SEO for Manufacturing: Proven Tactics to Drive B2B Growth

The internet is a very competitive place with thousands of manufacturers competing with each other to earn their spot. It is very important for your business to take the lead for better revenue and client acquisition. To do this, you need to implement search engine optimisation on your website.

56% industrial professionals stated that they compare the website of the supplier before they select them for further business. So when you are in the segment of manufacturing, it is very important for you to understand that how you present your business through your website matters, as it is the only way the procurement professionals are going to contact you for your goods.

What is Manufacturing SEO

Manufacturing SEO is the process of optimising your website in a way that it acquires the top position in the search engine rankings for industry-specific keywords, to attract more leads, and generate revenue.

In addition, when your website ranks higher, it builds trust among your potential customers and represents you as an authoritative figure. The only difference between traditional SEO and manufacturing SEO is that manufacturing SEO focuses more on keywords that are used by engineers and industrial companies.

Why SEO is Important for Manufacturing Companies

Search engine optimisation is very popular among all industries, and just like any other industry in the field of manufacturing, SEO also plays an important part. Here is a detailed discussion on why manufacturing SEO is so important.

• Brand Awareness

When your website contains content that provides a direct answer to the client’s query, you ultimately become a reliable source of information. In manufacturing SEO, you create content that not only earns the trust of the user but also encourages search engines to display content from your website on their knowledge panel, increasing brand awareness among website visitors.

• Trust Authority

Search engine optimisation helps you understand what people are actually looking for, what their expectations are from a manufacturing company, and how easily they can navigate and find their desired product on your website. This gives them a sense of trust and increases the chances of repeat visits. A well-crafted website that is highly informative about manufacturing and its related topics has a higher chance of becoming an authoritative figure in its niche.

• Qualified Leads

When your target audience is well aware of your brand’s presence, has earned your trust, and sees you ranking at the top of the search engine results, it chronologically brings more leads to your website. If you use long-tail keywords on your website, it works like a magnet to attract qualified leads.
When you integrate long-tail keywords into your website content, you directly target the search terms heavily used by your potential customers. Targeting long-tail keywords has a better chance of attracting qualified leads because buyers who use long-tail search terms are more likely to make a purchase or booking.

• Maximized Revenue

The most important part of utilising SEO for manufacturing is that it maximises the revenue of your company. Increasing brand awareness and organic traffic, along with building trust and authority among your clients, ultimately results in better revenue. When your website is visible to the target audience, they are more likely to take action, which results in business growth.

• Better ROI

Manufacturing SEO generates a better return on investment by attracting highly interested B2B leads at a much lower cost compared to other marketing efforts. SEO helps manufacturers build sustainable and long-term visibility on search engines. In manufacturing SEO, you do not have to worry about constantly paying for visibility. Your search engine-optimised website content holds the rankings for you and continues generating website traffic.

How SEO works for Manufacturing Businesses

Till now, we have learned about what is manufacturing SEO, what the benefits are now we get to know how exactly SEO functions for manufacturing businesses.

How Search Engines Rank Manufacturing Websites

There are many factors a search engine considers before it ranks a manufacturing website. The factors that a search engine considers before ranking your manufacturing website are

• Content and keywords – Content and keywords play a huge part in your website’s ranking because if the keywords are strategically placed in your web page’s content, it gets easier for Google to track your website and show it to the user, and increases your website traffic.
• Backlinks – SEO for a manufacturing company’s website also involves earning high-quality links from other reputable websites. These links function as a vote of confidence and signal the search engine and the user about the authority of your website.
• User experience – Search engine optimisation also involves optimising your website for a better user experience. When your website loads fast and is easy to operate on devices of various screen sizes, it also improves the user experience.

In addition, you can also contact firms that provide web design services because a well-structured website and high click-through rates signal the search engines about the credibility of your website.

These are all the factors that help the search engines to position your manufacturing company at the top of the search engine results.

