International SEO: Positioning a manufacturer looking for distributors

Scenario

This case study focuses on a manufacturer located in Sherbrooke (Quebec) who made a breakthrough discovery in the field of green disinfectants. When we met this manufacturer a year ago, their disinfectants were being distributed in Canada, the United States and Columbia. The product can be used for disaster recovery, agricultural and household markets. On the hunt for new potential distributors, this manufacturing company attends many exhibitions, fairs and conferences on a worldwide scale.

A year ago, this company was virtually absent from search engines. The website was getting little to no visits and virtually no queries about becoming a distributors were coming from the website.

Our mandate

Diffusio’s mandate guidelines :

Target markets : agricultural, household, institutionnel, medical, dental, industrial and disaster recovery.

Target customers : Disinfectant manufacturers
Territory : Worldwide
Language : English
Website : www.thymox.com/en/

Objectives

1. Increase the company’s online presence to potential distributors.
2. Increase the number of visits from potential distributors on the manufacturer’s website.
3. Maximize the number of contact forms filled out by potential distributors with an interest to distribute the product.

Mandate flow

Website loading issue

Since the beginning, we noticed the website took too much time before being fully loaded. We measured the display time from multiple pages of the website during various weekdays. The results came in varying between 6 and 45 seconds. Our client then accepted to move his website to a new web hosting company that we recommended: better performances for a better price. We handled the move ourselves. The website now displays under 3 seconds; which is much more acceptable by today’s standards.

Relevance of the website to target customers

Evaluating the customer’s website and chosen keywords highlighted the fact that the website did not target the right customer base: distributors. Indeed, the website featured the company’s products, its technology and various uses. However, little to no efforts were made to showcase the fact that the company was the manufacturer.

We edited the main page along with the website’s header so that a potential distributors can see, within 10 seconds, that the website is a disinfectant manufacturer. Our objective is to convince potential distributors to navigate on the website in order to find out more what our client, the manufacturer, has to offer.

Rearranging the website based on demand

Thanks to our keywords analysis, we managed to zero in on what potential distributors were looking for when it comes to disinfectant manufacturers. We revamped the website in order for the information to match with what distributors were looking for. We also positioned the website on these keywords.

Here’s overview of what was done :

• Menu and sub-menus reorganization ;
• Spread the content of certain pages across mutliple pages in order to provide targeted information ;
• Consolidating a few pages to provide targeted information ;
• Titles and sub-titles optimization in order to ensure continuity between what potential distributors look for in search engines and find on the company’s website.

Incite distributors to contact the manufacturer

Thymox invites potential distributors to click on this button

With our client’s main objectives being finding potential distributors for their products, we set up a Become a distributor button in strategic places on the website. A click on said button leads to a quick form inciting distributors to leave their phone numbers and a few lines in order to demonstrate their seriousness. Based on the first results, we adjusted a few things to maximize the click rate of the button.

Identifying what’s missing on the website

We added a search engine on the website in order to list the terms visitors look for. We will use this information to:

• improve the visibility of the information most often sought by visitors ;
• zero in on the requested information that is missing from the website and that would be beneficial to be featured.

Results

Excellent visibility on Google

The website’s positioning has been propelled to Google’s first search results page in the United States on multiple crucial keywords.

For example, the manufacturer behind the Thymox disinfectant, located in the industrial district of Sherbrooke, showed up in 2nd place in Google USA’s search results for the « disinfectant manufacturer » expression for a few months. Since then, the company holds its position on Google’s first search results page in the United States for this keyword.

Two distributor requests per week

For last several months, our client receives, on average, two requests to become a distributors per week. They are being contacted by potential distributors from all five continents including Japan, China, Philippines, India, Middle-East, Turkey, Peru, Ireland and various states from the USA.

While discussing with our client, we wanted to find ways to improve our ‘Become a distributor’ form. However, we came to the conclusion that nothing more could be done to improve it. Indeed, according to our client, they have been receiving a lot of interesting requests. Our client cited an example from a request received earlier in the week from an interested party with a turnover of 5 billion dollars. Our client also revealed that they’ve established an internal procedure to deal with the multiple distributor requests. Every potential distributors whom contacted our client receives a short questionnaire aiming to evaluate their distributing potential.

Countries and economic regions covered by the distributors who contacted Thymox

A vital flaw on the website was found

Two months after setting up the search engine on the website, we noticed that visitors we looking for the words ‘safe‘ and ‘safety‘. Following this observation, our client confirmed that he wasn’t surprised by this finding seeing as a recent white paper says that in the United States, the main concern linked to disinfectants is human safety. Our client views this as an excellent news seeing as the Thymox product has been proven safe for humans.

We pointed out to our client that his 79 page website does not contain any mentions of the words ‘safe’ or ‘safety’. Thus, thanks to the search engine, we managed to zero in on this very important flaw. We are planning to add new content which emphasizes the product’s safety feature and then begin positioning the website on these strategically important expressions.

What’s next : Content Marketing

For the new year, we agreed with our customer to proceed with the SEO strategy and the website’s optimization. Furthermore, seeing as our client’s website is interesting enough to convince potential distributors to contact them, we will launch a content marketing strategy.

We made sure that our client was featured in social media. We began publishing interesting information for disinfectant manufacturers. Diffusio ensures the information’s optimization and spreading across social media.

We are now focusing on three objectives:

1. regularly reminding potential distributors of Thymox’s existence ;
2. get Thymox noticed by potential distributors not actively looking for disinfectant manufacturers ;
3. publicize Thymox’s news to disinfectant experts: associations, journals, etc…

What else?

Feel free to comment below. If you are a manufacturer, feel free to contact us. We will gladly take the time to introduce you to our services. Or if you know a manufacturer that could benefits from working with us, why not share this case study with them?