The U.S. government awards over $800 billion in contracts every year.
Most manufacturers I talk to want a piece of that. They know the formal game — register in SAM.gov, get your CAGE code, respond to RFPs. They know the process.
What they don’t realize is there’s a step before all of that.
Before a procurement officer at a federal agency issues an RFP, someone on their team searches Google. They’re looking for who makes what they need. They’re scoping capabilities. They’re building a short list before the opportunity is even public.
That’s not theory. The U.S. Department of Energy found a manufacturer I worked with through organic search. No cold outreach. No contract vehicle. Just a web page that answered the right question.
If your website can’t be found for the specific things you make — the materials, the tolerances, the certifications — you don’t exist in that pre-RFP phase. You’re not on the short list. You don’t get the call.
Most manufacturer websites are built to describe what the company does in broad terms. “We’re a precision machining company serving industries including aerospace, defense, and medical.” That’s not a landing page. That’s a tombstone.
The manufacturers winning government business aren’t necessarily the biggest. They’re the most findable for the specific thing being procured.
The question isn’t whether government buyers use search. They do. The question is whether they can find you when they do.