SEO for Manufacturing Companies: Get The Highest Traffic with This Guide

56% of users don’t contact a manufacturing company without seeing their website first. This means manufacturers in this digital world have to devise fascinating SEO plans to make their websites visible and a favorite for both users and search engine algorithms. 
They also have to make an SEO content strategy that provides quality content to the users and answers their search queries. But SEO takes a lot of work — so we’ve compiled a list of SEO tips and tactics that can help you reach the top of SERPs!

Why Is SEO Important for Manufacturers and Manufacturing Companies?

SEO is important for manufacturers and manufacturing companies due to the following reasons:

1. It Yields Measurable Results

2. It Keeps You on Track

3. SEO Increases the Number of Leads

4. SEO Builds Brand Awareness

5. SEO increases the visibility and rankings of a website

How to Implement SEO for a Manufacturer Website

This comprehensive guide walks you through each step of building a successful SEO strategy for your manufacturer’s website. By following these practices, your website can rank higher and reach more potential clients than ever before.

Step 1: Website Architecture Creation

To implement better SEO for a manufacturer or brand manufacturer, the first step is to understand your core business areas. 

To do that, break down the website architecture for your manufacturing website into core offerings, then the extended list of sub-areas. Creating a table might help with this task: 

Core Service Areas	Extended List of Sub-Areas
Product Manufacturing	1. Product design 2. Product development 3. Product testing 4. Product assembly 5. Product packaging
Supply Chain Management	1. Procurement  2. Inventory management  3. Logistics 4. Warehousing 5. Shipping and Receiving
Quality Control	1. Quality assurance 2. Inspection 3. Testing 4. Compliance 5. Certification

Once you’ve identified your core service areas and sub-areas, use tools like Semrush or Outranking to gather data on keywords for each sub-group of the core areas for manufacturing. This will launch you into your keyword analysis step. 

Conducting a keyword research for each sub-area under the core service areas can help you develop a comprehensive SEO content strategy for your manufacturing service’s website. That means you can target the right keywords on your manufacturing company’s website and improve your search engine rankings. 

Step 2: Perform Keyword Research

As you’re performing keyword research, you need to keep 3 things in mind: 

1. Build out the extended research for sub-areas and gather the list of keywords in each of the core areas of your manufacturing website. For this example, let’s use “Product Manufacturing” as your core area.
2. Repeat the keyword research steps for each area if you have several core areas.
3. Perform the keyword research steps as many times as you have sub-areas, and exclude any irrelevant or outdated keywords. Also, focus on long-tail keywords to attract high-value users that are searching for a specific query related to manufacturing.

Use Semrush or Outranking to help with keyword research for your manufacturing company’s website.

Method 1: Use Semrush

1. Open the Semrush keyword research tool and enter your chosen core offering area — in this case, “Product Manufacturing”

2. Select relevant filters like location, search volume, and keyword difficulty to narrow down your results

3. Analyze the results and exclude any irrelevant or outdated keywords and focus on the most important ones

4. Export the CSV file with the desired data

5. Repeat this process for each core offering area and sub-area, like “quality control” or “packaging”, to create separate CSV files. Combine all CSV files into one for easier management

Method 2: Use Outranking

1. Go to Outranking’s available keyword generator
2. Refine the results with  Outranking’s streamlined cluster analysis
3. Gather and analyze the keywords generated by Outranking
4. Export the CSV file with the desired data
5. Repeat this process for each core offering area and sub-area to create separate CSV files. Combine all CSV files into one for easier management

Once the keyword research process is complete, you’re on to keyword analysis. Here, you’ll have to analyze the search volume, competition, and relevance of each keyword to determine which ones to target in your content strategy. 

To create a successful SEO content strategy, you can use Outranking. It’s not just a keyword research tool — it helps in prioritizing tasks, identifying content gaps, and tracking results. It also saves you time and helps with the whole content creation process: from research, to writing, and even editing. 

To select primary keywords for each group of clusters, consider the search volume, competition in the manufacturing industry, and relevance of each keyword. The primary keyword should be the one that has the highest search volume, the lowest competition, and the most relevance to the target audience. This will help your manufacturer’s website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and attract more traffic.

If you don’t have an in-house SEO or marketing team, try hiring an expert. Alternatively, manufacturing companies that don’t have a sufficient budget to hire a full marketing expert team can try Outranking’s keyword clustering. Outranking can help manufacturers to cluster keywords and refine their SEO content strategy.

Step 4: Create and Prioritize Your Manufacturing Company’s Content Calendar

To prioritize keywords for creating and optimizing content for a manufacturer or brand manufacturer services website, you can follow these steps:

1. Create a list of primary keywords and groups related to your services
2. Open up each group and pick the primary keyword to add to your content planner
3. Make a list of topics you’ll be using to create your content calendar
4. Use your keywords to map out a plan and schedule for your content
5. Prioritize your keywords based on their importance and relevance to your services

Outranking also offers a priority-setting feature, with three levels of importance for keywords: High, Medium, or Low. This will help you focus on the most important keywords and ensure that your content is optimized for them.

