SEO- Manufacturer v Distributor

[resolved]

In respect to a safety clothing manufacturer manage SEO on behalf of, I've noticed that product distributors own 85% of the page 1 SERPs leaving product manufacturers such as my client largely under represented for the vast majority of search queries such as 'safety boots'.

Love to hear your opinion on why this is and how I can combat it? TIA!

[effectdigital]

Yep this is widely known. In-fact, you may be surprised to learn that even those who both manufacture AND distribute their products are also under the kosh here. I work with a number of fashion brands who produce their clothing (which in many cases is really stylish, really high quality stuff) only to see their direct sales (from their own site) hindered by larger 'pure distribution' sites (sites which just distribute loads of items but don't manufacture any)

Here's the truth of the matter. It's not that distributors get some kind of unfair special treatment. Rather, it's that distributors aren't bound by the same limitations as manufacturers, or manufacturers with online distribution

I love all the brands that I work with, I think their goods are grade A (otherwise I wouldn't work with them). That being said, they can only list their own products on-site. Users commonly search for slightly broader terms which imply that they want to see a range of products to choose from (e.g: "men's shirts", "supportive bras" or "tailormade suits"). The truth is that for a user, the distribution sites ARE better. They can see a huge range of products on these sites and compare them all to find the best deal. This is part of the 'rise of the aggregators' phenomena. Nowadays, unless you're incredibly special - if you don't aggregate, you lose out (end of)

There's a reason that giant product aggregation sites (ASOS, eBay, Amazon, Bra-Stop) are killing it. They give people a one stop shop to solve their issue, then continue their lives happy that they have got a good deal. Even the services industry isn't immune to this, just look at sites like Money Supermarket and how dominant they are in Google's SERPs

Now you might say, ok - that makes sense for category level terms, but often these guys are beating my client even on product level terms. Why is that?

Well - by being such useful sites that make a big difference to user's lives, these sites organically spawn vast amounts of digital PR and UGC link coverage. They're frequently mentioned by the BBC, Forbes... you name it, they're in there (all the time and repeatedly). This builds up a colossal amount of SEO authority, which you basically can't compete with

Finally: often these distribution-only sites, because they are so dominant, are a client's main revenue stream (more than their own sites). That's because client's get paranoid that they will offend their distributors and they will then refuse to stock their products. That could be a disaster! But due to this paranoia, they often give distributors better prices for their products, than even their own native sites (if they are manufacturing and distributing directly as well - some do, some don't)

Due to this, they lose EVEN MORE product-level listings, as Google knows their listings are the worst deal for users. These patterns of thinking, keep the dominant distributors on top and leave crumbs for the rest of us

In the end, their success on Google is really a business  decision and NOT a pure-SEO decision. Do they want to bite the bullet and cut their distributors off from their products, keeping all the Google SERPs for themselves? Well certainly that would cut those guys out completely - but any distributor originating cross-traffic would be lost. What if a user visited the distributor site for another search query (not related to your client's product), then saw your client's product later in their journey and purchased it? All of THAT traffic (which is substantial) is going to be immediately lost. So although cutting out the middle-men might seem smart, it's an incredibly unwise knee-jerk reaction

Still, you can never grow above the distributors until you make this choice. It's a choice that WILL hurt you, but in the long run will allow you to reap revenue figures which you never previously dreamed of. So who makes the decision of when the time comes, to go through this necessarry pain? NOT you. Not an SEO person. That responsibility rests with the business owner alone and if I were you, I wouldn't seek to influence it (risky)