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Industrial SEO: A Case Study

SEO Blog
Industrial Case Study 1

Our client is a leading industrial services company with a focus on engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC). They hired First Page Sage to improve overall industry authority and generate organic leads through SEO content marketing. Over the course of three years with this client, we developed a custom SEO strategy to improve their overall industry visibility and organic lead generation, supporting this campaign with regularly published thought leadership content ghostwritten by our staff under an author persona of the client’s choice.

Although our client’s services were well-renowned and comprehensive, and they have longer-standing expertise than many competitors, their organic traffic was low compared to competitors in their industry. While the EPC market isn’t particularly saturated, client relationships tend to be long-lasting and big-ticket, leaving firms vulnerable to exceptional dips in revenue as contracts expire. 

This makes organic leads exceptionally valuable, as the long-term steady flow typically associated with organic marketing channels provides a higher level of stability than larger investments made periodically into short-term channels to make up for gaps as they come. By improving organic search traffic, our client stood to create a steady lead flow to make up for contract expirations, and provide steady, reliable growth that can be counted on to remain in the long-term.

The Opportunity

This service provider developed a faster, more deadline-compliant workflow for EPC projects that ensured maximum profitability for their clients. Their website didn’t consistently rank on the front page for their targeted keywords and didn’t rank at all for many of the most transactional keywords in their industry. Their website was informative on their process but lacked true thought leadership content about EPC more generally that would draw in leads as they researched key issues surrounding their projects.

After comprehensive research into their position in the market and the advantages of their EPC workflow, the First Page Sage team set out to accomplish the following three goals:

  1. Create a comprehensive SEO campaign strategy targeting transactional keywords that both educate decision-makers in the various industries that they serve and demonstrate the unique value of their services.
  2. Publish original SEO-driven content written and vetted by our industrial services experts.
  3. Provide research and develop custom content to support internal social and email marketing efforts.

By implementing careful keyword targeting and SEO best practices in all content, our team would accomplish all three of these goals over the course of a three-year campaign.

The Solution

To start, our SEO experts paired their subject matter expertise with market research to craft a comprehensive SEO-driven keyword strategy that targeted moderate volume, easily rankable keywords in EPC, HSE, and contractor services topic areas. When we were planning our SEO strategy for this client, we ensured that we did the research and gathered the proper information from client points of contact to offer the high level of information needed to satisfy the search intent of the industrial audience.

This group of industrial services writers then created transactional and educational thought leadership content. When paired with the exceptional SEO expertise of the FPS content strategy team, we were able to publish high-quality content that drove significant traffic to the client’s website and contact forms, with massive gains in organic traffic, front-page results, and MQLs

Our strategy of targeting search terms that reflect the most common pain points of their most common client firms like industrial manufacturing, midstream, chemical refinement, and energy companies allowed us to quickly generate results for them. Our writers used their in-depth research skills and experience in the technically complex field of medical devices to deliver compelling, easy-to-read content that provides actionable advice and offers a convenient and accessible solution—which is exactly what Google wants to serve to its users.

The Results

This client’s campaign was a clear and lasting success, as it resulted in a substantial upward trend in total keyword rankings and first-page rankings, as shown below:

Industrial Case Study 1
Ahrefs data shows an increase in total keyword rankings throughout our SEO campaign

This graph shows the increase in keyword placement for pages on the client’s blog over the course of their campaign over two years. This client experienced significant improvements in every key positional category, with a clear bias toward the top three placements on Google search results, which provide the most traffic.

This increase in keyword rankings pushed consistently more traffic to the client’s blog page. The number of monthly organic sessions, as reported by Google Analytics data, shows the increase caused by this increase in search placement.

Industrial Case Study 2
Google Analytics data shows that FPS’s content drove real traffic to the client’s website with the content we created

These positive results were not isolated simply to keyword placement and traffic. While these are promising KPIs for us as an SEO company that specializes in creating high-performing content, the KPIs that matter most to us and our clients are leads generated through this process. Below shows the goals set by the client most recently in year 3, and our progress toward completing them.

Industrial Case Study 3
Goals set and exceeded by FPS content, as has been routine throughout all three completed years of their campaign

Finally, the client in question has a long business cycle, and many deals can take years to close. This makes it difficult to get short-term snapshots of revenue generated for their campaign. Fortunately, this campaign’s length has allowed them to already experience a solid ROI that will only continue to increase as time goes on and more opportunities close.

Industrial Case Study 4
Data provided by the client on closed/won revenue over the course of the campaign (that is still ongoing) shows that they have already almost doubled their investment despite their years-long business cycle.

Overall, this client’s campaign has been an overwhelming success. Not only have they improved their industry reputation, online voice, and web traffic, but also the KPIs that matter to them most– MQLs and revenue. As a result, it is no surprise that we still work with this client, and are excited to see what this partnership can achieve as time goes on.

Future Outlook

SEO thought leadership marketing has become a vital aspect of this company’s digital marketing strategy, and the company is looking to utilize SEO to market some new services it provides for modular process systems. As a result, our SEO strategy going forward will focus on:

  • Building out a new keyword hub around their modular process system services to establish them as a leader in the space
  • Auditing and optimizing/refreshing current hubs for their pre-existing service offerings as needed
  • Improving the quality of lead conversion by creating more downloadable content and whitepapers
  • Doing audits of the client’s Google My Business profiles and making optimization recommendations to improve their Google Map Pack performance in local searches

Evan Bailyn

Evan Bailyn is a best-selling author and award-winning speaker on the subjects of SEO and thought leadership. Contact Evan here.