An engineering company serving metallurgy and energy works in a narrow niche where demand is made up of rare technical queries, and its site hadn’t yet been built for search. Together with the client we rebuilt the site around services, solutions and industries, and less than five months after the new version launched, targeted enquiries came through it. By the end of the work the site was getting 397 clicks a month from Google.
Results at a glance
Google clicks a month
~0 → 397
Traffic growth in a very narrow niche with low-volume queries that still had to be found
From the new site’s launch to enquiries
5 months
Five months after the new site was built, targeted enquiries came to it from search.
Average position for tio2 manufacturing process
2.37
Search Console, February 2024, up from 4.85 over the previous 28 days. For titanium slag the position went from 4.95 to 3.23.
Traffic and rankings in this case come from the client’s Google Search Console and GA4, because Ahrefs estimates traffic from its own index, and in this niche its estimate was 14 times lower than the real clicks. More on why below. Key actions are quoted as a share only.
Before
A niche SEO tools barely see, and a site not yet built for search
| Client | M HEAVY TECHNOLOGY, mheavytechnology.com |
| Niche | engineering for metallurgy, power generation and mining |
| Markets | US and English-speaking markets |
| Services | SEO strategy, site structure, content, link building, analytics, LinkedIn |
| Period | May 2023 – March 2024, 11 months |
| Status | completed |
| Team | 8 specialists and project managers |
M HEAVY TECHNOLOGY designs and modernises heavy industrial plants, from blast furnaces and their cooling systems to sinter plants, gas cleaning, mineral processing plants and titanium dioxide production. A separate line is CFD modelling, which means building digital models of real equipment. Its buyers are metallurgical, power and mining companies.
At the start the site got almost no organic traffic. Right away we worked through the industry’s professional terminology and the company’s audience together with the client.
The goal
A plant engineer should find M HEAVY when looking for a solution
A steel plant decides to modernise a shop to pass an environmental inspection, launch a new product or use less energy. The plant’s engineers write a plan and a technical spec, then go looking for solutions and work out a cost estimate. What they type into search is a specific solution, such as “blast furnace cooling system” or “titanium slag production”.
That’s the step where M HEAVY TECHNOLOGY needed to show up on Google. In a niche where every deal is large, what matters most is who arrives, and the constraints were these:
- SEO tools barely see the niche, so decisions would have to rest on the site’s own data;
- only the company’s engineers can write the texts, so each page has to be taken from brief to publication;
- the site had no sections for solutions or industries, just a list of business lines.
What we did
The niche map first, then a new site, then links
May – June 2023
A competence map, market analysis and thorough improvements to the site
The site was created before the company took up search, so we started with an audit and fixes for it.
Markets chosen together with the client
For an engineering company the choice of market drives everything else (which pages to build, what to write about, where to point links), and only the company knows where it can really deliver a project. Demand for plant modernisation is also pushed by outside factors, environmental rules and energy prices. So we analysed technologies, industries and adjacent markets with those factors in mind and built a competence map, which the client used to choose the markets for the site.
A “services / solutions / industries” structure
A plant engineer searches for “blast furnace cooling system” or “titanium slag production”, and each query like that needs a page that answers it specifically, which a list of business lines can’t provide. So we proposed three sections (a service is what the company does, a solution is the plant problem it removes, an industry is who it’s for) and briefs for homepage, industry, service and solution templates with blocks that handle buyer objections and show the company’s strengths. We dropped a separate “technology” page type, because technologies fit into the solution and service templates.
What the client did. The client implemented part of the audit recommendations within a few weeks (structured data for breadcrumbs, contacts and articles, a Reference Lists page) and started preparing templates from our structure briefs.
Outcome. No organic traffic yet, with GA4 near zero. But the “services / solutions / industries” structure was in the mock-ups.
July – October 2023
Only the client’s engineers know the subject, so they wrote the pages for the new structure, while we prepared briefs and edited them ahead of the site launch
The subject is too narrow for a copywriter, and a factual or logical mistake in a text can cost a potential contract. So the client’s engineers wrote the texts, and we prepared the briefs and did the editing. Pages for the new structure piled up while the new site was being assembled on a test server, and before launch we checked the whole thing.
