Innovating Production Shouldn’t Be Your Only Focus
As a CNC machining company leader, the challenges that you face on a daily basis are significant. Worker shortages persist, increasing the pressure to grow in automation and operational efficiency. Additionally, increased demand from new and existing customers means you’re busier than ever trying to keep up, which can quickly put quality at risk. And the need to optimize the supply chain is a consistent focus as the business looks to reduce costs, increase transparency and sustainability, and more.
Of course, you’re not the only CNC machining company navigating these roadblocks to success. Your competitors are emphasizing and innovating in automation. They’re pursuing new customers and doing all that they can to deliver unmatched, consistent quality. And they’re making headway in sustainability initiatives and supply chain resiliency.
What Does This Have to Do with Sales and Marketing Strategy?
Everything! In this industry, organizations are always pushing themselves further and refining their processes — but if you’re not visible to prospects in the way that most people are looking for solutions, that progress isn’t going to help you achieve your growth goals.
You need new customers to experience your innovations and solutions. And you need to win them where they’re looking: online. Relationships and referrals are important, but around 80% of B2B buyers are seeking solutions providers in ways that match consumer buying habits. Thus, it’s essential to have strong CNC machining SEO strategies in place to keep your business visible and competitive in search engines and win those prospects to your site, where you can share why you’re the CNC machining provider of choice.
Here, we’ll quickly explore a few CNC machining SEO strategies that are proven to help you increase your rankings in search engines and position your business where the people that need you will find you.
Key CNC Machining SEO Strategies to Put to Work Right Away
Of course, these assume that you’ve already analyzed and reoptimized your core website first. It’s important to have a strong foundation to build upon, otherwise many of the below opportunities won’t have the level of performance needed for success.
- Content Marketing Using Long Tail Keywords — Optimizing your site will ensure it’s focused around your core service offerings and capabilities, but there are far more opportunities around specific industries, materials, processes, equipment, part types, and more. People are actively searching for these every day, so creating educational content that helps them learn (while positioning you as the expert) and that uses long tail keywords (e.g. “how are aerospace parts machined today”) that match how people seek that content will add to your rankings.
- Local SEO for Your Business — One of the best opportunities you have is to own the search in your local area. “Near me” searches, city-specific searches, and other related geographic-based searches are significant because people want to work with partners that are nearby, or in specific locations for strategic reasons. Tailoring parts of your site for local search will go a long way in helping you plant a flag in your region and win those prospects.
- Area-Specific Search Targeting — Related to owning searches in your local area, you’ll also want to target searches in the regions or communities that are important to you. Perhaps a target company has multiple locations in a specific region, or there’s a corridor of a few states where certain types of customers are centralized. Researching these and creating optimized assets that use strong keywords will help you plant a similar flag in those areas and win those searchers to your site.
- Video Creation — Video is playing a greater role in SEO (and has been for some time). Search engines are smart enough to consider video content and their supporting data in SEO results. That, and people prefer video — so creating these assets for key services helps to engage visitors and bring them in through multiple streams. Along the way, search engines recognize the value of those assets, which means more traffic and rankings for your business.
These strategies work, and we can prove it. Explore our metal manufacturing case studies here.
This is Just the Start of a Successful CNC Machining Strategy
There’s much more to consider, from technical SEO to off-site strategies such as backlinking. At Athena, helping manufacturers in CNC machining, fabrication, sheet metal, and more is what we do best. We understand the complexities of these markets and what it takes to successfully win new business. Using the strategies outlined here along with a proven, structured front-end sales solution, we’re able to completely streamline and grow the new business development function of our clients — all while compressing sales cycles, enhancing sales rep productivity and accountability, and strengthening your brand.