Hundreds of Manutan articles bundled in six clear-cut pillar pages
Manutan specializes in materials for warehouses, offices and workshops. In addition, the company with French roots provides professional advice on, and takes care of the design of, workshops, offices, warehouses and sites from A to Z. It’s not surprising, then, that Manutan not only offers an impressive range of products, but also sits on a huge archive of highly relevant blog articles written to help buyers and users make all the right decisions. Wanting to make it as easy as possible for readers to find their way in that sea of interesting information, both Manutan’s Belgian and Dutch branch called on Onlyhumans. Providing design and copy, we created six comprehensive landing pages that together combine all articles.
Manutan and Onlyhumans: ‘old’ acquaintances
Implementing the decision to add more structure to the large amount of content was very much a phased process. Fun fact: Manutan’s subsidiaries in Belgium and the Netherlands were already acquainted with Onlyhumans. Since the beginning of 2018, we have the pleasure of writing blog articles to highlight Manutan’s expertise, dealing with topics such as “what to look for in an ergonomic office chair” and even “what kind of scaffolding do I need to optimize my warehouse?”
While already quite the avid blogger before our arrival, Manutan did not publish their articles via the best possible platform. In addition, the Belgian and Dutch branch were using different systems. Hence, we created one blog platform for both countries, which turned out such a success that even Manutan France switched to it. By curating existing content and creating new content, we worked our way up to becoming Manutan’s permanent content marketing partner. We left nothing to chance – a data-driven approach being our trademark for good reason – and covered all the important topics. After that, it was time to take the next step …
Overarching themes, from safety to waste management
We proposed the idea of introducing a pillar-cluster model, grouping related articles (clusters) into overarching themes (pillars). A pillar-cluster structure is not only user-friendly, but also boosts Manutan’s ranking and retrievability as a brand.
Together with our customer, we defined Manutan’s most important themes – themes they deemed a major common denominator for the current articles and the most relevant for their target audience (lead buyers, buyers and users). The six following themes ultimately made the cut:
- Separating and sorting waste
- A sustainable workplace
- Ergonomics at work
- How to work smart and efficiently
- Safety and hygiene in the workplace
- Office and warehouse layout
It all starts with research
Evidently, we did not choose the themes mentioned above randomly. Each of them was the result of thorough research, including:
- Keyword research:
We found out exactly what the Manutan target audience is looking for and which keywords should feature on the overview pages.
For example: “waste separation bin”. - Intent mapping:
We analyzed the (potential) Manutan customer’s intentions. Which problems are they looking to solve? What questions do they have and how can Manutan help answer them? For example: “buy 240 liter waste container” or “how to separate plastic waste?” - Content mapping:
We crawled all of Manutan’s URLs to get an overview of the most popular blog articles. In this phase, we also investigated which existing content would be a good fit for certain themes or pillar pages. - Content gap analysis:
Finally, we linked the most important keywords to the URLs to discover the gaps (read: keywords that were not yet covered by an existing page). Any gaps will soon be filled in with new content, including blogs, videos, white papers, and so on.
Writing overview pages
Based on the insights that emerged from our various studies, our copywriters started working their magic. We provided the copy for the pillar pages aimed at Manutan’s target audience in Flanders, then translated all texts for the Dutch and the Walloon market as well.
Types of content and future music
So, what does the future hold? Based on our content gap analysis, we will be expanding the number of content types with infographics, videos and more, for the topics that will benefit from it the most. Stay tuned!