Difference between B2B SEO and B2C SEO

B2B SEO is a digital marketing strategy, which means businesses optimise their website to attract other businesses, and B2C SEO is when you optimise your website to attract and convert more consumers to your website.

There are some differences between B2B SEO and  B2C SEO

B2B SEO	B2C SEO
B2B SEO is for businesses attracting other businesses to connect.	B2C SEO is when businesses optimise their website to attract individual customers.
B2B SEO strategy for a manufacturing business includes incorporating search terms that are mostly the engineers or other businesses.	Most manufacturing companies use in-depth, informative, and educational content in their B2B SEO strategy.
In a B2C strategy, the companies use high volume, broad, and transactional keywords.	In B2C SEO companies, more focus is on creating engaging, persuasive, and compelling content to grab users’ attention.
In B2B SEO, you use niche, long tail and and low volume keywords in your web page content.	In B2C SEO, the decisions are emotional, price-sensitive, and convenience-driven.
The goal of B2B SEO is lead generation. demo requests and consultation sign-ups.	The goal of a B2C SEO is to generate sales and boost direct purchases.
In a B2C SEO strategy, the website uses keywords that its target audiences mostly look for.	In B2C SEO, the decisions are emotional, price-sensitive and convenience-driven.

Role of intent-based queries

For better manufacturing SEO, it is very important for you to understand the intent behind every query. When the search term gives you a hint on the underlying goal or motivation, like purchasing or booking something is known as an intent-based query. In manufacturing, SEO intent-based queries are generally divided into three categories: those are:

Informational – Informational query is when the visitor uses search terms to find an answer, learn something or collect data on the products that you manufacture are considered informational queries. It signals that the visitor is at the top of the search funnel.

Commercial – Commercial queries signal that the user is in the research phase of their journey. Commercial queries are important because they project a high intent of the customer, and by optimising your content with commercial keywords, you have better chances of attracting these buyers.

Transactional – Transactional queries are when the user is about to make a purchase or is about to complete a specific online action. By optimising your business for transactional queries, you are increasing the chances of your business appearing on the screen of customers who are ready to purchase something.

Effective SEO Tactics for Manufacturing Businesses

Manufacturing companies utilise certain SEO strategies to improve the performance of their website. Below, we will get to know more about those strategies and how they benefit manufacturing companies

1. Keyword Research for Manufacturing SEO

Manufacturing companies perform keyword research by identifying the terms that other companies, engineers, and other prospective buyers use to find the products and services that they provide.

There are certain steps that you can follow for your manufacturing company’s keyword research

1. You can begin by creating a list of potential keywords you can also consider the primary keywords to represent your offerings.
2. You can also check the keywords that your competitors are using. By doing this, you can gain insight into the market landscape and identify new keyword opportunities. To do this, you can use keyword research tools like Ahrefs and Semrush that give you full insight into your competitors’ strategy.
3. You can also use free tools like Google Business Profile and Google Search Console. Google Business Profile ensures that your website appears when someone searches for relevant keywords and gives you insight into the search terms your target audience generally uses, and Google Search Console helps you to identify search terms that are driving traffic to your website by properly analysing these keywords you can optimize the content of your website and align it with the need and search of your target audience.
4. Exploring user-generated content will also help you to analyse the user queries and the pain points, which you can leverage for identifying keywords.

The reasons why keyword research is so important for manufacturing SEO are:

• It helps you to understand the user intent, and once you can do so, it helps you in keyword targeting.
• Keyword research also helps you to analyse the keyword volume and competition. When you use keywords with high competition, it becomes tough for you to earn the top position in the ranking.
• Keyword research is important cause by doing this, you can easily identify opportunities that your competitors might have missed.
• Keyword research is required as it helps you in finding new keywords that your audiences use.

2. On-Page SEO for Manufacturing Websites

On-page optimisation of your manufacturing business website is when you optimise the on-page content, like headers, title tags, images, and alt texts, for search engines. When you optimise the on-page elements of your website, it smoothens the user experience, improves your search engine rankings and attracts more organic traffic.

