, and H1s.
  • Off-page SEO refers to using other websites to help drive traffic to yours. It relies on external links, such as those on the sites of partners and affiliates, as well as social media posts.
  • Technical SEO involves optimizing your website’s more technical aspects, such as accessibility, mobile-friendliness, and page load speeds, to ensure your pages are user-friendly and rank well in search results.

Why Do Manufacturing Companies Need SEO?

The manufacturing industry has traditionally lagged behind in the world of online digital marketing. One reason for this is that marketing for manufactures isn’t easy. Common challenges include product complexity and longer sales cycles. Search engine optimization is an opportunity for manufacturing companies to get ahead of the curve. By clearly explaining highly technical or complex products and processes, you establish your thought leadership and willingness to invest in helping customers and prospects understand what you do. It’s also something search engines love! Ryan Henry, Founder and CEO of Cureight, explains: “Search engine optimization enables manufacturing brands to dominate by becoming the company that helps people understand their products and processes better than the competition. “But to effectively promote industrial products, you need to understand your customers and how to best educate them about your offerings. That means creating quality content that establishes your expertise and authority in your space and supports your customers’ buying journey.”

Why SEO Matters for Growth

The benefits of a solid manufacturing search engine optimization strategy include:
  • Increased website traffic.
  • More qualified leads.
  • Higher brand awareness.
  • Greater ROI than traditional advertising.
  • Increased revenue.

Top 5 Reasons Why Manufacturers Need an SEO Agency

While tackling SEO by yourself is possible, it will take a lot of time and require a steep learning curve. If you’re looking for compelling outcomes quickly, entrusting your SEO strategy to a professional search engine optimization agency is a wise choice. Here are a few reasons why:

#1: Your Teams Won’t Need to Navigate the Complexities of SEO

While there’s a myriad of SEO educational tools and resources available, building your knowledge and proficiency for SEO will take time, which means it could be many months before you move the needle on your website’s rankings. It can also divert precious time and resources away from your core business operations.

Search engine optimization agencies employ professionals with deep manufacturing industry experience, who are also well-versed in the complexities of SEO. This means they’ll pinpoint the most suitable and effective SEO tactics to improve your search engine rankings. Engaging an agency is a way to achieve fast and effective results while keeping your internal team focused on other critical aspects of your manufacturing business.

#2: It’s More Cost Effective

Working with a reputable manufacturing SEO agency is far more cost-effective than investing in paid advertising by yourself.

While there will be a few upfront costs, the rewards are worth the investment. They include a well-structured and responsive website full of quality, useful content that will continue to build your brand and add value for years to come.

#3: You Can Move Beyond Point-in-Time Initiatives and Achieve Long-Term Value

Some manufacturing companies invest in paid advertising in an attempt to drive more traffic to their websites and build greater brand awareness. Unfortunately, the results in most cases will be mediocre and short-lived.

Unlike paid advertising, which only works for a brief period, search engine optimization is a long-term investment that will continue to deliver business results for years.

#4: A Data-Driven Approach and Ongoing Monitoring

As part of their SEO services, leading agencies will provide you with data-driven insights and analytics that can be leveraged to strengthen your overarching digital marketing strategy.

Specialists at a search engine optimization agency use a variety of tools and techniques to analyze a website’s performance. They’ll send you regular reports on your website traffic, rankings, and other key metrics (such as bounce rates, dwell time on site, and click-through rates) that can help you identify areas for improvement.

#5: You Get Access to a Strong Bench of Digital Marketing Experts

One primary benefit of working with a search engine optimization agency is access to a team of experts in diverse marketing fields.

In addition to SEO, the best agencies offer a range of complementary services and employ specialist content creators, web designers and developers, project and account managers, editors, proofreaders, and more. You get to tap into these professionals’ expertise to develop and execute an effective SEO strategy that drives results.

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.

Drive Growth with Cureight: Your Manufacturing SEO Services Partner

Cureight provides specialized manufacturing search engine optimization services to increase your visibility in search engine results and help more customers and prospects find your business.

We offer a holistic SEO service for manufacturing companies that includes:

Research

Our team of internet marketers will gain a comprehensive understanding of your manufacturing enterprise, website, competitors, and industry dynamics. We’ll also conduct a site and server analysis to evaluate your current website and its performance and create a roadmap for effective optimization.

Keyword Identification

Our team will conduct keyword research to discover the keywords and phrases your organization should be striving to rank for online. We’ll also provide you with a detailed keyword mapping report and advanced rank tracking.

Website and Content Optimization

As a next step, we’ll suggest ways to optimize your website to assist search engines in understanding your manufacturing operation. This includes embedding primary keywords in your existing content, updating your title tags and meta descriptions, improving your site’s speed, and optimizing its navigation to decrease bounce rates and enhance visitors’ experience.

Content Development

We’ll provide topic suggestions and content plans to help you educate readers with a steady stream of fresh, relevant content and keep them coming back to your website. This will ensure you attract quality traffic and provide visitors with the information they need to make an informed purchase.

Link Building

We have a team of specialists who focus on earning site links and mentions from authority websites.

Measurement

Finally, we’ll conduct comprehensive measurement using analytics to ensure your website is driving prospects through your conversion funnel. And, where necessary, we’ll make improvements to get you the highest possible ROI on your SEO investment.

In our experience, many manufacturers’ search engine performance is ready for improvement. As a leading manufacturing SEO agency, Cureight can craft a plan and execute an effective SEO strategy that will make your business shine and continue to grow for years to come.

Contact us to take your manufacturing SEO to the next level.

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See how our SEO strategies can enhance your search rankings and attract more leads.

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