Promoting a Technical Site

[waynekolenchuk]

I have to promote a manufacturer's rep site. They deal in process control instruments,and they don't have much original content. Creating it is hard for me due to the technical nature of the business.

If any Mozzers have an idea I'd love to hear it.

[karlseidel]

I'm working on a similar set of sites right now - for conveyors. I've set up blogs, written entries, set up a couple of AdWords campaigns. I've also hired people to write some blog entries, but, like you, I'm not the expert so my fear is my words/content/blog writer direction will not be pertinent enough to attract the eyeballs we're after. In any case I know the line well enough to get a certain amount of traffic. I'd like to be better at it and do more though. I think this is the conundrum we face - the owners/marketers at the manufacturer want the hits but they don't have the interest/time/confidence to put in the effort to write the words or make the plan for SEO effective. That's kind of the nature of the proverbial beast - they're technicians - they're not thinking or acting like SEO'ers!

The bottom line answer to this conundrum is to understand the vision of the people who own/run/represent the manufacturer. But you probably don't want to call it the "vision" as that will make them think you're an alien left-coaster (or something!). The goal is to combine their vision with the right words - put those in order of priority - sometimes they're easy to access within their cut-sheets and marketing literature - and start writing.

Once you start creating the "original content" you're seeking you'll become their go-to-guy for this and more.

Is this the secret to success? I don't know. It's a start.

[waynekolenchuk]

I like your suggestion about creating the content and normally I would have no problem writing it. The barrier for me in this case, is that it very technical, filled with lots of specs,  and I don't understand it enough to create accurate content.

[EGOL]

I have had success meeting with the clent and asking how they think potential clients will find them in search.... we brainstormed some keywords and I showed them the adwords keyword tool which they greatly enjoyed and played with for nearly an hour.

After that I told them that if they wanted traffic for any of those keywords that I would need a page of substantive content for each one.  I told them that substantive content would be needed to inform Google that they are seriously in that line of business.  That got the attention of the owner and he assigned shares of the content development to members of his staff.

Playing with the keyword tool opened their eyes to how search engines recognize what a website is about.  I received lots of content as Word documents in about two weeks.