A digital presence is critical for manufacturers to reach potential customers. Most understand the importance of having a website to showcase their services and capabilities, and some are aware that search engine optimization (SEO) is required to drive people to their websites. But if asked what SEO entails, for many, things get a bit fuzzy. Improving your online visibility requires both on-site and off-site SEO.
On-site SEO refers to the work done on your own website to help search engines and buyers understand your pages. This includes page structure, technical performance, keywords, internal links, content quality, schema markup, and user experience. Off-site SEO refers to work done outside your website to build credibility, visibility, and referral traffic. This includes backlinks, business profiles, industry directories, trade association mentions, guest content, reviews, and social sharing.
For manufacturers, both are needed. On-site SEO helps the right buyer understand what you make and whether you are a fit. Off-site SEO helps search engines and buyers see that your company is active, credible, and connected to the markets you serve.
| SEO Factor | On-Site SEO | Off-Site SEO |
|---|---|---|
| Basic Meaning | Work done on your own website | Work done outside your website |
| Main Purpose | Helps search engines and buyers understand, crawl, and use your website | Builds credibility, visibility, and referral traffic from outside sources |
| Examples | Page titles, headers, URLs, internal links, schema markup, page speed, mobile usability, service pages, and blog content | Backlinks, Google Business Profile, directories, reviews, guest articles, trade association links, and social sharing |
| Level of Control | Mostly controlled by your company | Partly controlled by your company, but dependent on third-party sites and platforms |
| Best Manufacturing Use | Explains capabilities, materials, industries served, applications, tolerances, equipment, and value | Supports credibility through industry mentions, supplier directories, customer reviews, partner links, and association listings |
| Impact on Lead Quality | Helps buyers self-qualify before contacting sales | Helps more relevant buyers discover and trust the company |
| Best First Step for Implementing | Fix core service, industry, and capability pages to make relevant to the right type of prospect | Build legitimate links and citations from relevant sources |
| Common mistake | Writing generic content that attracts poor-fit traffic | Chasing links from low-quality or unrelated sites |
Why SEO Is Important
SEO is important for increasing visibility and driving organic traffic to your website. Optimizing your online presence increases the probability that your company and services appear organically—as opposed to paid—as one of the top entries on a search engine result page (SERP). The search engine we are optimizing for is generally Google, which has nearly 90% of the search engine market share. The next closest is Bing, with less than 5%, so it becomes clear why so much effort is afforded to ranking on Google.
However, just showing up isn’t enough. The first five organic results—the ones under the AI overview and often those labeled “sponsored”—account for more than 80% of all clicks, meaning that the majority of searchers never go past the first page.
This is why both routine on site and off site SEO services are critical. Unfortunately, many manufacturers do not understand this and operate under the false sense that a nice-looking website or even a website with some optimization is enough to bring prospects to them.
On Site SEO Services and Solutions
On site SEO refers to the work done on your site to increase the likelihood it will be found by search engines. It is what many think of when discussing search engine ranking and increasing website lead flow. When optimizing for on-site, it is critical to do it for the website structure and content.
On site SEO includes developing a keyword strategy. Keywords are words or short phrases that strategically and naturally appear in your webpage content (headers, body, URL, and image alt-tags) and are used in search queries when people are looking for information. However, it is much more than placing keywords on the page. For one, when developing the keyword strategy and writing content, it is critical to match content to user intent and consider the needs of your prospective customer. For example, someone searching “what is injection molding” likely needs a definition or education and is not buying. Whereas someone searching “wax coated shipping box supplier” is closer to evaluating a partner.
While keywords are critical, they won’t be found without a proper website structure. Website structure, or website architecture, refers to how a website’s pages are organized and connected, including navigation, URLs, and internal links. It supports SEO by enhancing crawlability, user experience, and internal link authority.
Some elements related to website structure to consider include:
URL Structure: URLs should follow a logical hierarchy reflecting the site’s organization and include targeted keywords.
