+25%
Organic search visibility (27.0% → 33.8%)
+65%
Search share of voice (5.8% → 9.5%)
+64%
Estimated traffic from tracked keywords
14
Product keywords with major ranking gains
Industry
Industrial cutting & welding equipment
Market
United States · B2B
Services
SEO, AEO, content
Timeframe
Oct 2025 – Oct 2026
Tracked keywords
73 product terms
The challenge
A crowded category where buyers research for weeks before they call
This manufacturer builds portable cutting and welding automation for fabricators, shipyards and heavy-equipment builders across the U.S. Its buyers are engineers and plant managers who research for weeks before they request a quote, and they search with very specific product terms.
The category is crowded. Distributors, import brands and marketplace listings all compete for the same searches. When we benchmarked 73 product keywords in October 2025, the brand held a 27% visibility score with 25 keywords in the top three. Several of its highest-intent product searches sat on page one but below competitors, and Google’s AI Overviews were starting to answer buyer questions before anyone clicked a result.
Visibility then dipped to around 20% through the summer of 2026. The goal was to recover that ground and own the searches closest to a purchase.
Our approach
Four workstreams, measured every week
01
Product page targeting
Rebuilt on-page targeting for the core category and product detail pages around the exact terms engineers search when they spec equipment.
02
Buyer-education content
Published guides that answer pre-purchase questions, such as how to choose a portable welder and how rail-guided welding works.
03
AI search optimization
Structured product and content pages so Google’s AI Overviews could pull them in and cite them as the answer.
04
Weekly rank tracking
Monitored all 73 keywords weekly in Semrush, including AI Overview citations, and adjusted pages based on what moved.
The results
Visibility at its highest point of the year
Visibility recovered from its summer low and climbed to 33.8% by late October 2026, its highest level in the 12-month period. Search share of voice rose from 5.8% to 9.5%, and Semrush’s traffic estimate for the tracked keywords grew 64%.
Fourteen product keywords made major ranking gains over the year, including three that weren’t in Google’s top 100 a year ago. Six held the #1 position every day of the final week, and Google’s AI Overviews for two core product searches now cite the company’s own pages as the answer.
Why AI answers matter
Being the cited source beats ranking first below it
When a buyer asks Google about automatic welding equipment, the AI Overview at the top of the results now cites this manufacturer. That answer sits above every organic listing, so being the source it quotes puts the brand in front of buyers before they scroll to a single competitor.
What's next
Turning search visibility into quote requests
With visibility at its high point for the year, the next phase focuses on conversion: sharpening the calls to action on the product pages that now rank, and extending buyer-education content to the remaining product lines.