Your website is the digital face of your business, your digital business card. It needs to be welcoming, educational and helpful to your users.
The manufacturing industry is unique in that it requires extra education for your audience and the translation of a complex process into something easily digestible. Your website is arguably even more important because you need to provide your audience with all of the information they need to understand your company along with resources that are beneficial to them.
There are so many parts to creating a successful website — from optimizing for visibility to creating a great user experience. The following ideas will help you elevate your website to get more traffic, and ultimately, more results.
1. Make your blog a conversion point
When marketers think of conversion points on a website, the blog isn’t often the first place we think to optimize. Your blog can be a great place to drive traffic and goal completions.
Not all of your posts will result in conversions depending on the goal of your post, but depending on your strategy, optimizing your posts with contact us forms and other lead-generation tactics can go a long way to getting you more site traffic and email contacts. Whether you’re trying to boost downloads, collect more emails, earn more “contact us” form fills or make a sale, optimizing your blog as a conversion point is a great way to leverage traffic on your site.
[Read More: Turn Your Blog Post into a Conversion Machine]
Bottom line, it’s important to remember that your landing pages aren’t the only place where you can drive goal completions.
2. Implement video on your landing pages
Videos are awesome tactics for showing off what your company does. For videos to resonate with your audience, they used to have to be super produced and polished. But you can take a breath because that’s no longer the standard. Short-form video and videos that are real, natural and authentic are what consumers want to see most.
This is an animated video our team created for our manufacturing client, Lakeview Industries.
When you’re thinking about a strategy for putting video on your landing pages, make sure they’re short and simple so that if someone is on your landing page they can quickly get the idea — after all, attention spans are continuing to decrease.
[Read More: 7 Tips for Creating an Effective Marketing Video]
You can use video to explain your product offerings, show examples of your work or client testimonials, company culture and recruiting — the possibilities truly are endless. Just make sure to keep the end user top of mind when creating your video.
3. Emphasize client stories: Let your customers do the talking
Your clients are some of your biggest advocates. Create content that allows your client examples to shine on your website — these are your proof points of a great product/service. Think ahead when you start working with a client and consider if they’d potentially make for a good case study. Then work with them to emphasize their opinions/thoughts on your company.
Make sure that when you implement case studies you link the case studies to relevant pages of your website, like industry pages and service pages. You can also link them in blog posts, send them in email campaigns and post them on social to draw traffic back to your website.
4. Contribute articles to expert sites: Position yourself as a thought leader
If you haven’t started seeking out opportunities to contribute articles to relevant expert sites, it might be a great opportunity for you to expand your reach, increase your website authority through links and show off your knowledge as an industry thought leader.
How can you identify expert sites that are worth partnering with? One easy way is to search for keywords or phrases that you’re trying to rank for on your own site — chances are you’ll have an overlap in site content, giving you something to talk about. Then you should figure out if the blog accepts guest posts — check around on their website for a guest post submission form. If you don’t find any indication that they accept guest posts, it might be unlikely that you’ll find a partnership with them, but you can always reach out through the contact form to pitch the idea.
One tip I recommend is offering to trade a post on your own site for a post on theirs, creating a mutually beneficial relationship. You should also make sure you personalize your guest blog pitch and introduce yourself in the pitch — you want to sound like a human being and not like a bot. And don’t forget to adhere to the blog’s post guidelines.
Download our 2023 State of Digital Marketing for the Manufacturing Industry research report here!
5. Create a backlink strategy
Related to guest blogging, you’ll want to make sure you have a backlink strategy in place. Guest blogging is a great way to start this, but you can also do some work with influencer outreach and link exchanges with other subject matter experts in your industry.
Always make sure you’re creating shareable, valuable content that’s relevant to your audience and be sure to listen to brand mentions to leverage any links. Neil Patel’s blog has a great article on creating a scalable backlink strategy — check it out for more information.
6. Perform a technical SEO audit
Performing a technical SEO audit is a fairly easy task that can present you with easy-to-achieve results that will improve your visibility in search and overall user experience.
Common issues you might find in an SEO audit include title tags, meta descriptions, headers, URL structure and no-index. Each of these areas can take away from your visibility and prevent your site pages from ranking in Google.
We recently added a great tool to our site that conducts a free SEO audit on your website and gives you a detailed report to show you what’s working and what’s not.
[Read More: Perform an SEO Website Audit with Brandpoint’s New Tool]
7. Audit your tech stack
Once you’ve audited your website, you might want to consider auditing your tech stack. This means evaluating the tools and software you’re currently using to run your website. The best tech stacks include a CMS, analytics, a search console, an SEO platform and a CRM.
Content Management Software (CMS)
Let’s start with your CMS. You’ll want to make sure you’re utilizing a modern solution that’s working for you. It should have the features you need to grow your digital performance. You also need to keep the platform updated to prevent security vulnerabilities.
Analytics
You’ll need to have an analytics plug-in on your site, and the easiest way to do that is with Google Analytics. It’s most valuable when you use it to track conversions, goals and events — it can tell you so much about your site performance and how your users are using your site.
Search Console
Using Google Search Console is important for showing you how your site performs in search. It provides you with keyword visibility along with your site speed and other technical tools that give you a better understanding of how well your website is functioning. The more you understand your site, the easier it will be for you to optimize it.
Search Engine Optimization
If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to implement an SEO platform to obtain ranking changes over time as well as ongoing optimization recommendations. Then you can measure the impact of your changes and understand what actions to take with SEO. You can also look for keywords that rank off the first page, as these are easy opportunities to optimize.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
CRMs are so important to your business, especially as your company starts to grow. Your primary requirement of a CRM is that it connects to your website and imports website leads directly from the site to your CRM. You’ll want to avoid custom-built CRMs that require continuous work and updating, and look for CRMs that can integrate other marketing platforms to make your life easier.
There are other awesome tools you can add to your tech stack too. Make sure you’re set up for success with these five tools and then expand your tech stack with things like a social media management platform and a marketing automation platform.
8. Optimize your user experience
When you’re building out your website, think about your user experience. User experience can directly affect your search ranking, move users down the sales funnel and impact your bottom line.
Your website needs to be useful, accessible, usable, desirable, findable and credible in order to drive a successful user experience. The best way to make sure your site has great UX is by putting yourself in your audience’s shoes when thinking through your site map and site content. Make sure that your site is for your consumer.
A good way to know if your content is resonating with your audience is by measuring your content’s engagement. You can do this both on your social channels and on your website to indicate if you’re talking about the topics that your audience cares about.
9. Be intentional with your CTAs
In order to drive leads on your site, you need to have CTAs that offer options for every level of the sales funnel. For example, if the only CTAs on your site are “Contact Us” or “Request a Quote,” you’re missing opportunities to connect with leads at the top of your sales funnel. By including CTAs for subscribing to your blog or newsletter along with links to other relevant site content to keep them on your site for longer, you’re working the lead and creating a stronger relationship.
You should also be cognizant of this while creating content. Make sure you have a variety of content on your website that appeals to every level of the funnel. Think about the buyer’s journey and what someone is looking for when they’re first coming to your website and what content will keep them coming back.
It’s time to upgrade your manufacturing website!
Your website is your strongest marketing tool, so making sure that it’s fully optimized for search engine results, great user experience and conversions is important when connecting with your target audience.
If you’re looking for a partner in website development or SEO strategy and implementation, reach out today. Our digital marketing team will act as an extension of your marketing department and help you reach your unique goals.
