Marketing engineering firms require a fairly standard approach in terms of strategies and channels, yet many engineering companies will focus their efforts on the operational aspects of the company. It’s just the nature of the work and environment.

However, engineering firms are no different than any other business. Balancing operations, sales, and marketing are required to connect with and deliver services to its customer base.

While the marketing platforms and delivery mechanisms an engineering firm uses are similar to that of what most businesses use, the end-user is a very refined target. This requires very specific targeting as well as marketing messages that solve very specific problems.

Knowing the ideal engineering client and his or her interests and online behaviors are instrumental, helping to deliver the right message to the target audience. So, how can engineering companies drive more high-quality and targeted organic website visitors? Let’s dive into five engineering firm marketing tips that will help achieve this.

1. Create an Engineering Blog

The first step to driving more website traffic is to create an engineering blog on your website. A blog allows you to publish content that is both informative and educational, while also optimized to target keywords and search terms that your target clients are searching for on Google while looking for the services your firm offers.

Publishing high-quality content also helps to increase your website’s authority and trust level, and over time Google rewards this with increased exposure and impressions in its search results.

The biggest obstacle firms face when blogging is coming up with topics to create optimized content around. Here are some ideas:

• Detailed informational posts about the specific engineering services your firm provides
• How-to posts detailing the process and steps required to complete projects
• Listicle posts that break down popular engineering topics in an easy to understand format

The information contained within your content is as equally important as how it’s optimized. Ranking on the top of Google is great, but if prospects land on your blog and feel that the quality of its content is subpar they will leave.

2. Optimize Your Blog Posts for Humans (Not Google)

We just touched on the importance of publishing quality content, and focusing on just pleasing Google and the search engines, and not the end-user, is a big mistake. While some on-page optimization elements can help you rank, when it comes down to it, Google takes into consideration how users interact with your content.

Here are some metrics that Google takes into consideration:

• The average time spent on each page for each visit
• How many pages the average visitor interacts with during each session
• The click-through rate your posts receive in the organic search results
• The bounce rate, meaning how many users leave your website immediately after visiting without interacting with additional content

Always write your engineering blog content with humans in mind. You want prospective clients to interact with your content, view your firm as experts in your field, and then reach out for more information after feeling confident in your ability to solve their problems and needs.

By focusing on publishing content that provides value, your prospects will stay on your website longer, which improves your rankings and overall traffic volume, while helping you convert more visitors into clients.

3. Optimize Your Blog Titles and Meta Descriptions for Hight CTRs

Interaction with your content helps Google understand what content is popular and provides value, and what content might be ranking higher than it should. Its algorithm uses this data to make adjustments.

The higher the click-through rates of your blog posts on the search results page, the better, so it’s important to optimize your post titles and meta descriptions to attract more clicks. These are the two components of a blog post that draw the click or result in your content being passed over.

You could have the best content and deliver the most value, but if nobody is clicking on your content in the search results the content becomes useless as a marketing tool.

Post Title: Work in your main keyword as close to the beginning as possible and create an attention-grabbing title to draw eyes to your page. Also, keep your title less than 60 characters to prevent Google from clipping part of it.

Meta Description: This needs to be less than 160 characters and it’s a good idea to include your keyword to create that connection from the search to your page. Paint a picture of what to expect by reading the post and also entice the person to click. Get creative here, as doing so can help you attract a high percentage of clicks even if there are other results above yours.

4. Share Your Blog Content on Social Media

Google is by far the number one source for organic website traffic, but that doesn’t mean you should rely on it for 100% of your traffic. Social media is a great source to tap into, and all it takes is sharing your posts after they are initially published – and then recycling them and adding them to a repurposing queue.

Your audience is going to be best accessible on Twitter and LinkedIn, opposed to what many consider to be the more popular social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook. This is a good reminder that you always want to be active on the social platforms that your target audience participates on.

Just because Instagram is perceived as the most popular social media platform currently, doesn’t mean that it’s going to naturally be the best platform to deliver and promote blog content from an engineering firm.

5. Build and Earn Links to Your Engineering Blog Posts

To strengthen the authority of your blog posts and your website overall, you need to actively build links and secure links through outreach efforts. Backlinks have been the number one off-site signal that Google uses in its algorithm since day one.

While search engine marketing has evolved and changed, links continue to be a vital component of engineering firm SEO, and securing links to your blog posts is a great way to help push them up in Google’s search results.

The best way to earn links is to first create epic pieces of content and then share that content with your social media audience, LinkedIn connections, email lists, etc. The more eyes on your content the better chance that a relevant blog or website will link to you, referencing the information shared within the posts.

It’s a numbers game, so don’t be discouraged at first. You can also reach out to bloggers, influential people in the engineering space, and partners or suppliers – create a network that you can reach out to when you publish something exceptional. While it won’t happen overnight, if your blog gets a reputation for being a source of quality information, you can see natural link earning happen in the future.

Final Thoughts

A constant influx of new prospects and clients is needed by every business, which is why engineering SEO is so important if you want to attract organic traffic from Google. It’s an incredibly competitive process, but those engineering firms that understand its true value and commit to the long-term success of search engine optimization will succeed.

Do you have any questions about the engineering marketing tips outline above designed to help improve your SEO and inbound traffic? If so, contact us at your earliest convenience and one of our engineering firm SEO experts will be happy to help answer your questions.

Additionally, if you would like to learn more about our SEO services for engineering companies, our team will be more than happy to explain how it works as well as provide you with an audit of your current visibility on Google. Our agency helps engineering firms attract more clients using search engine marketing, and would love to make you our next success story.

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