Good online visibility is essential for manufacturing businesses to capture the attention of
customers, promote their products, and develop their professional credibility – and the most cost-
effective means of doing this is search engine optimisation (SEO).
SEO or LinkedIn?
At JDR, we recognise that manufacturing businesses often have a longer sales cycle and a different
sales process to service and retail businesses, involving a lot more face-to-face contact and
traditional sales channels – e.g. trade shows.
In digital terms, this sits very well with LinkedIn marketing, and many manufacturing businesses
experience excellent returns from lead generation and sales using social media networking. This
doesn’t mean, however, that your company website isn’t important, and some of the best online
sales results for manufacturing businesses come from adopting a personalised fusion of SEO,
LinkedIn marketing, and face-to-face (F2F) sales that matches the purchasing habits of their ideal
customers.
By taking a bespoke approach to SEO and digital marketing that tailors your strategy towards the
specific needs of your sector and your customers, you can grow your online presence and secure
more sales.
Here are 3 reasons why every manufacturing company needs good SEO:
1) Improve brand awareness
SEO raises the profile of your business by making it more visible on Google for sales -related
searches. For manufacturers engaged in face-to-face tradeshows and conferences, this can lay the
groundwork for better engagement at the events and increase lead generation. For instance,
appointments can be made in advance that give your sales team better opportunities to make
connections at the event, and a better online profile makes it more likely that prospects will have a
working knowledge of your business before they encounter you in person.
You’re not limited regarding the types of keywords you can optimise for your business. Your
keywords can be sales -related for various enquiries at different stages of the sales funnel, or they
can be chosen to increase general brand awareness – or even to draw attention to a specific product
launch or campaign. SEO gives you the opportunity to tailor your marketing content to the precise
needs of your ideal buyers, bypassing the uncertainties of traditional advertising and helping you
shorten your sales cycle with prospective leads.
2) Better visibility for local customers
Many manufacturing supply chains have shortened since the pandemic, with a movement towards
local supplier partnerships and re-shoring. For British manufacturers (especially second and third tier
service providers), this provides a lucrative market opportunity to secure more work from local
customers. SEO can help improve your visibility for local searches and expand your customer base.
Google offers several ways of optimising your business presence for local SEO, including the
opportunity to post a Google My Business entry, and registering your business address on Google
Maps. If you have multiple addresses or areas of operation, you can manage them all from your
Google My Business portal.
You may also wish to focus on local keywords and phrases, and solicit reviews, back links, and
testimonials from local customers – maybe using your LinkedIn network as a source for positive
content you can use to boost your SEO.
3) Continued investment in your website
The manufacturing sector isn’t always known for its high-quality websites, and this can impact the
search visibility and prominence of manufacturing businesses – older and slower sites are often
penalised by Google with lower search rankings. By investing in continual web development and
content creation as part of an SEO and digital marketing strategy, you give your business a
competitive edge by providing a more responsive and intuitive website user experience for your
customers.
How to get started
Search engine optimisation is a process of website optimisation, in which you progressively improve
the accessibility of your website for Google bots and your customers. There are several actions you
can take to get started:
Define KPIs to monitor your success with SEO in terms of your search engine position for
your target keywords, and to track back links to your website over time.
Analyse your website to ensure that each page is indexable and searchable by the search
engines – and that your website features an up-to-date XML site map and a robots.txt file
that describes all the critical pages and areas of your site.
Audit your site to ensure that it is mobile friendly, meaning that it loads quickly on 4G
connections, and that the design is responsive enough to adapt to the user’s device screen
size.
Review your web content to ensure you have high quality searchable material available to
address each of your target keywords. Your content should explain your products and value
propositions, provide detailed technical information, compare your solutions with those of
your competitors, and explain how your applications address your ideal customers’ pain
points.
Establish an analytics strategy to monitor your relative success against the KPIs you
established in step one – including your click through rate, conversion rate, bounce rate,
social media shares, and other metrics.
To find out more about specialist marketing solutions for manufacturers, please get in touch with
one of our marketing team today on 01332 343281.
Image Source: Canva
