The oil and gas industry today is still seen as a very conservative branch of the economy. Large oil companies, although they have their websites, do not need to promote them since they already have a significant number of clients.
However, when you have customers who are looking to get into the oil industry, looking for specific oil refineries, or are interested in different oil products, and so on, then they come to the Internet to search for these answers.
As oil and gas companies have these answers, it is a perfect match! So, the way to attract clients such as this, and much more, is with SEO optimization.
In this article, we will present you with the best SEO tips for oil and gas companies.
1. Know your target audience
Determining who your target audiences are is a key step in building an efficient SEO strategy. Whether we are talking about small and medium oil traders who want to build an oil refinery or tank farm, or companies that supply equipment for oil companies and refineries, and foreign marketing companies that are doing research – you should know who is visiting your website.
For instance, although representatives of large oil companies could search for this information on the Internet, it is likely possible that they will not make a deal just because they found a web resource on the Internet.
After they have visited your website, they check your company through their channels, look for any points of contact, and only after that do they call and arrange a personal meeting. By knowing this, you will be aware that this category of potential customers is into researching, so you will know which strategy and SEO tips for oil and gas companies will work best in this case.
2. Select relevant keywords and phrases
While your list should industry-relevant keywords and phrases such as oil, refinery, and so on, you should also think broader. So, you can also go for phrases such as a business plan for the construction of an oil refinery, the efficiency of oil refining, economy oil refining, oil refining, etc.
The main difference here is that these are less competitive, but more suitable keywords for the businesses. What can a person be looking for when they enter “oil” into the search form? Literally nothing. He may want to know the price of oil, he may want to buy oil and sell it abroad. The same goes for all other queries.
If someone types “refinery” in the search form, does he need a company that is engaged in marketing research of the oil and oil products market? Therefore, always focus on keywords are that are more suitable for your exact line of business.
The goal is to increase the number of site visitors and is relevant for large oil and gas companies and information sites. The advantage here is that you’ll have a complete study of the project. The disadvantage though, is that that your attention would be scattered over many sections that need to be increased. If you are not ready or able to have these sections on your site, then this goal could be unreachable for you.
3. Analyze the popularity of key phrases
An analysis of the popularity of these key phrases shows that they are not often requested by users in the main search engines.
However, sometimes you need to consider which option is better, to pay a large sum of money for having your website on the first page of the search engine for when someone is looking for “oil” and not getting a single client, or taking the first positions for free on queries such as “business plan for running an oil refinery” or “efficient oil refining”, and turn a significant number of those leads into customers.
Certain key queries can even help you get into the top 10 results. This is one main targets that suits most oil and gas companies and other big industry websites.
Based on an analysis of search results, it is also possible to understand which keywords you can use to better promote your website: high-frequency, mid-frequency, or low-frequency, and form an optimal semantic core.
If at the top there are mainly oil and gas companies with a huge assortment of products or services and your site is inferior to them, then it will be almost impossible to compete with them in terms of high-frequency keywords. That’s why it is extremely important to follow the best SEO tips for oil and gas companies, and also additional SEO strategy that can help you achieve your goals.
4. Know your competitors and their websites
You should always know the functionality of competing sites. This can include their design, page loading time, number of backlinks etc. If the functionality of a website is inferior to its competitors, then it will be ranked lower.
Based on this data, you can form a structure for your project (sections, subsections), understand what competitors are focusing on when promoting sites.
A thorough analysis of who your competition is can also help you discover one extremely important fact, and that is whether you have a lot of direct competitors or none at all. Some websites that can be classified as indirect competitors also use black hat optimization techniques that can remove them from search results.
When you know this, you can also use it to your advantage and do competent work that will see you take up first positions in all the required queries.
5. Develop a strategy that will increase your audience
A technical audit of your website is the initial stage of developing a strategy. This is carried out to assess the current state of the site, identify possible problems and eliminate them.
Strategy writing is not complete without competitive analysis. Based on the results of its implementation, it is possible to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the site, based on which another part of the tasks necessary for implementation will be formed.
After carrying this analysis, you will know what search engine promotion strategy would work the best for you.
Sometimes, this can lead to increasing your website’s promotion through changing Title tags, page description tags, changing the structure of the site, using some advanced design technologies such as CSS, etc.
6. Start a company blog or a user support page
Other strategies could include creating your company blog, where you can publish not official information, but simply thoughts and comments from your employees, etc. Here, you can also allow feedback from industry representatives, exchange views and post comments.
Or, you could also create an online user support page, with the ability to submit an online application for a business fee, and so on. However, all of this depends on the way you want to promote your brand and what are you looking to achieve.
If the site is young, it will be impossible to get it into the top 10 in a month. The fact is that either the website has not accumulated any metrics yet, or they are too small to compete with the “old” websites. In this case, you also need to correctly calculate the time that would be required to achieve your target results.
If the site has been active for a while and it has been promoted before, then it will take much less time for it to achieve those goals.
Conclusion
Some oil and gas companies will need a day to achieve a specific goal, others a week, for and for some it may not be possible at all. In digital marketing, everything is quite individual and depends on the initial data, certain conditions, and other factors.
That is why it is necessary to formulate an SEO strategy based on the best SEO tips for oil and gas companies and correctly set the tasks included that are in it. And if your approach fits those issues correctly, then you will also be able to achieve your goals as soon as possible.