6 actionable tips for manufacturers to improve SEO rankings on their website.
US industrial production suffered a 16.5% drop as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and a 22.7% drop in the number of total factory orders compared to the year before.
The dynamic and highly competitive environment in the sector urges manufacturing companies to consider new ways to build, expand and maintain market positions.
One of these ways is to create an SEO industrial website to ensure traffic and ROI.
We spoke to pros from a top custom web development company, and they shared tips on improving manufacturing website rankings by using SEO techniques.
Creating SEO content means compiling information for both customers and Google (or other search engines). Intricately connected, they are united by one thing: quality content. Users are searching for specific information while Google is quick to provide the most accurate of it.
In this post, we’ll walk you through SEO for manufacturing websites, including six actionable tips you can use to help improve your site’s ranking.
SEO for your manufacturing website includes taking steps to improve your website performance and ranking in search engines like Google.
Getting your site to rank on the first page of a search engine is key to being found quickly and easily and reaching your target audience.
The search results are based on the quality of your content, business-related keywords and phrases and your website performance and authority.
Your industrial website SEO can refer to both on and off-page optimization. What is the difference between the two strategies?
On-Page SEO is related to optimizing sections on your website to rank higher in search engines. This can include headings, title tags, meta descriptions and URLs reworded or restructured to contain keywords that are important to your manufacturing business.
Another way to improve on-page SEO is to add alt text, captions, and descriptions to the images accompanying your website content and naming them to include important industrial keywords.
Keyword density, internal linking to other pages of your industrial website and optimization of page loading time are other important SEO factors to consider.
Creating high-quality content that benefits your clients or customers is a powerful way to attract people to your manufacturing website.
This content can include financial insights on your special offers, industry statistics and information on stocks, as well as educational materials providing specialized knowledge.
Off-Page SEO is based on building and increasing website authority by incorporating links from other websites that serve as respected and reliable information sources.
If your content is considered valuable, it may be shared by bloggers, influencers or media outlines that will link back to your site, and the result will be a better search engine ranking.
The benefits of SEO on your industrial website include higher traffic, increased brand awareness, building of a solid reputation, enhanced ROI and increased sales.
The manufacturing industry is a diverse universe offering thousands of products from cell phones and TVs to food, medicine, cars, airplanes and heavy machinery.
Sometimes the product-related information is too technical and people have to research dozens of information sources to find what they need.
If your business is one of the primary choices on search engines, you have a higher chance that potential customers will visit your website, interact and complete a transaction.
Compared to the traditional advertising techniques, SEO is more affordable and ensures long-standing results if you continue to produce valuable content and reoptimize your pages when needed.
1. Research Your Keywords
You might think that knowing your business inside and out would mean a fast and easy choice of keywords to integrate into your content. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.
Free or paid SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush will give you information on the best keywords to use depending on their search volume, keyword difficulty and competitive analysis.
Another great SEO tool is SEO Minion, which can help you visit other manufacturing websites, including your competitors. You will be able to see if they have optimized their websites for search engines, what keywords they are using, and their ranking.
2. Use Your Keywords Properly
Once you have identified your keywords, you need to weave them into your website content.
The positions are strictly determined: they should go into your H1 and in H2s together with phrases that are semantically close in meaning.
Plug them into your meta description and title tag, as well as your website URL and image names. This will make it possible for your content to rank higher, and you will benefit from increased traffic and interaction.
3. Improve Site Speed
70% of consumers share that page speed relates to their willingness to buy, while 22% say they stop interacting with a website if the pages are too slow.
Make sure your website loads fast and displays all the information correctly. Pingdom, GTmetrix and WebPageTest are some of the tools that can help you check your site speed and make improvements, if necessary.
A way to enhance your website speed is to resize the images used and implement speed applications and plug-ins like WP Rocket, NitroPack and more.
4. Get Rid Of Broken Links
Everybody has come across the 404-error message at least once.
Suppose your industrial website contains pages that show error messages or your pages cannot be accessed or found. In that case, Google gets that information and chops it up to a bad user experience and assumes your website is not well maintained.
Use Ahref’s Broken Link Checker or Google Search Console to identify errors and make sure to eliminate broken links. Once done, perform regular checks to fix broken links.
5. Make Your Industrial Website Mobile-friendly
Today when all the information you need is accessible through a few clicks on your mobile phone, many searches are performed in exactly this way.
61% of mobile users say they would contact a business with a mobile website. Therefore, having a mobile-friendly website is not just recommended; it is an absolute must for your manufacturing business.
This will ensure your content shows across all devices, is easy to view and navigate and provides a pleasant user journey.
Responsive web design will use the same URL and code, adjusting your content to the size of the screen.
6. Build Backlinks From High-ranking And Trusted Websites Within Your Business Sphere
If websites that are renowned for their expertise and quality link back to your website content, this will create SEO authority and help you rank better.
How can you achieve this?
Quality content is key. Provide simple and easy explanations, add important technical data, use infographics and videos to present your products. This will make you stand out, and other reputable websites may link to you as a reliable information source.
Other ways to build backlinks include researching domains linking to similar content and asking them to link to your website, email campaigns, social media posting, guest blogging on other manufacturing websites and more.
Search Engine Optimization is vital for your manufacturing website. Its on-page and off-page implementation will rank your business among the top search results on search engines and help customers find you quickly and easily.
This will bring higher traffic to your website, solidify brand awareness and company reputation and result in expanded markets and increased sales.
Tune in to hear from Chris Brown, Vice President of Sales at CADDi, a leading manufacturing solutions provider. We delve into Chris’ role of expanding the reach of CADDi Drawer which uses advanced AI to centralize and analyze essential production data to help manufacturers improve efficiency and quality.