Industrial SEO: Transform Technical Documents into Sales Drivers
Industrial SEO & Technical Documents as Marketing Assets
Are your technical documents collecting dust while your competition overruns your market niche?
Many new, small manufacturing business owners with ecommerce stores find themselves in this exact scenario. And, while many of them invest time, effort, and cash in developing mandatory or useful technical documentation, few use it as prime marketing collateral. Few go the extra mile to include industrial SEO (search engine optimized) content in their technical documents.
Industrial SEO in Technical Documentation Drives Revenue
It doesn’t matter whether your business manufactures precision tools, hand carts, tool-pack-out bags, five-gallon buckets, or shop rags. If your product has any sort of warranty, guarantee, user manual, warning label, safety data sheet, or quick-start guide, it belongs in your online marketing and sales funnel.
Effective industrial SEO includes strategically written, technical documents pull in search engine traffic and drive sales. Just like your blog posts, product listings, and landing pages, technical documents developed by a professional SEO expert sell merchandise and keep customers coming back for more.
Industrial SEO Technical Documents in a Sales Funnel
A few years ago, I worked with an entrepreneurial IT equipment manufacturer. The team found themselves up against a well-established competitor that had dominated the market for decades. And it wasn’t going anywhere soon.
And, the lead engineer of this new company had engineered a server room solution superior to any other device on the market. It was sturdier, safer, more powerful, and easier to operate than the market leader’s products and those of their smaller competitors.
But, with brand-new online marketing assets and a target audience already accustomed to the competitor, they decided to invest in an SEO content audit for their ecommerce website and blog. And, with the lead engineer at the helm, the team focused on developing not only its blog, web page, and landing page content. It also opted to invest heavily in its user manuals, product spec sheets, and start-up guides as cornerstone SEO marketing collateral.
And, less than a decade later, the ecommerce equipment manufacturer has gained the market-dominating position in the southwestern US. In addition, its technical documents continue to nurture existing customers for repeat sales and even pull in search engine traffic to the website. And, it has expanded its reach throughout the US, and into Canada, Europe, and Pakistan.
Writing Industrial SEO into Tech Documents
Think about your technical documents:
- How are you using your users manuals now?
- Are they packed into shipping boxes or retail packaging?
- Does your website link to all of them?
- Do your paper documents include URLs and QR codes?
- Are they linked to each other or to other marketing collateral (website pages, blog posts, white papers, etc.) on your ecommerce website?
- Are they up-to-date?
- Were they included in your last content SEO audit?
- Have you done a content SEO audit?
Your expertise and quality manufactured goods deserve visibility, and you, your business, your staff, and your family deserves income generated from the sale of your company’s products. Getting your technical documentation search engine optimized and online, or printed with links and QR codes, will contribute to the traffic and sales. That revenue will help your business grow and your family thrive.
Start with an Industrial SEO Content Audit
To effectively convert technical documents into SEO-powered marketing assets, your team needs to plan. And an industrial SEO content audit helps small manufacturers compete effectively in the digital marketplace.
In-House or Third-Party Industrial SEO Content Audit?
You can definitely learn all of the skills to do an audit internally. And, you can find plenty of free and paid resources to help your team do that. If you’re interested in learning what the Industrial SEO content audit process involves, you can learn more by reading, “Ecommerce SEO Audit for Micro-Manufacturing,” on the Tin Traces blog.
But, consider hiring an external industrial SEO content auditor. An external auditor will see your ecommerce store with fresh eyes. In addition, the external auditor, unfamiliar with the dynamics of your business that customers never see, will see your offerings much like a customer. That customer-viewpoint gives your auditor a perspective unique from that of your staff. And while you likely have a highly trained, professional, and proactive staff, they also design, fabricate, manufacture, administrate, sell, market, keep books, maintain, and help you run your business. If you occupy them in executing a meticulously detailed industrial SEO content audit, you’ll see reduced productivity in one of those business processes. An SEO expert will conduct the SEO content audit quickly, efficiently, and with the benefits of years of experience backing the work.
