Keywords, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Site navigation, Web Development
What can AODD pump manufacturers do to help end users find the best pump for a challenging application?
The answer is simple; optimize product pages with the features, benefits, and specifications that end users need – let’s explore this further.
Direct Industry lists over 55 manufacturers. Each of these manufacturers’ claim unique benefits in their directory listings, but does this help end users find the best pump for their application? The truth is, not really. Directories are middlemen in the search process. Wouldn’t it be more efficient and cost effective to eliminate the middlemen and drive end users to a page on your site that is the perfect product for their application? By doing so, you will help save the end user time by quickly giving them what they need. You are probably asking, sounds great, but how do I make this happen? Read on.
Optimize for the search savvy
Search engine technologies have reached the point of providing excellent matches for user search terms. For search engines to rank your products well, they must clearly understand what your products have to offer. Web pages must concisely communicate product specifications, features, and benefits, and they must be easily navigable – no crazy, illogical URL structures.
Like search engines, end users have become more search savvy; they now typically use long tail searches (keyword phrases) to help narrow down their search instead of a single keyword search. Long tail searches that contain application challenges or required product features help produce the ideal pump in a search result. It’s much like dating sites where couples seek the perfect partner. The best match is out there, but if your website doesn’t illustrate user solutions in the way people search, results fall short.
It sounds so simple, and you are probably thinking, “I do a good job with that so why are my company and products not ranking high on a search results page?” But if your product navigation is complicated and your product pages don’t clearly communicate specifications, features, and benefits, search engines will not understand your site structure and products, and you won’t be able to outrank the competition.
Let’s see what we are talking about
Let’s demonstrate how it works. Try entering the following into a search bar or click on the following link, AODD, ½” ports, 20 psi, 5 GPM, Polypropylene, PTFE, stall proof, efficient, food grade. Notice that the search engine struggles to find the perfect match, but offers some good results. What got these pages top ranking? What can you do to outrank the competition and make the end user happy by providing them with an ideal match? Easy, make product pages relevant to the phrases people search for and simplify site structure, especially if you have many product categories. Do a thorough job of describing the value your products offer so search engines can make accurate matches and present the searcher with ideal results.
How does your site stack up?
Search engines are doing their part, now if you do your part as an AODD manufacturer, everyone wins (you, customer and search engine). Who is going to be the first manufacturer to take the lead by communicating properly with search engines, win new business and give customers a delightful search experience?
As always, if you need help navigating search optimization best practices, give us a call, 360.834.2780.
Keywords, Search Engine Marketing, SEO, Site navigation, Strategy, User Testing
What is website success?
Website success means your site achieved its goals. For the purpose of this article, we’d like to focus on success that is measured by qualified lead generation – a goal 99% of our clients use – sounds simple right? Well it can be, but 3 things need to happen first:
- You have implemented Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices. Meaning:
- Your site is found and indexed by search engines.
- Search engines rank your web pages on page 1 of a search results page.
- Your search snippets (page description) entice searchers to click through to your site.
- Your site provides searchers with product and service information relevant to their search inquiry.
- You’ve user tested your website. Usability testing means your site meets the navigation and information needs of your prospects and customers.
- You analyze website and competitor data on a consistent basis allowing you to make data-driven decisions about the site to ensure it meets set goals.
Website success: What it does for your business.
- It generates a generous ROI.
- It helps you better understand your target audience. Search engines provide gobs of very focused usage data, but it also gives your insight into:
- Human behavior as it applies to your business – this is important. What search patterns do site visitors use? What keywords do they use when looking for your products and services? How do they navigate your site? How long do they spend on the site? What are your most visited pages? Where did the visitors come from? And so much more.
- Competitor data that reveals their success in ranking for specific keywords, which ad campaigns they run and how successful they are and other internet tactics they deploy.
- It pulls in leads that can be highly filtered to minimize and simplify response priorities.
- It establishes company creditability and authority.
- It warms up the customer experience by humanizing your website.
- It provides you with market trends applicable to your products/services.
- It builds and maintains brand recognition. And when accompanied by various marketing tactics and practices, will propel revenue.
What’s the process for developing a successful website?
- Develop clear marketing goals – goals that are aligned with overall business goals. Ensure your website developer, graphics specialist, and internet marketing firm understand the goals and carry out their respective jobs with the intention of meeting those goals.
- Understand customer expectations and develop your site based on their feedback. Searches have two sides; input and output. Search engines are becoming better at monitoring and understanding user behavior, and they are becoming very sophisticated at matching website content to searcher intent.
- Understanding the keywords and phrases that drive qualified searchers to your site and ensuring all elements of your site (backend and frontend) are optimized and in synch. A search engine’s ability to match a searcher’s inquiry with relevant results depends on how well they understand a website’s content – this is where a lot of websites fail. If search engines can’t determine how to navigate your site and understand the information well enough to index and rank your site, prospects won’t find your site. How sad, since getting it right is a win for all players and the cost is low.