The reason why on-page SEO is so important for your manufacturing website is

• On-page optimisation involves creating content on your webpage and incorporating the keyword in it so that any buyer engineer or anyone who wants to make a purchase directly comes to your website.
• On-page optimisation of your website helps your website earn the top ranking. In this way, your business is more visible to potential customers, and in addition, it builds your brand authority.
• See, the purchase procedure at manufacturing companies is long and complex; on-page SEO keeps your website visible throughout the customers’ research and purchase process.
• On-page optimisation of your website ensures that your website is relevant to the customer’s query. It is an effective way for your website to establish itself as an authoritative figure.

3. Off-Page SEO for Authority & Traffic

Off-page SEO for manufacturing companies involves link building, content marketing, social media marketing, and earning press releases. It is basically optimising your website from the outside for better ranking by using these tactics. Each of these tactics has its own importance, like

• Link building – When you acquire a link from high high-quality website, it signals the search engines that your website is also credible and trustworthy.

• Content marketing – Content marketing is when you create valuable content and distribute it you establish your website as an expert in your business segment, which helps you to acquire a higher rank in the search results.

• Customer reviews and testimonials – It involves encouraging your customers to leave positive reviews about your business, and if there is someone who has left a negative review, you can approach them and ask them to remove the review in a professional manner.

The reason why off-page SEO is important for your manufacturing website is

• Builds authority – Acquiring high-quality backlinks from reputable websites signals authority to the user and search engines.
• Improved search rankings – High-quality backlinks, positive client testimonials, and customer reviews are the signs of a credible website, and they help you to improve your website ranking.
• Increases visibility – A firm content strategy allows your products and services to appear in the feed of your potential audiences, and in this way, you are increasing the visibility of your website.
• Lead generation – When your website shows all the signs of a trusted and credible source of information, it automatically generates leads to your web pages.

4. Technical SEO for Manufacturing Sites

Technical SEO is required for your website as it improves the backend elements and structure of your manufacturing website. It also points out the area that needs improvement when you run SEO audits with the help of tools like Screaming Frog, SEMrush, Ahrefs, etc. Technical SEO points out the factors that might be affecting your website’s ranking, like

• 404 error pages
• Broken links
• Duplicate contents
• Uncrawlable pages
• Missing schema markup

Technical SEO is important for your website pages because

Better crawlability and indexation – Technical SEO helps you to optimise your website page, like adding structured data, fixing broken links, and uncrawlable pages. Technical SEO improves the crawlability of your website page and makes the indexation process easy.

Mobile optimisation – Technical SEO includes tactics like optimising the large-sized images, content, and increasing the website load speed, all of which are done to optimise your website for mobile devices so that you can also reach someone who is looking for your services/products on their mobile devices.

Advanced schema markup and structured data – Structured data helps the search engines understand the context of your website, and as we have learned earlier, it improves the crawlability and indexing. In addition, it also features information like ratings, availability, and product images, enhancing your website’s attractiveness and making it more informative for the user

Adapting to algorithm changes – Technical audits are also required, as they allow you to optimise your content according to the changes in the algorithm. This way, you make sure this change does not affect your website’s online ranking.

5. Local SEO for Manufacturing Businesses

Local SEO is something that you just can not ignore. Your manufacturing business requires local SEO because there are many potential buyers in your local area, but they are unaware of your presence in their area. Local SEO improves your website’s visibility in local searches.

There are certain local SEO tactics that you can use:

• Develop Google Business Profile – Create your Google Business Profile to maintain the accuracy of your name, phone number, address, and business hours across all platforms.
• Optimise your website – You can place local keywords in your content, header, meta descriptions, and title to increase the chance of appearing for local searches.
• Build local authority – You can also focus on earning backlinks from the local businesses, enlist your business in local directories, and ask for reviews from clients, all will help you to present your business as the leader in the market.
• Content and engagement – You can create content around local industrial companies, engage with local news and community, and optimise your website for voice searches.

These are the most effective local seo tactics that you can follow for better results. There are certain benefits of local SEO for your website.

