Where to start with industry research?

[allegrovivo]

Hello all! Posting for the first time here.

When we get new clients, I have a general idea of where to begin my industry research for SEO, but I get stuck with some other ones. For example, we have a nonprofit manufacturing alliance as a client. They want to improve their SEO to increase awareness about 1) their organization and 2) the local manufacturing community.

Since this is such a unique situation (versus a retail store or a residential or commercial services company), I have no idea where to begin with optimization. What do people search on Google that could possibly bring up their website? I know how to optimize the code and I know social media is a huge part of it, but again, where do I start in terms of ranking well on Google?

I apologize if this is in the wrong subforum!

[theodore007]

Hi,

Looks like you have a branding optimization, which is pretty nice from Penguin updates penalizations point of view, that beeing considered safe (by using brand in the anchor text, sometimes together with different keywords).

1) Organization - should be writed some articles (with and/or withoul links) with brand inserted - look like this is a trend, this could have a greater impact in the serach engines than using backlinks. Social media also need to pe used, creating not too many profiles on different networks, but concentrated on the gain of a community in the most important ones.

2) Local - use local business directories. Also, here you could try some SEM / Adwords - at least at the start, with a low budget, using the brand together with the area targeted and some keywords, until people wiil hear about it and could associate the brand with that business.

Good luck!

[anallawalla]

Welcome to Webmasterworld, allegrovivo.

You should see if there are searches for this manufacturing alliance noted by the Google Keyword Planner tool. If their audience is very small, you might not find any data for the search terms. That makes it hard for you to optimise their site.

If they have a blog or a news page that features some of the companies in their alliance, the brand names of those companies or their products could be candidates for search terms that might be used by potential members.

Your client will be able to articulate why should a manufacturer join their alliance and that will give you additional ideas. Good luck.

[rwilson]

^ Google keyword planner is a great start. If their site doesn't give you enough data, try similar organizations or some of the local manufacturers sites. SEMRush will give you ideas of similar websites and what they rank for.