Service / S-07
SEO for engineering and industrial firms
Derby's supply chain sells to engineers and procurement teams who research carefully. We help capability, materials and certification pages get found by the right buyers.
Derby has an unusual economy for a city of its size. Rolls-Royce builds civil aero engines here, Toyota makes cars at Burnaston just outside the city, and the Litchurch Lane works, now operated by Alstom, has built trains for well over a century. Around them sits a large supply chain of machinists, fabricators, coating specialists, test houses, software firms and engineering consultancies, many on industrial estates around Pride Park, Sinfin and Raynesway.
These businesses rarely sell through a single search. A buyer may search for a process ("five-axis machining Derby"), a material ("Inconel machining"), a standard or approval, or a problem. Then they compare several suppliers and pass a shortlist to colleagues.
What we build
- Capability pages for each process you want to win work for, with the machines, tolerances, materials, batch sizes and lead times stated as precisely as you are comfortable with.
- Industry pages for aerospace, rail, automotive, energy or medical, explaining what you do for each and which approvals apply.
- Quality and certification pages that are easy to find, because procurement teams look for them.
- Technical articles that answer engineers' questions without giving away anything confidential.
Measuring the right thing
Traffic is a poor measure for a B2B site where a single enquiry may be worth a year of revenue. We track which pages lead to quote requests and calls, and judge the work on the quality of enquiries rather than volume.
Confidentiality
Many supply-chain firms cannot name customers or show parts. We are used to writing around this: describing the type of component, the sector and the challenge in general terms, with your approval before anything is published.
Who it is for
- Machine shops, fabricators and finishing specialists supplying aerospace, rail and automotive.
- Test houses, inspection and calibration services.
- Engineering consultancies and design firms.
- Industrial software and automation businesses.
- Logistics and industrial services along the A38, A50 and A52 corridors, including firms around Burton upon Trent.
What is included, step by step
- Buyer interviews. We talk to your sales and engineering staff about who buys, how they find suppliers, the questions they ask and why you win or lose work.
- Search research. Processes, materials, standards, components and problems your buyers search for, with volumes where they exist. Many valuable B2B searches have low volumes, so we weigh relevance over numbers.
- Site architecture. A structure with capabilities, industries, quality, and resources, each page with one job.
- Page production. Capability, industry and quality pages written with your engineers, reviewed for confidentiality.
- Technical clean-up. Many industrial sites carry old PDFs, duplicate pages and slow templates. We fix what affects visibility.
- Enquiry tracking. Forms, email clicks and calls tracked to source pages, so we can see what produces work.
- Ongoing content. Technical articles and updates as you add equipment, approvals or capabilities.
A page plan for a typical supplier
| Page type | Purpose | Example headings |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | Answer "can you do this?" | Five-axis machining, vacuum heat treatment, NDT |
| Material | Show expertise in difficult materials | Titanium, nickel alloys, engineering plastics |
| Industry | Answer "do you understand my sector?" | Aerospace, rail, automotive, energy |
| Quality | Satisfy procurement checks | Approvals, inspection equipment, traceability |
| Resource | Reach engineers earlier | Design guides, tolerance notes, material comparisons |
How long it takes and what drives the cost
Industrial searches are often less crowded than consumer ones, so well-structured capability pages can begin appearing within a couple of months of publication. Building a full set of pages takes three to six months for most firms. Cost depends on the number of capabilities and sectors, how much engineering time is available for interviews, and whether the site needs technical work or a rebuild first.
Common mistakes
- One "services" page listing everything, so no single capability is strongly relevant.
- Quality approvals buried in a PDF that search engines and buyers struggle to find.
- Stock photographs of generic machinery instead of your own equipment.
- Vague claims of "precision" and "quality" without tolerances, materials or batch sizes.
- Judging the website by traffic numbers rather than enquiry quality.
Derby context. The city hosts Rolls-Royce's civil aerospace base at Sinfin, Toyota's Burnaston plant and Alstom's Litchurch Lane works, and was chosen in 2023 as the home of Great British Railways. Buyers searching for suppliers in this ecosystem expect precise, technical information.
How we measure it
Enquiries by source page, the share of enquiries matching your target work, visibility for capability and material searches, and engagement on technical content. We meet quarterly with your sales lead to check whether the enquiries are the right ones.
Related services and reading
Read our guide to writing capability pages that engineering buyers trust. Related services: technical SEO, content and link building through trade publications and associations.
Questions we are often asked
Our customers find us through word of mouth. Why bother with SEO?
We cannot name customers. Can we still produce useful content?
Should we publish our machine list?
How do you measure success for a B2B site?
Do you work with firms outside Derby?
Next step
Tell us what you are trying to rank for
Send a few lines about your business and the searches that matter. We reply by email within two working days with an honest view of what is worth doing.