Get started.
So you may be saying, ‘this is all good for the big guys, but small distributors don’t have that kind of money,” which is a big fallacy. Optimizing your website, creating the ultimate user experience and analyzing the data does not require deep pockets.
Internet promotion, when focused on Company goals, provides you with the biggest bang for your buck. If you are still spending on exhibitions, print ads and paid directories, maybe rethink those activities by analyzing just how much business you acquire from each. You might have to reallocate marketing dollars, but you won’t be disappointed – the internet allows you to speak directly to your prospects and customers without excessive spending – the internet truly does level the playing field.
Analytics, Keywords, SEO
Keyword Optimization
A couple of weeks ago we talked about the importance of user testing. User testing allows you to see your site through the eyes of the people that matter the most, site visitors. But if you aren’t driving traffic to your site, website improvements won’t matter. This is why keyword research and how you use keywords is so important to the searchability of your site.
Keywords play two different roles. First, they allow you to optimize your site with content relevant to the user and second, to the search engines. For the user, that is content about your products and services optimized with words that the user would enter into a search engine to find a company like yours. Search engines use elaborate programming algorithms to find and display web pages with content that is relevant to the searchers search terms. So if your site is not optimized for the best keywords (search terms) for your business, the search engine will not find and place your relevant web pages well on a search results page.
When we are first approached, the conversation usually goes something like this. “We have hundreds of keywords and keyword phrases listed within our site, but we don’t rank well for any of those words and phrases, except when our company or product name is used.” What gives? Can you help us?
We start any optimization project by asking the following four questions to gain an understanding of why they were not ranking well.
First, are they using the right keywords? And are they using words that extend beyond just branded keywords (words with the company or product name in them), which is a common trap industrial companies fall into — focusing just on branded keywords. The problem with branded keywords is that unless the searcher is already a customer or is someone who knows about your products, they won’t perform a search using your branded keywords. You need to focus on words and phrases that searchers use. The most important search engine optimization activity is conducting keyword research. You must drill down deep to determine if searches for popular words apply to your specific market and target audience. It is also valuable to know just how difficult it is to rank high for those keywords, and what supporting words and phrases can be used to to drive even more qualified leads to your site.
Second, is the site optimized for keywords (search) on both the front end and backend. Each web page should have a primary keyword focus (on one main idea, product, or service). Page content (front end) should use that primary keyword, along with supporting keywords (we call these secondary and tertiary keywords). And, metadata (backend) should also incorporate keywords.
Third, are they providing content that addresses customer issues and solves their problems? Most industrial companies claim to be solution providers, but their content does not always support this claim. A lot of websites are feature heavy, sometimes bypassing benefits altogether. When creating content, ask yourself, “why would the customer care?” If you can answer that question, your content will be deeper and more relevant, which is a big search engine ranking factor. Focusing content on customer needs and issues also helps you produce new and fresh content, another search engine ranking factor.
Fourth, do you analyze your site’s search and visitor data on a monthly basis?
After doing the appropriate research, we make sure we understand the overall goal of the website. For industrial companies, this is almost always lead or sales generation. Armed with this information, we then can develop a project plan to optimize the site.
Typically, the project plan includes slightly reworking the front end, even adding a few new web pages to ensure each page is focused on one topic and then keyword optimizing that content. And, updating backend metadata by giving each web page unique and relevant keyword optimized page titles, descriptions, H tags, and Alt tags.
Search engine optimization is a long term strategy. It can take months to improve your search engine results page rankings, but with a little due diligence and consistently monitoring the site’s performance, you will begin to see change and start gaining a competitive advantage.
Analytics, Keywords, SEO, Strategy
10 questions you should be able to answer about your website.
If you are like us, you are probably hounded by Internet marketers like us (not to give all of us marketers a bad name) telling you that that your website is not living up to it’s potential. What do they know that you don’t? And how do they know that it’s not meeting your expectations if they don’t even know your website goals?
Most industrial manufacturers’ and distributors’ websites are informational sites designed to inform and educate target audiences, and website goals tend to lean towards lead generation. Does your site meet the needs of customer expectations for information and are you driving them to conversion? Here are 10 questions you should ask to determine if your site is living up to its potential.
- Are our website goals in sync with our overall business goals?
- Are our goals measurable?
- Do we have tools in place to track our goals?
- Do we understand how to interpret and analyze the data to drive improvements?
- Is our website easy to navigate?
- Do we have the content site visitors want and expect to make informed decisions or that drives them to take our desired action (fill out a lead form or call us)?
- Is our site visually appealing and does site imagery support content and messaging?
- Does the site meet structural requirements to ensure optimal performance?
- Is our site properly optimized to be found and indexed by search engines?
- Do we know the search terms people use to research our products and services?
How did you do? If not so good, the good news is that it doesn’t take a lot of money or time to get your site living up to its full potential.
