Sector
SEO for B2B and manufacturing: the specification search, months before the order
A business buyer's research starts with a specification, not a supplier: a material grade, a standard, a tolerance, a capacity, a process. Those searches are made by an engineer or a buyer months before a purchase order, and the sites that answer them are on the shortlist before the shortlist exists. Most manufacturer websites have a capabilities page that lists everything and ranks for nothing. SEO for a B2B firm is the work of owning the specification searches and measuring the steps that precede a long sale, on the Growth tier from £599 a month or Multi-area for several product lines, with one firm per product category.
The buyer's path
Four searches between a problem and a purchase order
- 1
The specification search
A grade, a standard, a process, a capacity. Made by the engineer, early, with no supplier in mind. Won by a page that explains the specification and shows you make to it, with the datasheet on the page as text.
- 2
The comparison search
Material A against material B, process X against process Y, for their application. Won by a plain comparison page with a point of view, which almost no manufacturer publishes because it feels like giving advice away.
- 3
The supplier search
"[product] manufacturer UK", "[process] supplier", sometimes with a region. Won by a capability page that names the equipment, the capacities, the certifications and the lead times, rather than adjectives.
- 4
The name search
Your company name, from the shortlist. Won by a site that loads, a profile with real photographs of the works, and reviews or case studies. This is where a slow site loses a deal it had already won.
What a capability page needs
The checklist for a page that ranks for a process or a product line
- The process or product named the way the engineer searches it, in the title and the first sentence
- Capacities, tolerances, materials and sizes as text on the page, not only in a PDF
- The standards and certifications you hold, with the numbers
- Equipment named, with photographs of it in your works
- Typical lead times and minimum quantities, because those decide whether the enquiry is worth making
- The datasheet, downloadable and tracked, with its contents also on the page
- A quote or sample request that asks for the specification, not just a name and an email
- Links to the comparison pages and the case studies for that process
Measuring a long sale
The numbers that move in month three when the order comes in month nine
A six-month sales cycle does not mean SEO cannot be judged for six months. The steps before the sale are countable from the first month: impressions for the specification searches, datasheet downloads, sample and quote requests, calls from the site. Each is set up as a goal in Analytics in week one and reported by page and by query.
Revenue attribution arrives later and is never perfect, because the engineer who downloaded the datasheet in March is not the buyer who signed in September. The leading indicators are exact, and they are the honest way to run a B2B account: if the specification pages are not gaining impressions by month four, the pages are wrong, and no order in month nine will fix that.
Datasheets as content
The most valuable pages on a manufacturer's site are usually PDFs Google cannot rank
Most manufacturers already have the content the specification searches want. It is in datasheets, drawings and technical PDFs that Google indexes poorly, that load slowly on a phone, and that carry no title, no structured data and no link to a quote form.
The work is to put each datasheet's contents on a page: the table as an HTML table, the drawing as an image with alt text, the standards as text, and the PDF kept as a download for the engineer who wants it. One product line at a time, in the order the query data suggests, which on the Multi-area tier is two pages a month.
Related
For a B2B firm
Questions B2B firms ask
Our buyers do not search Google. They come through trade shows and reps.
The buyer's engineer does search, usually for a specification, a standard or a material, months before a rep is involved. Search Console shows those queries on almost every manufacturer's site we audit, unranked. The work is to be on the page they land on at that stage, so that when the shortlist is drawn you are already on it.
How do you measure SEO with a six-month sales cycle?
By the steps before the sale: datasheet downloads, quote requests, sample requests, calls from the site, and impressions for the specification searches. Each is tracked as a goal in Analytics from month one, and the report shows them by query and by page. Revenue attribution comes later and is imperfect; the leading indicators are not.
We sell through distributors. Should we rank at all?
Yes, for the specification and the brand searches, with the distributor as the buying route on the page. If the engineer finds the distributor's thin listing instead of your datasheet, the specification decision is made without you. Ranking the manufacturer page and pointing to the distributor is the usual answer.
Is one business per sector the rule for B2B?
On the Local tier the rule is one business per town and sector, confirmed personally in the reply. For a national B2B firm the conflict we check is product category: we will not take two firms competing for the same specification searches.
Can you write technical content?
We write from a call with your engineer and from your existing datasheets and drawings, and the engineer checks every page before it goes live. What we bring is the structure Google needs and the plain first paragraph a buyer's junior reads; what you bring is the knowledge. Neither works without the other.
See which specification searches you already appear for
Send the site. The audit reads your query data for the specification and process searches you sit at positions 5 to 20 for, the cheapest gains on a B2B site, and the quote.