Working Technical Documents into the Industrial SEO Strategy
Technical documents by nature, contain valuable keywords that naturally attract your target audience. Using the information from an industrial SEO content audit, such as that from AhRefs, shown to the left, your marketing staff can transform these assets into traffic drivers.
The audit will reveal data on high-volume, low competition keywords and keyword phrases. Including these in your technical documentation can often make them valuable marketing assets to bring in traffic on keyword combinations that do not work well in less technical blog content. You can use the audit-recommended keywords to optimize the text, images, audio recordings, or videos for your products. A skilled SEO copywriter can create natural-sounding SEO text for your technical documents as well as non-technical documentation.
Executed properly, they can become some of your ecommerce website’s most valuable sales funnel components. And, by providing product owners with valuable technical information, you’re online documents will help nurture repeat sales and brand loyalty.
User Manual Optimization with Industrial SEO
Once your customers purchase your product, more than anything else, they’ll refer to quick-start guides and user manuals. And, placing them online, in mobile-first format means that customers already using your products will return to your website. They will see your content, and it will contribute to their user experience.
Convert traditional product manuals into searchable and search engine optimized online resources. Include targeted keywords while maintaining technical accuracy and user value, and make sure that you use them effectively to fill the industrial SEO keyword gaps identified by your ecommerce SEO audit.
Specification Sheet Enhancement with Industrial SEO
While your spec sheets may seem like a far stretch as marketing collateral, your most dedicated existing customers and warmest leads will look for them online. Make sure that you structure your spec sheets with SEO-friendly headers and descriptions. And, to make sure that your customers and potential customers can reference them from any location, ensure that you use responsive format for use on cell phones and tablets, as well as laptops and desktops. If your copywriter knows how to write easy-to-use, search engine optimized, and responsive spec sheets, they will capture both technical searches and general product inquiries.
Industrial SEO for Digital Presentation Strategies
General purpose search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Baidu, and Amazon’s A9, may have difficult translating consumer lay language queries into technical content matches. This makes industrial SEO especially critical for pulling in search engine traffic. Putting the documents in formats that search engines can easily index and understand is also critical.
For best results, use HTML, optimized PDFs, and image alt text in your technical documentation. And, videos with transcripts and schema markup contribute significantly to your content’s performance on search engines. Avoid Flash, image-only content, and password-protected pages. Your technical SEO expert should also verify the crawl-ability and mobile-friendliness of your ecommerce site.
Schema Implementation of Your Industrial SEO Ecommerce Strategy
The schema markup on your e-commerce site tells search engines what your technical documentation is about. It contextually connects it to your products. By helping the search engine understand, this structured data improves your product’s visibility in SERPs. It also boosts your overall site ranking as a richer and more informative user experience.
You want your SEO expert to add structured data markup to help search engines understand your technical content. It will also help SERPs display rich snippets in search results. Schema markup on your e-commerce site tells search engines what your technical documentation is about, connecting it contextually to your products. This structured data enhances search engine understanding, improves product visibility in SERPs, and boosts overall site ranking by creating a richer, more informative user experience.
Industrial SEO and Image Optimization
Be sure to optimize technical diagrams and product photos. Your SEO implementation expert should write descriptive filenames and alt text with your target keywords. Ecommerce content managers who need to get ecommerce sites up and running and products listed often have too much on their plate to check the details on images and other metadata. That’s where bringing in that dedicated industrial SEO content auditor really helps your team stay on top of sales as your new content increases website traffic and sales.
Transform your technical expertise into a competitive advantage. Strategic industrial SEO implementation helps small manufacturers compete effectively against larger competitors in the digital marketplace.
Ready to Maximize your Technical Documentation’s Potential with Industrial SEO?
Learn more about optimizing your content by reading “Boosting E-commerce Sales with SEO-Optimized Technical Documents for Industrial Tools” and discover how to turn your expertise into a powerful marketing asset. Also feel free to contact me here, on TechWriteable.com, or by email for any questions you might have.