The key benefits of local SEO for manufacturing companies are:

• Local visibility – It improves the visibility of your website in the near me searches and makes it easy for the local buyers to locate you
• Boosts foot traffic – It also generates a decent amount of foot traffic to your office
• Increased conversion rate – It boosts your conversion rate by leading more qualified traffic to your website
• Earns credibility and trust – Google business profile and positive reviews help your business establish itself as the trusted local entity
• Cost-effective -It offers a higher return on investment and keeps generating leads for a longer period of time
• Target mobile users – Local seo optimization makes your website mobile user-friendly and allows you to capture a large number of mobile users

6. Content Marketing for Manufacturing SEO

For manufacturing seo, content marketing is basically generating content around the complex jargon of the manufacturing world. You can turn the technical specs into informative and compelling content to engage your audience. The contents include

• Video marketing – company tours, machine tutorials, manufacturing process
• Informative content – Technical blog posts, whitepapers, e-books, webinars, etc
• Interactive content – Q&A sessions and efficiency calculator
• Data visualisation – Infographics

The key strategies for content marketing on your website are

• Keyword research and implementation – Perform a thorough keyword research and locate the terms your clients use the most, and create content accordingly for better search rankings.
• Content customisation – Create different content based on the segment of your clients’ background preferences.
• Utilise social media – You can use social media for better engagement through engaging in industry groups and promoting your content on social media.
• Track performance – You can also measure the performance of your content and improve your content strategy.

Some reasons make content marketing a valid SEO strategy, and those are

• Improved brand awareness – Content marketing helps your business to become the go-to solution for your audience whenever they require the services/products that you provide.

• Drives traffic and engagement – When you produce high-quality content, you effectively attract qualified leads, keep them engaged and increase the conversion rate.

• Improved SEO – When you add high-quality content regularly, it improves your website’s ranking, makes it more relevant to your audience, and makes your website adaptive to the algorithm change.

• Cost-effective – If you have several high-quality content on your website, it can generate traffic on your website for a longer period of time.

7. International SEO for Global Manufacturing Companies

International SEO for your manufacturing company is when you optimise your company website to rank higher in search results of multiple countries. This also involves handling technical complexities and capturing a large amount of qualified leads from all markets globally.

The key components of International SEO are:

• Market analysis– It is required for identifying high-potential countries by using analytics data and keyword demand.
• Technical set-up – It involves implementing hreflang, choosing URL structure and optimising your website for mobile users.
• localisation of the content – You can start by translating the product specifications, creating content more region-specific.
• Link building – Acquire backlinks from local industry directories, trade publications and suppliers
• Tracking performance – Gives you a better understanding of your international SEO performance and informs you about chances for improvement.

Your manufacturing business requires international SEO for several reasons, like

• Attract global clients – International SEO is useful for attracting buyers, manufacturing clients across the globe, by ranking high on search results
• Target leads – It easily targets potential leads who are looking for your service/products in their local language
• Builds trust – A High ranking on multiple countries’ search results signals to the search engine the quality of your website
• Competitive advantage – It gives you a competitive advantage by strengthening your presence in other countries’ local searches.

8. Tracking User Journey and Lead Generation

In manufacturing, SEO tracking user journey helps you to understand the interaction between your website and the visitor, and tracking lead generation is the process of collecting data like their email, so that you can nurture them into potential customers.

The importance of tracking user journey and lead generation is

User journey

• Gives you a better understanding of your customers’ needs and habits.
• It allows you to identify where they faced an obstacle, what caused them to leave.
• Allows you to adjust your marketing strategies for better resource allocation.
• Successful mapping of the user journey helps you to improve user experience, increasing the conversion rate.

Lead generation

• It signals the best marketing campaign and allows for better budget allocation.
• Monitoring behaviour allows you to tailor the message, nurture the relationship, and increase conversion.
• You get a clear idea about customer preferences, pain points, and engagement, enabling a personalised experience.
• It directs the marketing activities directly to revenue, providing value to stakeholders.