The engineer writes, we edit
A copywriter can’t write about a sinter plant in a way a chief engineer would believe, while an engineer writes precisely, and our job was to bring the text into the language of search. The second trap was the FAQ, because the questions search suggests for these topics mostly come from students, while a buyer wants to know something else (roughly, how long the modernisation will take and whether the shop will have to stop). So we kept the engineers’ texts and edited them (a monthly SEO check, editing for an American reader, calls to action and FAQs with buyer questions), and wrote a separate CTA guide for the briefs so each one would include calls to action.
Pages for the new structure
Solution and industry sections are only as useful as what’s in them, so we wrote briefs for the homepage, 6 solution pages, 6 service pages, 3 industry pages and blog articles. The topics followed the competence map.
Topics matched to the client’s expertise
Without an expert, a text in a niche like this won’t convince a buyer, so we chose topics to match the company’s expertise.
A new site, checked before launch
A mistake at a new site’s launch shows up for Google on every page at once, so the pages have to be checked on a test server before they reach live production. That’s why, before release, we checked the new site (templates, FAQ, meta tags, breadcrumbs, 404, the HTML sitemap, what to remove from old posts) and gave recommendations for the footer, an Our Projects section with case studies and the engineers’ Our Team pages, because a buyer of engineering services wants to see who’ll do the project and what the company has already done.
The company’s LinkedIn
The client asked us to take on social media too, and for an engineering company LinkedIn is where engineers and plant managers are, the same buyers. So we ran the company’s LinkedIn (weekly posts built on industry news, images for them, connection requests among metallurgical engineers).
What the client did. Finished the templates (services, solutions and industries, a blog with categories, partners, footer, mobile versions), and the new site was assembled on a test server. The client provided case studies for Our Projects and the engineers’ details for Our Team.
Outcome. Organic traffic in GA4 stayed near zero, because the new pages were waiting for the site to launch. By the end of the stage the test server held service and solution pages, the first articles, and the Our Projects and Our Team sections.
November 2023 – January 2024
After the new site launched, organic traffic went up
Guest posts in a narrow niche
A new site without links struggles to climb, and hardly anyone writes about metallurgy; there are few relevant sites, they get little traffic, and many have dubious topics in their link profiles. So we started guest and sponsored posts on business, technical and environmental sites, where an article on gas cleaning or mining waste looks at home.
Internal links between articles and services
Internal links show search engines which pages are connected and which matter more, and for a reader they’re the path from an article about a technology to the page for a solution the company sells. So we suggested making the industry icons on the homepage clickable, leading to the matching blog categories, and linked the published articles, solutions and services together in waves.
New lines
Later the site expanded into new lines, so new briefs went to a BIM services page and to articles on them, and, as before, the client’s engineers wrote them from our briefs.
What the client did. Launched the new site with the “services / solutions / industries” structure and templates from our briefs, published pages quickly and made fixes after our checks, 21 pages in 3 months (7 services, 4 solutions, 1 industry, 9 articles).
Outcome. Organic sessions in GA4 started climbing and kept speeding up until the end of the project. The first enquiries came through the form.
February – March 2024
Pages built from our briefs brought 397 clicks in a month
Engineer bylines on the articles
A text backed by a named specialist earns more trust than a byline from a faceless “team”, and for a buyer an engineer’s byline is also a showcase of the company’s expertise. So the articles now carry engineer bylines, with an author block, a link to the author’s Our Team page and internal links from those pages.
Links to key pages
We pointed links to the homepage and the general service pages (CFD, manufacturing engineering, power plant engineering).
New topics and editing for the reader
An engineer who’s buying reads fast, so we also edited the engineers’ texts for an American reader: shorter sentences, active voice. We also wrote briefs for 4 more articles.
What the client did. Added an author block under the articles and specialists’ pages to the site.
