Do you want to increase equipment sales but don’t have the marketing staff? You may have an alternative.
Websites for equipment dealers and other big ticket e-commerce retailers will face unique challenges.
We have a standardized approach to doing website audits for e-commerce sites and we adjust this approach so that it works well here with only a few adjustments that are specific to your industry.
These adjustments are based on 10 years of working with equipment dealers, so we have insider knowledge of the industry, competition and what works.
Before We Start:
First, we get to know your team, your website, your business and your goals. Each e-commerce niche has its own business factors that are unique to the industry and this is where we get onto the same page as your team. This is part of our standardized audit process and it comes first for important reasons.
However, for machinery retailers the time needed to get started during this first step is almost cut in half. We already know your industry, we know what is likely to be important to your website and we understand the underlying forces that drive converting leads to your business.
Now We Begin:
We use our 150+ point SEO audit checklist. This is the same checklist that we use for any e-commerce website regardless of the industry and regardless of the website’s platform.
This checklist allows us to go through your website methodically to look for weaknesses, existing issues, and areas for improvement. Nothing changes to this part of the process for equipment and machinery websites. We just go through the list. It is standardized enough so that nothing gets missed and this allows for a process that is both simplified and also in-depth.
Adjusting Website Structure for Inventory Depth & Replenishment Rates
When you are selling expensive machinery and equipment you will not be dealing with the same type of traffic or sales volumes as a large t-shirt manufacturer.
It is important for category pages to have ample content and it is also important to be familiar with Google’s policy on doorway pages among other related concepts. We will often look to expand the number of categories if we are able because this can be an easy way to expand your reach in the search engines.
Some equipment dealers (new and used) will have much different inventory levels and replenishment rates than others, so the way that we set up categories may also be very different for each website. The key is to strike a balance between user experience, maximizing search engine visibility, and not creating empty category pages that are just meant to exploit the search engines. We don’t want the same content on every page and we don’t want empty pages.
Content Strategies and Recommendations for Dealers
Once our audit is done we will begin to work towards making content recommendations for each of our e-commerce clients.
This part of our process for equipment dealers and machinery retailers is likely to be shortened because many business owners in this space are interested in two things: inventory and sales. Runnin or even facilitating a content generation operation is often just not within the scope of what everyone wants to do. Once you start trying to create videos, edit and approve blog posts, you will take on an additional burden even if the operation is outsourced, and we understand this.
Instead of focusing on content generation strategies for equipment dealers, we focus on your incoming lead channels and making sure all channels are being utilized and flowing with traffic.
For example, one of our top priorities is to make sure that you are utilizing your customer email list and you are running a monthly newsletter with inventory updates. Growing this list is one of the best things that you can do for your business and this is also something that is commonly neglected in this industry.
This Means Fewer Small Ticket SEO Items In Our Recommendations
We won’t be putting as much emphasis on some of the smaller onsite SEO factors that we might look at in the audit process. This is a function of the number of pages on your website that can be monetized and the competition for those pages to rank for their respective keywords.
Dealing with some of the least important SEO elements flagged by the audit process is usually not a great way for you to get the best bang for your buck. These items will tend to take up a smaller part of our recommendations for equipment dealers and machinery retailers. Instead, we will focus more on the main SEO elements and some of the non-SEO initiatives of your marketing program where we can often find the best opportunities to make money for you.
The Roadmap
We don’t just hand you a report and wish you good luck. We deliver a set of prioritized SEO recommendations. We teach your staff how to implement them and why, and we give you a roadmap to success moving forward.
The roadmap completes the first leg in this section of your journey and this encompasses everything that we have learned during the audit process.
Contact us here to get your own roadmap and to get your inventory and sales flowing at the levels that they deserve to be at.