Critical SEO Challenges Affecting Manufacturing Websites

While performing SEO for manufacturing companies, you might have to deal with certain challenges, those are

1. Niche and Highly Technical Keywords 

Niche and highly technical keywords are specific and long tail keywords that you use when you want to target a specific segment of the audience

The reason why niche and technical keywords are a challenge in specific areas is

• These keywords have exceptionally low search volume, so you can not totally depend on these keywords
• Keyword research tools struggle to find robust data on these specific technical keywords
• If the content misaligns with the qualified leads’ search intent, it can make them bounce

2. Complex Content

It is a common issue in the technical field; these contents basically give an in-depth analogy on the topic, which takes a lot of effort to understand. For example, suppose you have written a blog about something related to manufacturing machines and production processes and used technical words instead of simplifying it for the general audience, so that way those who have an in-depth knowledge about your manufacturing industry only he will be able to understand and limit the content’s reach only to the qualified leads.

Here are the reasons why complex content is a challenge

• Technical contents are often created by those who are already in this field, and they are the ones who review it too, but if a general manager of a company is trying to understand it to make a purchase, he won’t be able to understand most of it, leading him to bounce to your competitor’s page.
• Another challenge is that the table of stakeholders ranges from the ones who are well informed and those who are in their initial phase of the sales funnel, so now the challenge is to develop content that caters for both without devouring keywords or creating confusion for the search engine.
• It is difficult for the complex contents to stand out in the search results. making it necessary for you to develop content that offers real-world knowledge and practical insight to cut through the noise.

3. Strong International Competition

With the help of international SEO, you can land in the international market effectively and get ahead of your competitors. The real challenge starts when you face strong international competition. Competing with someone who has better knowledge about that specific geographical location can be challenging. In this scenario, the challenges that you face are

• You can not take the risk of misinterpreting their culture, business etiquette, and of course, there is a language barrier, so if your one misunderstanding can effectively derail your deals.
• handling varied tariffs, taxes, laws and import duties increases cost and complexity
• Your market entry can be affected by currency fluctuation, political instability, and economic uncertainty.
• No marketing, product or strategy delivers profitable results domestically that can also perform well in the international market.
• Entering the global market, stable investment for research, marketing and development.

4. Poorly Optimised Websites and Outdated Content 

Poorly optimised website and outdated content are those challenges that can rupture the reputation of your manufacturing website and lose the position it has acquired on Google search rankings. Poorly optimised website and outdated content can affect the user experience, search engine optimisation and business performance and revenue.

The challenges that you might have to face due to these are

• Outdated content, poorly optimised website, pixelated images and longer loading time create a negative first impression.
• Poor website experience is mainly caused by an under-optimised website and outdated content, leading to higher bounce rates.
• It can also harm the ranking of your website as search engine prioritises websites that provide a better user experience, produce fresh content.
• Poor performance can also affect the revenue of your website because most users are going to abandon the site.
• It can also give your competitors an advantage and push you back in the competition.

5. Lack of Quality Backlinks

Lack of quality backlinks is also a challenge because backlinks are the ones that help you to establish authority effectively. Search engines like Google also check for backlinks, as these function like a vote of confidence, and when your website lacks backlinks, it directly affects the performance of your website.

Here are the challenges that you might have to face due to a lack of quality backlinks

• Your competitors who have high-quality backlinks will definitely surpass you in the search ranking race.
• When you compensate with low low-quality website, it affects your ranking and also might get you penalised by Google for providing a poor user experience.
• High-quality backlinks accelerate the crawling and indexing process, and low-quality backlinks can cause it to slow down. Sometimes, the website pages might not get indexed at all.
• Lower ranking means lower traffic, which technically affects the revenue of your company.
• It also hinders your brand’s credibility cause when you are using backlinks from high authority websites, their credibility also gets distributed among your website pages, and in case of low-ranking pages, adding low-quality websites adds no value to your website’s credibility.