Take a look at some keywords relevant to a manufacturer’s website, and why they’re classified in that order: 

Priority	Keywords Containing	Why
High	Custom Manufacturing, Product Design, Prototype Development	Can place your services among the competitors in the manufacturing industry
Medium	Contract Manufacturing, Assembly Services, Quality Control	Can place your services among the competitors in manufacturing industry
Low	How-to Guides, Educational Resources, Manufacturing Industry News	Can define you as a thought leader and support your important manufacturing services webpages for the flow of information — but they’re not as impactful as High priority keywords

Step 5: Develop a Content Production Process and Create Content Briefs

Creating detailed SOPs and content briefs is crucial for producing SEO-optimized content for a manufacturing website. Otherwise, the content risks becoming irrelevant to the target audience. 

Implementing a well-structured process for content production can help streamline the steps, so the content creation endeavor becomes more efficient and effective. Here are two expert tips to establish a thorough content creation and optimization process:

1. Create Solid Content Briefs

A content brief is a document that outlines the key information and requirements for a piece of content. This includes the target audience, the topic, the tone, the format, and the keywords to include. Creating solid SEO content briefs can help you ensure your content contains the necessary keywords related to your manufacturing business to rank well in search engines. It also helps you ensure your content doesn’t deviate from its target audience and purpose. 

2. Organize a Workflow for Tasks

A workflow is a process for completing tasks in a logical and efficient manner. If you have an optimal workflow for tasks, everyone involved in the content creation process will know what to do and when. This helps prevent delays and maintain high standards for your content. 

You can use Outranking’s content planner for your manufacturer’s website. It provides a comprehensive set of tools for managing the content creation process. For example, Outranking’s planner allows you to create and manage content briefs, set up a content calendar, and organize a workflow for tasks. 

Alternatively, you can hire an in-house SEO team to handle the organization and workflow. But the ultimate result should be the same — a well-oiled process that gets content out of the door in a timely manner, without compromising quality. 

Step 6: Create SEO Optimized Content for Product Pages and Blogs for Your Manufacturing Website

SEO-optimized content on all your service pages and blogs is key to getting good results from your manufacturer or brand manufacturer website. By optimizing content for search engines, the website can attract more organic traffic, improve search engine rankings, and ultimately increase conversions.

Outranking’s SEO content optimization and writing platform can help busy manufacturers to write and optimize pages to get high organic exposure. Outranking offers a wide range of features, including real-time SEO score optimization benchmarks, title optimization, content structure suggestions, media and linking insights, and other on-page SEO services. With these features, manufacturers don’t have to waste time and resources to improve their content. 

Step 7: Optimize Your Manufacturer Website’s Internal Linking

Optimizing existing pages with better internal linking can significantly improve a manufacturing website’s overall traffic. By analyzing the positions of existing pages, you can identify pages that rank between positions 4-14 and have some authority. You can then target these pages for optimization: simply “borrow” their authority and transfer some of it to pages that need to rank for more keywords. 

When you connect Outranking to Google Search Console, you identify which pages on your manufacturer’s website are within the 4-14 positions. Outranking will then give you suggestions on the best linking opportunities, and even the best anchor text to use for these links. 

Step 8: Acquire Backlinks and Industry references for Your Manufacturer’s Website

Getting local citations and backlinks for your manufacturing company is very important for local SEO benefits. In fact, local citations are the fifth most important local ranking signal according to Moz. 

Local citations help search engines verify the existence, legitimacy, and trustworthiness of your manufacturing business. If the same details appear across many relevant and trusted websites, then search engines like Google are likely to have increased confidence that the business exists, is operational, and that what is said about it is true.

There are two types of citations: structured and unstructured. Structured citations list the name, address, and phone number (NAP) of a business. They’re usually found in directory listings and social media profiles. Unstructured citations are contextual mentions of a business and are usually found in blog posts, forum posts, or as a result of press mentions.

To build citations, follow these four steps:

1. Get listed with the ‘big three’ data aggregators: Acxiom, Data Axle, and Localeze. These companies distribute business data to many other directories and websites.
2. Submit to other core sites: These are popular directories that are relevant to the business’s industry or location. Examples include Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Angie’s List.
3. Submit to popular industry and local sites: These are websites that are specific to the business’s industry or location. For example, a sporting goods manufacturer may want to get listed on a site like SportsDirectory.com.
4. Pursue unstructured citations: You can try to reach out to bloggers, influencers, or other journalists to mention your manufacturing company in their content. 

To help with building citations, here’s a table listing the ‘big three’ data aggregators and some popular directories and industry-specific sites:

Data Aggregator	Popular Directories	Industry-Specific Sites
Acxiom	Yelp, Yellow Pages, Citysearch	ThomasNet, Manta, IndustryNet
Data Axle	Bing, Yahoo, Superpages	MacRAE’s Blue Book, Kompass, GlobalSpec
Localeze	Foursquare, Facebook, TripAdvisor	Local.com, ChamberofCommerce.com, Alignable

Step 9: Optimize Page Speed and Website Experience For Your Manufacturing Business

Optimizing page speed and website experience is crucial for better rankings and user engagement. A slow website can lead to a higher bounce rate and decreased user satisfaction, which can negatively impact your search engine rankings.

