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Investing in SEO for Electrical Distribution

November, 2019

Believe it or not! 2020 is quickly approaching, and the further we get into this digital age, the harder it becomes to even imagine any purchase being made without some sort of online shopping. Whether someone browses products, gathers product information or makes an actual purchase, most purchases today are made with some help from the internet.

According to Electrical Wholesaling magazine, over 70% of people who want to buy electrical products today go to Google first.1 While it may seem great that 70% of people are searching for the PVC electrical products you are selling, you also need to know that 75% of people searching for those same products will never scroll past the first page of any search engine.2 This means your products must appear on page one of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines or you pretty much don’t exist in the digital world. Yes, it’s true! Unfortunately, while 25% of people searching for your products might possibly make it to page 2, the chances are slim to none that they will ever find you on page 3 or higher of Google.

With 70 % of potential PVC electrical product customers looking to the internet for product information, it seems quite obvious that investing in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your website would probably bring in more business---But if you still have doubts about investing some of your marketing budget into SEO, you should also know that leads from search engines also have a 14.6% close rate, while outbound leads like leads from direct mail, print advertisements, or cold calling only have a 1.7% close rate.3 The search engine lead rate is higher simply because people who are “Googling” your products are already looking for them. 

What exactly is SEO and how much would it cost?

The goal of SEO is simple. You want to optimize your website for search engines so you appear on page one of Google and other search engines as much as possible for your products and services. SEO is the process of making your website more accessible and understandable to search engines in order to climb higher up the search ranking list. Fortunately, there are so many companies today that help businesses implement SEO strategies that you should be able to find an expert to help your SEO results even with a very small marketing budget. 

With U.S. online shoppers expected to increase to over 300 million by 2023 (which doesn’t even include the browsers and information gathers), it probably makes sense to move some of you PVC electrical product marketing budget to SEO. After all, the person searching for a product on the internet is much closer to a purchase then the person browsing through a magazine on their lunch break or listening to the radio in the car.

What if you don’t have the marketing budget to hire an SEO professional?

Regrettably, SEO changes as fast technology these days, so an expert dedicated to SEO is certainly the best solution. However, here are some simple steps you can take on your own to begin to improve your search engine rankings:

1.      Increase the amount of applicable website text on your website and make it keyword rich. You can add text to existing pages or add new pages and include the phrases that most people would use to search for some of your products.  For example, if you sell schedule 40 conduit, use “schedule 40 PVC conduit” and “schedule 40 PVC pipe” in your new website text. There are websites you can go to in order to check to see how much specific key word phrases are searched. They will help you pick the best terms to use for your products to get more search traffic. For example, since a plaster ring is also known as a mud ring, you might want to find out which name is searched more. Additionally, including very informative text that answers the questions people are asking about your products will improve your chances for moving up in the search rankings.

2.      Improve your page speed.  Google penalizes websites for slow page loading, so make sure your pages are not slow loading. Making your images smaller to improve your page speed is one very easy fix.

3.      Be responsive! Make sure your website is screen responsive. Screen responsiveness has become more important than ever to making it to page one. If your website doesn’t adjust to any size mobile device and function well after it adjusts, Google will penalize you.

4.      Create links! Both external links back to your website and cross-linking between pages are good for SEO results. So be sure to link back to your website. For example, if you have a YouTube channel, link the text about your videos on that channel back to the website pages about the products as well as back to your home page. Cross-linking between pages is very simple. If you talk about a product on one page, link it to another page where you have text about that same product.

5.      Fix URLs.  You will be penalized for spaces! Your URLs should never have spaces. Be sure that your page names, as well as the photos and PDFs linked to your website do not have any spaces. For example, make sure your photo for Schedule 80 PVC Conduit is uploaded as Schedule_80_PVC_Conduit or that your PVC Box adapter sell sheet is uploaded as PVC-Box-adapter-sell-sheet. Similarly, URLs can’t have spaces either. They should like this: https://www.cantexinc.com/products/fittings-and-accessories

These simple tips can help you stay competitive in the digital age by driving quality traffic for PVC electrical products to your website. Electrical Wholesaling Magazine expressed the importance of SEO in the digital age best with this quote: “Today we are only as good as the last search.”5

1.       The Power of SEO, Electrical Wholesaling, eweb.com
2.       25 Mind-Bottling SEO Stats for 2019 (and Beyond), Junto Digital, junto.digital
3.       25 Mind-Bottling SEO Stats for 2019 (and Beyond), Junto Digital, junto.digital
4.       Statista.com
5.       The Power of SEO, Electrical Wholesaling, eweb.com