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11 July 2025

Case Study: How We Built an Entity SEO Strategy for a UK Manufacturer


Repositioning an Engineering Brand Using Full-Funnel SEO and the UTOPi Optimisation Model

Following a period of diversification, a UK-based manufacturer partnered with UTOPi to realign their website strategy and implement SEO that would better support and promote their new services. Our client, known widely as a Tier 1 and Tier 2 supplier in the engineering sector had evolved significantly, investing in advanced automation, robotic technology and assembly services. However, online, they were still known primarily for their legacy offerings. Our mission was to help them reposition online, bring their newer offerings to light, and establish long-term organic traction through a sustainable SEO strategy built around entity-based SEO and the UTOPi Optimisation Model. Its website lacked semantic clarity, topical depth, and full-funnel alignment and crucially, it wasn’t discoverable in search for the newer services that now defined its competitive advantage. This case study explores how UTOPi implemented its Optimisation Model, built to provide full-funnel SEO and an entity-based strategy to deliver measurable early gains and lay the foundation for long-term topical authority.

SEO for Manufacturers

The Challenge

At the start of the project, the client’s website was flat, loosely structured, and largely informational. There was no clear separation between services and products, no internal hierarchy, and very limited semantic interlinking. Despite significant real-world investment, these innovations weren’t showcased on-site. Even when mentioned, they were buried in generic content with no supporting semantic context, schema, or link depth. It lacked the elements needed to build topical authority, surface in AI-powered search experiences, or rank meaningfully for non-branded queries.

Before our involvement, the client’s website was suffering from:
  • A flat site architecture with poor semantic clarity.
  • No internal linking strategy to support AI-integrated search.
  • Under-optimised service pages and minimal presence for newer services.

A heavy reliance on branded or legacy traffic, with little reach into commercial or exploratory search intent. While technically sound, the site wasn’t performing for new service areas and more importantly, wasn’t positioned to grow.

Building the Strategy

Full-Funnel Entity SEO in Practice

At UTOPi, we don’t offer SEO in a silo. We apply a full-funnel approach designed to meet audiences across every search stage, top (TOF), middle (MOF), and bottom (BOF) and build sustainable traction across the full customer journey.

For this manufacturer, we began by restructuring the site into two clear semantic groups: Products and Services. This provided a crawlable, logical structure designed for both search engines and Large Language Models (LLMs).

UTOPi’s full-funnel Optimisation Model is built on three integrated pillars:
  • Semantic and structural optimisation
  • Entity-based SEO and authority building
  • Content development designed to meet intent across the funnel

This model ensures that all content is aligned to search behaviour, AI comprehension patterns, and user intent, from zero-click TOF searches to high-converting BOF keywords.

For this manufacturer, that meant:
  • Rebuilding the site into a semantic hierarchy of service and product pages
  • Creating optimised landing pages for new services
  • Designing internal link pathways to express topical relationships and signal relevance clusters
  • Anchoring these themes in real-world USPs, such as physical facilities, ISO/IATF certifications, and UK-based manufacturing

Together, these strategies aimed to build the business into an SEO entity that could be recognised and surfaced by search engines and LLMs.

Architecture First

Rebuilding for Context, Clarity and Crawling

The first step was to restructure the site’s information architecture. Previously flat and disjointed, the site offered little interpretive context to search engines. Key service areas were either absent or underlinked.

We restructured the site into a clearly tiered model:
  • Top-level silos: Cleanly separated Products from Services to reflect user pain points and search categorisation
  • Pillar pages: Introduced comprehensive landing pages designed to build topical clusters
  • Internal linking pathways: Connected related content by function, buyer stage, and search intent, supporting both user journeys and LLM comprehension
This approach aligns with modern principles of information architecture for AI search, as discussed in our post on structuring SEO entities for discoverability.

Entity SEO in Action

Anchoring New Services to Semantic Signals

The core of our approach was entity-building, this meant building the client’s new capabilities into the semantics of the website through structured content, contextual linking and real-world signals. We treated each new service area as a standalone entity:
  • Ultrasonic Cleaning: We positioned this as the client’s flagship new service, connecting it to adjacent entities like passivation, medical-grade cleanliness and IATF-approved assembly. By adding references to equipment, standards and use cases, we gave Google and AI models the context needed to frame this as a specialist offering.
  • Kitting & Assembly: These were framed as value-added solutions, supporting supply chain efficiency. We were sensitive to use-case language (e.g. low-variability assembly, supply chain de-risking) and connected it to broader themes like Just-In-Time manufacturing.
  • Sustainability: The company’s investment in solar power and green production methods was moved from passive mentions into proactive SEO signals. Schema, internal linking, and dedicated page content now align with ESG-influenced search behaviour and zero-click relevance.
Each of these entities was structured through supporting keyword research, internal context mapping, and strategic placement within the content hierarchy, reinforcing the company’s new identity as a technology-led, engineering provider.

Strengthening the Entity

From Keywords to Knowledge Graph

A critical part of our approach was building the website into a search entity, a distinct, trustworthy concept in Google’s knowledge graph. We achieved this by anchoring business attributes to real-world signals on the website.
These included:
  • Geo-specific pages for each factory location.
  • Sustainability-focused messaging throughout (leveraging their solar and energy investments).
  • Specialist technical terminology matched to target audience knowledge gaps and nurture journey.
  • Skills-based descriptions of the workforce to anchor brand expertise.