Outcome. Search Console showed 397 clicks, 24,514 impressions and a CTR of 1.62% over 28 days, and 6 of the 7 top pages by clicks had been built during the project (including the TiO2 and titanium slag articles). Rankings rose and held steady at the top. But the main thing is that targeted enquiries came in.
What was hard
The tools couldn’t see the niche, and only engineers could write
Ahrefs predicted 28 clicks where we pulled in over 10 times as many, 397
If you just look up competitors’ topics in Ahrefs and judge them by its data, you might never start doing anything, and that would be a mistake. The reason lies in the niche itself, because demand here is a long tail of narrow technical queries that simply aren’t in Ahrefs’ database.
So every decision in the project rested on real data from Search Console, since we scattered certain “semantic traps” across the pages to find out the real demand.
The engineers knew the subject, we knew how people search
An engineer writes precisely, just not the way people search. Two similar articles about BIM, for example, cover two different query clusters, meaning people look for the same thing from two sides. Expert writing takes longer, so we planned the cycle from brief to publication with time to spare.
We left the changes the pages needed for search as comments, and those changes were made. That’s how we worked, with the substance staying with the engineers and search language with us.
Almost nobody writes about metallurgy
Link building needs sites that cover your topic, and very few cover metallurgy. Plenty of candidates had dubious topics in their link profiles, and we screened those out. Competitors hardly build links at all, but their domains are older and stronger, so they reach the top more easily. So we placed articles on business, technical and environmental sites, where a piece on gas cleaning or mining waste looks at home.
After
Clicks go to what the company sells
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Organic traffic in GA4 near zero | 397 clicks a month |
| No sections for solutions or industries | Six of the seven pages with the most clicks appeared during the project |
| The site brought no enquiries from search | Targeted enquiries started coming in |
For a company that sells plant modernisation, 397 clicks a month isn’t “a little”. What matters most here is which pages collect the traffic. Just as important is what’s written on them and how, because in markets like these the cost of an inaccurate or unclear text is too high.
Why it worked
Three decisions without which the niche would have stayed invisible
Clicks over estimates
We checked each direction in Search Console. By Ahrefs the niche looked empty, and we simply wouldn’t have gone into it.
A structure built around what plants buy
Separate sections for solutions and industries, a page for each solution, and topic clusters of content built around those pages.
The client’s engineers as authors
The company’s specialists wrote the content. In industries like these an ordinary copywriter can’t “simulate” expertise, because errors of meaning and technology are inevitable. And one such error destroys a potential buyer’s trust completely, and a contract worth a sum with a great many zeros will fall through at the stage where the company presents itself.
Takeaways
Three lessons for narrow technical niches
- Don’t trust outside traffic estimates in a narrow niche. Ahrefs showed 28 visits a month here, while real traffic was 14 times higher.
- In niches like this, leaving “semantic traps” on your pages is a good tactic. Mention another topic or service that doesn’t exist on the site yet, in the content or in internal links, and watch Search Console closely. Impressions for those keywords will tell you “whether there are any fish there”. Then move forward step by step.
- Expert content needs an expert writer. A copywriter can’t write about a sinter plant in a way a chief engineer would believe. An engineer can, given the right brief and a little editing afterwards.
Questions
What people ask about this case
How long did it take to see the first results?
About six months. For the first months organic traffic sat near zero, because the structure was effectively being built, the texts written and the new site prepared. After the launch the curve went up, and within 4 months Search Console showed 397 clicks in 28 days.
Why not Ahrefs in this case, like in the others?
Because here Ahrefs was off by a factor of 14, with about 28 visits a month against 397 clicks in 28 days in Search Console. Ahrefs estimates traffic from its own keyword database, and the long tail of narrow technical queries isn’t in it.
Who wrote the texts for such a narrow niche?
The company’s engineers. We gave them briefs with target queries and structure, checked the SEO, edited for an American reader and added calls to action and FAQs.
Do SEO and GEO make sense if a niche has “no” search demand?
Create “semantic traps” or cheap versions of pages. Wherever you see impressions in Search Console, that’s where to go and build the pages out. By the same logic, you need to set up prompts to track in LLMs.