To optimize your manufacturing website’s speed and user experience, focus on optimizing images, reducing the number of plugins, using a lighter WordPress theme, using NitroPack-like plugins, using a CDN, and moving to a better host. By taking these steps, you can significantly improve your manufacturing website’s speed and user experience, leading to better search engine rankings and increased user engagement. 

Step 10: Track Your Manufacturing Website’s Rankings Using Google Search Console

Connecting your manufacturer’s website to Google Search Console and tracking rankings is important as it helps to improve the website’s organic traffic. It helps you optimize your existing content, find new opportunities for fresh content, and identify underperforming rates. 

This table can help you interpret website ranking data so you can take the necessary action to improve your brand manufacturing site:

Goal	Ranking Data	Action
Optimize Internal Linking	Manufacturing web pages with keywords in the top 4-14 positions	Improve internal linking structure to improve Pagerank for your manufacturing business
Build Topical Authority	Manufacturing web pages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with user’s search intent	Create fresh content that aligns with user’s search intent for manufacturing businesses
Improve Underperforming Pages	Manufacturing web pages with no ranking keywords in the top 20 positions that don’t align with user’s search intent	Improve or redirect the underperforming Manufacturing web pages

Step 11: Optimize Your Manufacturing Website’s Local Google My Business Account

Google My Business is a free service that allows you to provide more information about your business when it appears in searches, such as business photos, videos, telephone numbers, business hours, and links to reservation services. 

Expert tips to improve your manufacturing company’s Google My Business listing:

1. Fill out all the necessary information, including business name, email address, phone number, website, hours of operation, and business category. For example, A manufacturer of custom metal parts should select the category “Metal Fabricator” and provide their business address and phone number.
2. Add high-quality photos of the manufacturing process, products, and team members to showcase the business’s capabilities and professionalism. For example, A manufacturer of custom metal parts can add photos of their CNC machines, welding process, and finished products.
3. Encourage customer reviews to improve the business’s credibility and ranking in search results. 
4. Update the profile with new products, services, or promotions to keep customers engaged and informed. 

Use keywords in the business description to improve search engine optimization and attract potential customers. For example: include keywords such as “precision machining” or “custom metal parts” in the business description.

How to Evaluate an Agency to Help with SEO for Your Manufacturer or Brand Manufacturer

When trying to select an agency to help with your SEO efforts, you need to keep three key things in mind.

1. Expertise, Reviews, and Results 

Expertise, review, and results can be your guiding light. Without them, you won’t know whether the agency you choose is truly qualified to help you. Here’s how they can help:

1. Expertise: Look for an agency that has experience working with a similar company to yours. Are you a skincare product manufacturer? Try to find an agency with expertise in that specific field. This will ensure the agency you go for has enough knowledge about the ins and outs of your specific industry

2. Reviews: Always look at the reviews for any agency you want to choose. Were its previous customers happy with the results or were they dissatisfied? If reviews aren’t publicly available, you can approach the agency itself to provide you with case studies of how they worked with other customers.

3. Results: A good agency should be able to provide you with concrete data on how they actually helped their customers. Ask for actual data about increased traffic, improved keyword rankings, and boosted leads and conversions for other manufacturing websites. Buzzwords and inspirational conversations aren’t enough — you need results. 

2. SEO Services Offered for Manufacturers

When evaluating an agency to help with SEO for your manufacturing website, consider the following: 

1. Creativity and Innovation: A good SEO agency should be highly creative and innovative. Ask prospective agencies what unique strategies they’ve implemented to help their clients stand out from the competition. Being creative is hard and expensive, but it’s worth it for the results.

2. Real-World Experience: Look for an agency with at least 5-10 years of real-world experience in SEO, preferably working with websites in your niche. Experience matters in digital marketing, especially SEO. An agency with hands-on experience in your niche will have a better understanding of the competitive landscape and be more creative in its approach.

Don’t be swayed by salesmen promising the world — ask to speak directly with the SEO manager or specialist who will be working on your account. With the right agency, you can improve your website’s visibility and attract more potential customers.

3. Contract Duration and Flexibility

Look for an agency that offers flexible contract durations that align with your business goals. A good agency should be able to work with you on a month-to-month basis, allowing you to adjust your SEO strategy as needed. Avoid agencies that require long-term contracts that lock you in for extended periods of time.

Need an SEO Strategist to Set up the Plan and Answer All Your Pressing Questions?

If you’re a manufacturer or brand manufacturer, it’s important to have a solid SEO plan in place to ensure that your website appears at the top of search engine results pages. However, SEO can be a complex and time-consuming process that requires specialized skills to execute effectively. That’s why it’s a good idea to hire an SEO consultant to help you with strategy, planning, and execution.

At Outranking, our SEO consultant and strategist can help you with every aspect of your SEO plan. We’ll also ensure your SEO plan is comprehensive, effective, and tailored to your specific needs. We’ll stay up-to-date on the latest industry trends so your brand manufacturer website can generate good results for years to come. 
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you with your SEO strategy, planning, and execution.