Many mining suppliers have websites buyers and procurement teams can't assess. Here's a hypothetical WA workshop turning its services into pages they can find and check.
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Mining services marketing works differently from selling to the public. The people who find you are usually a maintenance planner, a site engineer or a procurement officer, and each one checks something different before you make their shortlist. The clearest way to show how search fits in is to walk through one business, step by step.
Meet the hypothetical supplier
This business is invented for the example. It isn’t a client, and any resemblance to a real company is a coincidence.
Say you run a hydraulic repair and field service workshop in Malaga. You rebuild cylinders, make up hoses and fittings, and send technicians to sites in the Goldfields and the Pilbara on short notice. Most of your work comes from a handful of long term customers and the odd referral.
The website was built years ago. It has a home page, an about page listing the founders’ experience, one services page that mentions everything in a single long paragraph, and a contact form. It looks tidy. It just gives search engines and buyers very little to go on.
The owner’s goal is modest and sensible: be found by site teams who don’t yet know the business exists, and look credible when an existing contact forwards the website to someone in procurement.
How buyers look for mining suppliers
Before touching keywords, picture who is searching and why. In this example there are three typical people, and they rarely search the same way.
- The maintenance planner has a failed component and a shutdown date. They search for the specific job, often with a town attached, such as hydraulic cylinder repair Kalgoorlie.
- The site or reliability engineer is comparing approaches. They read longer pages about rebuilding versus replacing, seal materials or common failure causes.
- The procurement officer already has your name. They search it to confirm you’re real, then look for safety systems, insurances, certifications and the regions you can actually service.
None of these searches carry big volumes. That’s normal for B2B work in the resources sector. One enquiry from the right site can be worth more than a lot of casual visits, so the aim is relevance, not traffic.
Turning capability into search terms
The next step is a simple spreadsheet. Column one lists every service the workshop genuinely performs. Column two lists the words a site team would use for it, which are rarely the words in the company brochure. Column three lists where the service can realistically reach.
For our Malaga workshop, the first rows might look like this:
| Service | How buyers phrase it | Where it applies |
|---|---|---|
| Cylinder rebuilds | hydraulic cylinder repair, cylinder reseal | Workshop work, freighted in from site |
| Field service | mobile hydraulic technician, onsite hydraulic repairs | Goldfields and Pilbara sites |
| Hoses and fittings | hydraulic hose supply, hose assemblies for mining equipment | Metro pickup and regional freight |
| Shutdown support | shutdown maintenance contractor, hydraulic shutdown crew | Planned shutdowns across WA |
Check each phrase by typing it into Google and looking at what ranks. If the results are national equipment sellers, the term is about products, and a service page will struggle. If the results are other contractors, you’ve found a term worth its own page. Google Search Console and the Google Ads keyword planner will show rough demand, but at this scale treat the numbers as a direction, not a forecast.
What to skip: broad terms such as mining equipment or mining services on their own. They attract job seekers, investors and students, and you’d be competing with large directories and the miners themselves.
Pages that pass a procurement check
The single services page gets split into one page per service group from the table. Each page answers the questions a planner would otherwise ask on the phone: what you do, on which equipment, in which regions, how mobilisation typically works, and what happens in the workshop versus on site.
Then add the proof procurement looks for. This is where many supplier websites fall short.
- Your safety management system and any certifications it holds, stated accurately
- The types of insurance you carry, with details you’re happy to confirm in writing
- Site inductions and access your technicians already hold
- Equipment types and brands you service, noting that you’re independent of the manufacturers
- Project summaries in general terms, naming a customer only with their written permission
Write these pages for a careful reader. Short paragraphs, specific nouns, real photos of your own workshop and vehicles. Avoid claims you can’t back up, such as being the leading or fastest provider, because a procurement officer will notice and so will your competitors.
Behind the scenes, each page needs a unique title tag naming the service and region, one clear main heading, and internal links between related services. If the site needs structural fixes first, that’s the sort of work a remote SEO agency Perth businesses use can scope, though a capable developer can handle most of it from a clear brief.
Mining services marketing beyond search
Search rarely works alone in this sector. A planner might first hear the workshop’s name from a colleague at another site, then search for it weeks later. That branded search is where the website earns its keep, so make sure the business name, address and contact details match everywhere they appear, including the Google Business Profile for the Malaga workshop.
Supplier portals and prequalification systems matter too. Many larger operators and contractors ask suppliers to register through their own systems, and the details entered there should match what the website says. A mismatch creates doubt at exactly the wrong moment.
Posts from your technicians on LinkedIn, a short write-up after a well run shutdown and a listing with a relevant industry association all point people back to the same pages. None of these replace good service pages. They give buyers a second reason to trust what they find.
If you want to see how we approach the sector more broadly, our page on mining SEO in Perth covers it. Progress in B2B search typically takes months rather than weeks, and depends on the competition and how much the site needs fixing first.
The bottom line
For a supplier like our hypothetical Malaga workshop, the work is mostly about clarity: say exactly what you do, where you do it, and what proves you’re safe to engage.
- List every service in the words site teams actually use, then check those phrases in Google.
- Give each main service group its own page, with its regions and proof.
- Add safety, insurance and induction details that procurement can verify.
- Keep your business details identical across the website, Business Profile and supplier portals.
