The importance of keywords for a manufacturing website is undeniable. In a nutshell: the right target keywords bring engineers and purchasing managers from Google to your site, which increases the chance that the right buyers find you, and eventually the number of RFQs in your inbox.
One of the basic practices of SEO is choosing keywords that fit naturally into the content of your pages.
Getting noticed is difficult, though. For the head terms of your industry, you compete with on-demand platforms, directories and suppliers with twenty years of content behind them.
So having the right keywords is crucial, but is ranking for “CNC machining” even realistic for a job shop, and would it bring the right buyers?
The way to start moving towards more RFQs is to leverage long-tail keywords.
Before we get to the practical tips, let’s briefly explain what long-tail keywords are and why a manufacturer should target them instead of the basic ones.
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Long-Tail Keywords Explained
Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific search terms. Because they are searched far less often than the basic keywords, targeting them can seem counterintuitive at first.
But if you know how to use them, they are extremely valuable, because the person typing a specific phrase is much closer to sending an RFQ.
Say your company does sheet metal fabrication. The chance of your page appearing near the top for “sheet metal fabrication” is slim: in Germany the English term gets around 150 searches a month, has a keyword difficulty of about 68 according to Ahrefs, and the first page belongs to platforms and directories.
But if an engineer searches for “laser cutting 3 mm stainless steel small batch Bavaria”, they are far more likely to land on your page, and that engineer has a drawing on their desk.
Ranking for long-tail keywords is much easier than for the basic terms, and nearly 70% of all searches are long-tail.
Using them well comes down to connecting your business with the buyers who are actively searching for the specific service you provide.
You have to know how your buyers think and search. Engineers search by process, material, thickness, tolerance and certification. Purchasing managers search by service, region and words like “supplier”, “subcontractor” or “Lohnfertigung” (contract manufacturing).
Optimising your website for those phrases is how you rank higher in organic results and make sure your pages match both the keywords and the intent of the people typing them.
Finding the Right Long-Tail Keywords
Keyword research means finding the terms that are useful to your business and to your buyers at the same time.
You probably already have a set of core keywords you would like to rank for: laser cutting, CNC machining, welding, powder coating. The best way to build long-tail keywords is to use those as the starting point.
Spin each core phrase into something more specific by adding the modifiers your buyers actually use:
- Material: laser cutting stainless steel, CNC machining aluminium, welding Hardox
- Thickness or size: laser cutting 20 mm steel, powder coating parts up to 7 m, machining large parts
- Capability: 5-axis CNC machining, tube laser cutting, robotic welding
- Certification: EN 1090 EXC3 steel fabricator, ISO 3834 welding company, IATF 16949 machining supplier
- Batch size: prototype laser cutting, small batch CNC turning, series production sheet metal
- Location: laser cutting service Bavaria, steel structures Austria, CNC supplier near Rotterdam
- Commercial intent: laser cutting quote, sheet metal supplier, CNC Lohnfertigung (CNC contract manufacturing)
Put yourself in the engineer’s shoes and think about the reasoning behind the search. Someone typing “laser cutting 20 mm steel” has a thick plate to cut and has probably been told “no” by a supplier with a smaller laser.
Regardless of length, the phrases have to make sense. You will integrate them into your pages in natural language, so “laser cutting stainless steel 3 mm” becomes “laser cutting of 3 mm stainless steel” in the text, without compromising the grammar.
Start the research with Google itself. Type your core keyword into the search box and look at the autocomplete suggestions, then at the “People also ask” box and the related searches at the bottom of the page. These are the phrases people actually search for, so they are a reliable indicator of direction.
For search volumes and competition data, use Ahrefs, Semrush or the free Google Keyword Planner. Check every market and language you sell to separately: in Germany, “Laserschneiden” (laser cutting) is searched around 1,000 times a month, the English “laser cutting service” about 100 times, and their long-tail variants are different phrases entirely.
Finally, open Google Search Console for your own site. The queries you already get impressions for, but few clicks, are long-tail keywords you can win with a dedicated page.
Our seven-step keyword research process for manufacturers walks through all of this in detail, with real search volumes.
Strategic Use of Long-Tail Keywords
Stuffing all your long-tail keywords onto one page makes no sense. Google easily detects that the phrases share the same context, and the page ranks for none of them.
Distribute the phrases across dedicated pages, the pages a buyer lands on when they click the result:
- Capability pages for material and size keywords: laser cutting stainless steel, laser cutting aluminium, tube laser cutting
- Certification pages for EN 1090, ISO 3834 and similar terms
- Industry pages for “sheet metal parts for agricultural machinery”
- Location pages for the regions and countries you serve
- Technical guides for informational long-tail keywords such as “laser cutting tolerances” or “powder coating vs galvanizing”
Each page focuses on one long-tail keyword and its close variants.
Fit the phrase in where it reads naturally: the page title, the H1, the first paragraph, a subheading, the meta description, the URL and the alt text of the photos of your parts.
Don’t overdo it. Forcing a grammatically awkward sentence just to include the phrase does not resonate with an engineer, and it does not help with Google either. Our guide to on-page SEO for manufacturing websites covers the placement in detail.
Optimising the page for RFQs takes more than a “Request a quote” button, too.
The buyer who searched for “laser cutting 20 mm steel” needs to see, within seconds, that you can actually do it: the machine and its power, the materials and thicknesses you cut, the tolerances, batch sizes, lead times and certifications, photos of real parts, and a form where they can upload the drawing.
The content needs to be specific and well written, so the engineer feels confident enough to send the RFQ instead of going back to the results.
Once your pages are optimised for long-tail keywords, they become visible for dozens of related searches, driving more of the right traffic to your website.
By giving buyers exactly what they searched for, your conversions start to take off. Track the queries and pages in Search Console, and keep improving the pages that get impressions but few RFQs. Sometimes the smallest change, a thickness table added to a page, makes the difference.
Another strategy is to leverage your connections in the industry. Your machine supplier, your material supplier, the trade association you belong to and the industrial directories you are listed in (Europages, wlw) all have pages where your company can be described with exactly the phrases you have singled out. Make sure your profiles and reference mentions say “laser cutting of Hardox up to 20 mm”, not just “metal processing”.
And if, for some reason, you cannot build the pages yet, you can turn to Google Ads. Long-tail phrases are far cheaper to bid on than head terms, and the searchers behind them convert better. That is exactly the logic behind our laser cutting RFQ campaigns: precise phrases, precise landing pages, direct enquiries.
Conclusion
Whatever processes you offer, if you want to be found by the engineers and buyers who need them, you have to understand how they search.
Even though longer, more specific keywords are searched less often, the visitors who arrive through them are much more likely to send an RFQ than those who typed “CNC machining”.
Optimise dedicated pages for long-tail keywords to increase both your organic traffic and your conversion rate, which is what ultimately increases sales.
Come up with as many long-tail phrases as you like, but research them properly and choose the ones that fit your capabilities, the language of your buyers and the pages you can build. Our guide to SEO for manufacturers shows where long-tail pages fit into the overall strategy.