Performance Overview

Strong Early Momentum Across Strategic Pages

Within just three months of publishing the new pages, we began to see positive movement in organic visibility and search traction. While these gains represent early-phase momentum, they show clear alignment with expected patterns of topical authority growth.

SEO Results for Manufacturers

Organic Visibility

  • +122.8% impressions and +109.5% organic clicks.
New commercial keywords ranking, including:
  • ‘ultrasonic cleaning’ (+131% impressions)
  • ‘passivation services’ (+102.7%)
  • ‘assembly production cleaning’ (+7,820%)
These are critical keywords tied to the client’s future growth and previously unranked.



Keyword Movement

  • Over 2,000 new keyword impressions generated.
  • Improved positions for priority terms like:
  • ‘wire forming’ ( +164.5% impressions)
  • ‘spring manufacturers’ ( +126.9% impressions)
  • ‘welding fixtures’ (+190.3% impressions)
  • New commercial keywords surfaced: Including kitting and assembly companies, ultrasonic cleaning, robot welding cobot, and more

Landing Page Traction

New pillar content is already competing with legacy pages:
  • /wireforms-and-assemblies/ saw 2,726 impressions and +140% clicks.
  • /spring-manufacture/ delivered 3,045 impressions in its first full quarter.
  • /ultrasonic-cleaning-passivation/ reached 6,636 impressions, with traffic climbing 71.4%.
These are exactly the kinds of cumulative gains we anticipate when building a site for semantic discoverability. Google's interpretation of new content is progressive and rankings for newer queries often begin with visibility growth (impressions) before click and position stabilisation.



Sustainable SEO

Building Traction for the Long Term

At UTOPi, we engineer our SEO strategies to serve the long game. Rather than chasing trends or short-term wins, we’ve prioritised sustainable SEO results that support organic traffic growth, crawlability and contextual understanding for both search engines and AI systems over time.

In this project, sustainable SEO took the form of:
  • Topic clustering: We grouped content semantically around pillar services like ultrasonic cleaning, spring manufacturing, and robotic welding, allowing us to deepen relevance and reinforce the site’s expertise.
  • Future-proofing for AI search: As search interfaces increasingly incorporate conversational responses and summarisation AI models (such as Google’s AI Overview), sites with clearly structured, entity-aligned content stand to withstand future algorithm and search behaviour developments. We’ve made the site LLM-readable by embedding schema, using consistent semantic markers and ensuring content depth across related concepts.
  • Minimal reliance on paid search: The uplift seen in new keywords such as assembly production cleaning (+7,820%) and passivation services (+102.7%) shows the power of organic-first strategy. This not only reduces cost-per-lead but builds owned visibility that compounds over time.
  • Layered content journeys: Rather than one-size-fits-all landing pages, the site now offers multiple entry points, from educational to commercial, tailored to user readiness.

Our focus now shifts to supporting content creation, deeper internal linking, and semantic reinforcement laying the groundwork for topical authority in every service area.

Why This Matters for SEO in Engineering and Manufacturing

For engineering companies and manufacturers, entity-based SEO is important because manufacturers need to be found not just for what they produce, but for what they do, the processes, innovations, locations, certifications, and real-world credentials that anchor trust.

In this case, we surfaced real-world USPs, like sustainable energy use, a skilled UK workforce, and new facilities, by mapping them directly into service content. Additionally, by reconfiguring the site to support full-funnel SEO, we’ve enabled the business to meet engineers, scientists, and buyers wherever they are in the research or procurement process.

For engineering companies and manufacturers, the SEO strategy needs to incorporate these criteria:
  • Complex buying journeys – with decision-making distributed across technical specifiers, procurement teams, and compliance leads.
  • Highly specific search terms – often long-tail, technical and non-branded.
  • Niche innovation – new technologies or capabilities that aren’t yet well-known or widely searched.
By applying entity-based SEO and designing a website for manufacturers with a knowledge-based architecture, we’ve helped this client not only gain visibility but stake a claim in emerging service markets.

Proof of the UTOPi Optimisation Model in Practice

This project showcases what our UTOPi Optimisation Model can achieve when we integrate SEO, CRO, and GEO to drive sustainable, entity-centric organic performance.

Let’s recap how the model was applied here:
  • SEO: We implemented entity-based, full-funnel content architecture; reorganised the site structure around semantic clarity; and optimised new pages for topical authority.
  • CRO: While our primary goal was visibility, we began embedding clearer user journeys, CTA placements and service anchors to improve on-page engagement.
  • GEO: We optimised the site not just for traditional search engines, but for AI-integrated search systems, from Google’s AI Overview to LLM-based tools like ChatGPT. By building the site as a semantic entity, linking real-world USPs (like their skilled UK workforce, automation investments, and sustainability credentials) with crawlable, contextual content, we’ve increased the client’s chances of being surfaced, cited, or summarised in AI search.
What sets our model apart is the combined methodology between SEO, CRO and GEO which creates more than visibility. The framework is for building SEO entities, combined with full-funnel journey structuring, to deliver clarity for humans and search engines.

If you’re looking to build long-term traction, enhance your visibility in AI-powered search, and scale sustainably, then let’s start mapping your website as an SEO entity. We’ll review your current website and walk you through key opportunities tailored to your goals and value. Drop us a message or give us a call, and we can discuss SEO opportunities specific to your website and your business goals.

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