Trends in SEO for Manufacturers

SEO for manufacturers is a dynamic process because the algorithms constantly change, and in order to keep up with the changes, what you need to do is be aware of these constant changes in the trends.

Below is a detailed discussion on the trends in SEO for manufacturers.

1. AI and machine learning

AI SEO is effectively changing the way manufacturers used to approach. Now, with the help of AI tools, they can efficiently analyse large datasets to identify trends and insights to build strategies on these datasets. It also allows the manufacturer to tailor content that resonates with your audience segments. It has made keyword research, performance tracking, content creation and optimisation efficient.

Here are the simple steps on how manufacturers can effectively leverage AI and machine learning

Acknowledge SEO strategies driven by AI

• Understand industry trends to identify emerging keywords.
• Categorise the audience based on search behaviour for relevant content production.

Utilise SEO tools

• Utilise AI tools like SEMrush for better keyword research based on real-time data.
• Leverage platforms like ChatGPT for content drafting.
• Google Analytics is also helpful in user engagement tracking.

Develop content for an AI algorithm

• Prioritise user intent to align content with their needs
• Use a schema to make the content easy to understand for the search engine

Leverage machine learning for predictive analysis

• Utilise M L tools to identify potential keywords that can drive traffic in future
• Adjust campaign based on real-time insight.

2. Voice and Image Search in the Industrial Sector

Voice and image search is one of the most effective trends. With each passing day, people are using voice and image searches instead of just typing in what they are looking for. It is projected that about 64% of the US Gen Z population will use a voice assistant monthly by 2027.

Here is a detailed guide on how you can optimise your content for image and voice searches

Voice search optimisation

• Optimise your web page content for mobile devices, as this is a ranking factor for search engines.
• Enable the voice search option on your website.
• Prioritise a user-friendly mobile site.

Image search optimisation

• Use high definition and compressed images.
• Use relevant meta titles and alt texts.
• Most importantly, use Schema markup for better results.

3. Mobile First Indexing

With the surge in mobile users, search engine algorithms make sure websites that are mobile-friendly rank at the top of the search results. It is clear why you need to design your website for mobile-first indexing.

Here is a brief guide for you

• Use a fluid grid on the website for smooth adaptation across all devices.
• Make sure that your website loads fast on all devices, cause site speed is a crucial ranking factor.
• Keep the content paragraphs as long paragraphs cluttering the mobile screens
• Compress the images on your website.
• Use WebP to reduce file sizes without compromising the quality.

4. Advanced Sales Funnel Advertising

Sales funnel advertising is an advanced marketing strategy which involves data, automation and tailored content to guide the buyer through their entire purchasing journey.

The main reasons why an advanced sales funnel is important for your manufacturing seo are that it tracks the user journey right from the moment they arrive at your website. This way, you know which marketing strategy is delivering better results

Here is a list of funnel metrics that you should measure for your SEO success

• CPA – It measures the spending on marketing and the acquisition of new customers. This generally tells you about your marketing efforts. Anyhow, if the cost outnumbers the gain, then your SEO campaign is a failure.
• Lifetime value – It measures customer retention and gives insight into industries like e-commerce and traditional sales.
• Conversion rate – It measures the number of visitors making a purchase on your website. You can also measure each stage’s success through micro conversion.

Conversion rate per channel – Each marketing channel has its own goal, which is why it is a necessity to analyse the success of each one. These channels can be paid ads, organic search, referrals and influencers, and email.

FAQs

Conclusion

To conclude, the entire blog is about what is SEO, its importance, benefits, strategies, challenges and trends. We have seen in this blog that SEO is very effective in generating leads for your manufacturing business and adding value to your marketing efforts. A well-optimised manufacturing website will not only help your business capture and attract targeted leads from the nearby areas but also help your business find its right place in the international market.

In case you find it confusing, time-consuming, or you are short on staff who can efficiently optimise your website, you can hire an expert SEO agency with years of experience and a credible track record to do so. They will not only help your business to grow overall but also set a benchmark in the industry.