Site Navigation: Navigation should facilitate finding content with minimal clicks.
Breadcrumb Navigation: Breadcrumbs help users understand their location within the site and provide a logical structure for search engines.
XML Sitemap: An XML sitemap lists all important pages of your website, making it easier for search engines to crawl and index your site comprehensively.
HTTPS: HTTPS provides encryption and verification that HTTP doesn’t. Search engines prefer secure sites (HTTPS) and may take users to a “Your connection is not private” page and/or display “not secure” next to the URL for sites that are not secure.
Header Tags: Proper use of header tags (i.e., H1 through H6) helps organize content hierarchically, improves readability for users, and provides contextual information to Google.
Structured Data Markup: Also called schema markup, structured data markup can enhance how your pages are displayed in search results with rich results (or rich snippets), improving click-through rates. Google supports 35 types that are relevant to different types of content.
Canonical Tags: Canonical tags are used to prevent duplicate content issues. They indicate which version of a URL you want to appear in search results.
Robots.txt File: This file tells search engines which pages or sections of your site to crawl and which to ignore. It helps in optimizing the crawl budget (the number of pages it crawls in a given time frame). However, it doesn’t prevent a webpage from being shown by Google. To do that, you can block indexing with a noindex tag or password protection.
Error Page Management: Proper handling of the “404 error message” and “500 error message” errors ensures that users are guided back to the relevant sections of your site. If users encounter these errors and immediately hit the back button, it can signal to Google that the content isn’t valuable for the keyword, which can drive rankings down.
Improving Website Content and Internal Linking for SEO
The content on your website should also be well organized and incorporate relevant keywords tailored to the industry you are in. We previously discussed choosing keywords that match users’ intent. However, understanding how people search is equally important. In an overly simplistic example, if users in the packaging industry erroneously call corrugated board “cardboard,” their search will bring up websites using cardboard as a keyword. Single-word terms like cardboard can be highly competitive and tough to rank for, so long-tail keywords with a more defined intent such as “double-wall corrugated cardboard” are used.
Several online tools can help you find relevant keywords with search volume and low competition such as Google Keyword Planner, Moz, Semrush, and Ahrefs. Some of these research sites can also help you uncover what keywords your competitors are ranking for.
Website content should also contain internal links that take users to other pages. A well-planned internal linking structure helps distribute page authority throughout the site and improves overall website navigation.
Stay In Line with SEO Best Practices By Keeping Your Website Mobile-Responsive
User experience is also important as people will quickly leave your site if the experience is poor. This includes ensuring your website is mobile-responsive. Google started penalizing pages for not being responsive in 2015 and, in 2020, rolled out mobile-first indexing for all websites, which means a site’s content is crawled with a smartphone agent. Most websites are compliant today, but you occasionally find one that isn’t. In 2026, mobile accounts for around 45% of mobile web traffic in the US and more than 60% globally, so it’s clear why this is critical.
Page load time is another factor that can impact the user experience. Most people will abandon a site if it takes more than a few seconds to load. Additionally, Google crawls and indexes sites based on its crawl budget, so if your pages are slow to load, it may base its ranking on a partial view of your site, which can impact your ranking.
Off Site SEO Services and Solutions
Off-site SEO refers to the work done outside your website to improve search visibility, credibility, and referral traffic. For manufacturers, off-site SEO can include Google Business Profile optimization, industry directory listings, backlinks, reviews, guest articles, trade association mentions, and content distribution.
A primary difference between on-site and off-site SEO is control of information. On-site SEO happens on your own website, where you have complete control of what appears. Off-site SEO happens on third-party platforms, websites, directories, publications, and search profiles that mention, list, review, or link to your company.
Off-site SEO works best when the website itself is already clear and useful. If your service pages, capability pages, and contact paths are weak, more visibility may bring more traffic without improving lead quality. A stronger off-site strategy points buyers back to pages that clearly explain what you do, who you serve, and when your company is a good fit.
