Growing your building materials company’s presence online isn’t as difficult as you might think. By having a professional web page and consistently creating content that visitors want to see, you can improve your search results position, boost traffic, and improve sales.
However, it is a little more complicated than just creating a blog post and hoping it does the trick. A solid content strategy includes making sure you’re using the right search terms, doing keyword research, and focusing on long-tail keywords that make sense for your niche.
Ready to learn how content marketing can help improve your website traffic and customer satisfaction? Let’s go.
Why Your Website Needs Consistent Content
SEO for building materials can be a little more complicated than any other type of industry. In a B2B environment, your goal is to reach your customers differently than one would expect selling straight to consumers.
However, you can still use content marketing as a way to improve website traffic and make your page work to sell more products. Furthermore, if you’re doing a great job, other websites will want to link to your website and the content you’re publishing. Here are two different angles you can take with your strategy.
Content as a Sales Tool
Perhaps one of the most important reasons building material companies need to consistently add content to their websites is that this information acts as a sales tool. The more data and specs a potential buyer has access to, the easier it is to make the decision to go with your products.
Think of it like this. If your sales team needs to direct someone to find all the questions they have about your products, a website is a better option than sending a brochure in the mail. Furthermore, if there are multiple decision-makers on a big order, they don’t have to be in contact with a sales rep to discover the information necessary to place an order.
Installer Education
Another option for building materials companies is to create sections of their blog or website around installer education. This is a great place to put tips, videos, and other knowledgeable resources to make using your products faster and easier.
Imagine a scenario where an installer is on the job. They type a search query from their smartphone about how to troubleshoot a specific installation problem. Imagine their surprise and happiness when the first page that comes up in Google for that particular search is the manufacturer! As you can see, this can be a very powerful digital marketing tool for your business.
The Process of a Building Strong Content Strategy
While the process of writing a blog post or article might seem simple enough, you want to ensure you have a strong content strategy beforehand. Here are a few of the most important steps to consider.
Keyword Research
This is when you sit down and really start to think about what you’re creating. For a blog post or article, decide on your main topic. Then use a keyword tool to find one or two primary keywords that you should include in your piece. Don’t forget to include long-tail keywords, which incorporate multiple strings of words together to create short phrases.
Keywords act as signal beacons to search engines about what your website and content is about. Certain keywords get better traffic than others, so this is a pretty crucial step in the content marketing process.
Content Writing
Next, you’ll go ahead and flesh out your content piece. It doesn’t matter if you do it yourself, use an in-house team member, or hire a digital marketing expert to do it for you. As long as the piece is fairly long, has those search terms you’re aiming to rank for, and covers a topic fully, you’re usually good.
Just make sure you aren’t keyword stuffing, which is when you start adding words in a nonsensical fashion or in multiple sentences in a row just for the sake of having them in your post.
Technical Details
There are other areas of your content that you want to ensure are optimized, too. In addition to writing the post, creating content also requires updating the page title and meta description with text that contains the keyword you’re trying to rank for.
Most platforms like WordPress make this easy to do while creating a new post. However, if you’re confused, don’t worry. A professional content marketing agency can handle this part, too.
What Types of Content to Include
So, now you know the importance of content marketing for your building materials company and have a basic understanding of the process. But what types of content should you include?
The main goal of content marketing is to create items that are informative and educational. In turn, this keeps your customers coming back for more, improves overall search engine optimization (SEO), and can improve your overall Google ranking. To accomplish this, the two most commonly used mediums are text and video.
Text Content
Text content is exactly what it sounds like. This is any article or blog post that someone would read to get information. Often, you can break long blocks or paragraphs of text up into bullet points, visuals, and infographics. The key here is to really just provide as much value for free as you possibly can, making it easy for potential customers to keep coming back.
You’ll also want to choose a few accompanying images to make your content really stand out. This can be photos of the product, copies from a sales brochure, or even the item being used on an actual job site.
Video Content
Video is also a very important link-building tool, especially if you’re trying to grow the amount of educational material on your website. By creating tutorials, frequently asked question-and-answer segments, and even sales guides, you can help boost the organic traffic to your content while spotlighting the professionalism of your organization.
The best part about video content is that it doesn’t have to be fancy. You can always hire a marketing partner to help produce and edit raw content, but sometimes just posting a one to two-minute video of an expert talking is enough.
How Often to Post Content
This is one of those questions we see a lot. Some building material manufacturers post content several times per week, while others have a gap of weeks or months.
The right answer is going to depend on your niche, keyword selection, and what you’re trying to accomplish. While it is always a good idea to post on a regular basis, it might not make sense if you’ve already covered tons of topics pertinent to your company and product line.
Conclusion: Content Marketing for Building Material Manufacturers
In conclusion, content is a very important aspect of any digital marketing growth strategy. While it might seem like a lot of work, it is really worth it in terms of the organic traffic you’ll receive over time.
That said, you don’t have to go through this process alone. As lead generation experts, our team at ER Marketing is here to help with all of your content strategy and creation needs. Please contact us today for further details.
