SEO Keywords for Manufacturers: Which Ones Are Worth It in Your Niche?

In manufacturing, the same search patterns come up again and again. And many searches turn out to be far less attractive than they look at first glance.

To optimize for the right keywords and find out where the sales potential is, you need to understand the difference.

Common search patterns around manufacturing processes

Look at different manufacturing processes such as turning, milling or laser cutting, and certain patterns keep showing up. Some keywords show that people are:

• looking for background information on the topic (informational intent)
• looking for a service (transactional intent: they want a service provider)
• looking for a machine (transactional intent: they want a machine supplier)

A search for the process itself, such as “turning” or “milling”, almost always has mixed intent: people want both information and services.

Important: the informational side usually dominates. For a job shop that wants new business, there are better keywords to target.

What matters for machine manufacturers

Most mid-sized machine manufacturers are highly specialized. Take machine tools as an example: terms like “5-axis machining center” or “lathe” can mean almost anything.

For a niche supplier, that means competing with the biggest names in the industry. It also means that most people searching for those terms aren’t potential customers at all.

So these companies need to find the right, more specific search terms. These long-tail terms usually have only a fraction of the search volume, which is why SEO agencies often pass them over. But our client work shows they’re the best way for niche suppliers to actually win new business. That’s exactly where SEO for manufacturers starts.

So it pays to find the search terms that fit your specific niche. Sometimes that takes a bit of trial and error, but once you’ve found them, it pays off.

Pro tip: for machine manufacturers that sell internationally, English-language keywords are often especially lucrative. An English-language website already reaches India, Southeast Asia and every English-speaking market.

Want to know which search terms carry sales potential in your niche? Free consultation