Can They Find You? SEO for Manufacturing

Marketing for manufacturers isn’t quite the same as the marketing utilized by your end users. A construction company may need to reach every potential home builder or property manager within a certain radius, while a retail pharmacy that sells medical devices will need to segment their marketing to serve many different facets of the general public. The good news is that using the web for digital marketing has greatly democratized content distribution; in theory, anyone can be found online. The bad news is that practically everyone is trying to get found these days, making it hard to make your voice heard above your competitors’. Proper manufacturing search engine optimization (SEO) can make a decisive difference in whether your message breaks through the din.

SEO in Brief

Search results are delivered by a series of algorithms that evaluate the search query against a vast amount of web content. SEO attempts to structure your site and its contents in a way that is friendly to the search engines and your end users alike, improving your chances of being found. SEO is something of an arms race, with major search engines like Google constantly changing their algorithms to deliver better results, black hat SEOs trying to game the system, and then search engines changing again to ensure quality. Cain & Company follows white hat SEO, which can take a little longer to show results but also keeps your site from being de-indexed.

The Mechanics of SEO

Search engine optimization broadly falls into two categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. Each has its place, and neither should be neglected.

Key On-Page SEO

On-page SEO consists of the things that are visible to any site visitor. It’s choosing keywords that your customers would use to find your products and services. It’s ensuring that your information solves problems for them. It includes alt text for photos or infographics that are relevant to the copy or that add visual reinforcement to your text.

Key On-Page SEO

Everything going on behind the scenes is off-page SEO and technical SEO. While they may be invisible to the casual observer, your site code, caching, image tags, backlinks, and mobile responsiveness are all silently evaluated by the search engines. Lock these down, and you’ll notice better search engine results.

Three SEO Improvements You Can Make Right Now

There are some on- and off-page SEO improvements that can give your manufacturing business more SEO "juice."

• Improve site performance, paying particular attention to 301 and 302 redirects, broken links, 404 errors, your site map, load times, and mobile responsiveness.
• Make your keywords more relevant to your target markets, since the use of keywords will help you target the right people, industries, and even geographical areas you need to reach.
• Improve your content. Update content that’s grown stale, blog consistently, and make sure you’re serving pages and content that your clients will find useful. Search engines equate evergreen content with authority and will reward you accordingly.

Getting Your SEO Right

Because it changes so often, SEO can seem daunting even to those of us who work with it daily. When you’re new to the field — especially when SEO is one more thing on a plate that’s already piled high with the many demands of running a manufacturing business — the to-do list and the learning curve can seem insurmountable. Cain & Company specializes in SEO strategies that ensure your site is optimized from the inside out. Let us shoulder the load, so you can get back to what you do best.