Local SEO for Increased Local Traffic
Local SEO tactics helps your company appear in location-based searches, including Google Maps results and searches that include a city, region, or “near me” wording. For manufacturers that serve regional buyers, depend on local relationships, or want to be found by nearby OEMs, distributors, contractors, or purchasing teams, this becomes critical.
A complete Google Business Profile is one of the main local SEO tools. Your company name, address, phone number, website, hours, categories, services, and business description should be accurate and consistent with the information on your website. Photos, posts, product or service descriptions, and customer reviews can also help buyers understand whether your company is active and relevant. Encouraging satisfied customers to leave positive reviews can also boost your local search visibility and attract more local clients.
For manufacturers, local SEO should not be limited to map visibility. Local chambers, regional manufacturing associations, economic development directories, supplier databases, and industry-specific directories can also help increase traffic from local prospects.
Link Building for Higher Rankings
Link building is a tactic for earning links to your website from other websites website. This are called backlinks. Earning backlinks from relevant, credible websites, can boost your credibility and help search engines and buyers find your content.
For manufacturers, these back links can come from industry directories, databases, industry groups, trade associations, trade shows, case studies, resource pages, or other relevant sources. A backlink from a relevant source is much more valuable than a backlink from an unrelated page. in fact, the latter can hurt you.
The safest approach is to earn links by publishing useful content, maintaining accurate directory listings, participating in credible industry organizations, and sharing resources that other sites have a real reason to reference. Buying links for ranking purposes violates Google’s spam policies, and Google specifically lists paid links, excessive link exchanges, and automated link-building programs as examples of link spam.
Guest Posting on Other High Ranking and Industry Websites
Guest posting means contributing content to another website, publication, association, or industry platform. Guest content should be useful on its own, not written only to place a link. Strong guest content usually explains a technical topic, answers a common buyer question, shares process knowledge, or clarifies an industry issue. When the content is relevant to the audience and links back to a useful page on your site, it can support referral traffic, credibility, and off-site visibility.
While you may want to prioritize content efforts for your own site, guest posting on other websites beyond your own has many benefits. By contributing valuable articles to other websites in your industry, you not only gain valuable backlinks to your website, but also build up authority and trust in Google’s eyes by further aligning yourself with a reputable expert in the space you want to grow in. Guest posts also allow you to tap into new audiences and direct traffic back to your site, allowing you to reach a larger audience and further supporting your SEO efforts.
Better Leveraging Social Media Platforms
Social media is another off site SEO service that drives attention for your brand and recognition for your website. For manufacturers, social content should usually point back to useful website pages. A post about a completed project can link to a related capability page. A post about a common production challenge can link to a technical blog. A case study post can link to a full customer story. Social media can be an effective channel for driving leads to your website.
As more content from your website is shared online, more links back to your website are generated. Consider sharing testimonials, team updates, creating videos, and investing in infographics, which are all highly popular forms of content, on your website as well as your social media platforms.
Whether It’s On Site or Off Site, SEO Is a Long-Term Process
While on site and off site SEO strategies are both essential components of a well-rounded digital marketing approach, it’s important to keep in mind that SEO is not a set-it-and-forget-it process. It is a long-term strategy that requires patience for substantial results to emerge. The time it takes for changes to a website to be reflected in SERPs and for rankings to improve can vary widely, from several days to several months, depending on crawl budget, indexing speed, algorithm updates, competitiveness, and other factors.
That being said, SEO requires continual attention and adaptation. Putting together the critical pieces of the SEO puzzle, from routine content updates to SEO audits, link building, local seo, guest posting, and social media engagement, piecing together each part ensures your site remains competitive, relevant, and visible in search engine results. And by siding with a reputable SEO partner, you can be confident that all the pieces of your website performance are expertly handled, allowing you to stay focused on your other core business activities. At Athena SWC, that approach is even taken one step further with our inbound and outbound approach.
Want to learn more about keeping your website active and up-to-date? Discover our proven on site and off site SEO services and strategies to stay visible in search results today.