$1.43M+
verified freelance billings. Public and verifiable, one slice of a decade of work
Your buyers search two places now: Google and AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity. First Article gets manufacturers found in both, and turns that visibility into RFQs. The AI part is the new frontier. Ranking on Google is the foundation underneath it. You need both, so I do both. Run by an actual mechanical engineer, not an agency account manager.
Pick a prompt. This is how a procurement engineer sources suppliers in 2026: one question, one shortlist, thirty seconds. If you're not in the answer, you're not in the deal.
// IN THE PAID AUDIT, WE RUN 50 OF THESE FOR
// YOUR EXACT CATEGORIES, ACROSS 4 AI PLATFORMS,
// WITH SCREENSHOTS. THEN WE FIX WHAT WE FIND.
You've paid writers who don't know GD&T from GDP. Every draft comes back needing so many corrections from your engineers that it's faster to write it yourself. So nobody writes anything, and your competitors with inferior products outrank you.
Page views don't pay for tooling. Most industrial sites that do get traffic dump it on a generic "Contact Us" page and lose the buyer. There's no capture, no nurture, no path from search to quote.
Engineers and procurement teams adopted AI search faster than the general population. AI answers pull from authority signals, structured data, and third-party citations most industrial sites were never built with. The shortlist forms without you.
No retainers-for-the-sake-of-retainers. This ladder works like your shop floor: inspection first, then a first article run to prove the process, then production. You never commit to production on an unproven process. Neither do I.
Here's the good news: getting found in AI and ranking on Google are mostly the same job: clean structure, machine-readable specs, real authority, and content that answers the buyer's actual question. I do both, because your buyers use both. The AI layer is just the newer, harder frontier built on top of SEO fundamentals most manufacturers still haven't nailed.
In manufacturing, the first article is the part that proves the process. You inspect it against the drawing before you ever run production. That's how marketing should work too: prove the system on real data before scaling spend. It's also, conveniently, what we make: articles that get found first. The name is a filter. If you know what FAI means, we already speak the same language.
WORKED WITH (direct, agency & freelance): Corning · OMEGA Engineering · Markforged · Southco · Ergotron · SIMCO · Source Atlantic · Microsoft · Google · Samsung · Databricks · Procore
PUBLISHED IN: Engineering.com · Automation World · CompanyWeek · The Medicine Maker · Forbes Technology Council
A B2B software company with a complex product and a long sales cycle needed search traffic that turned into pipeline. I built the full machine: topic clusters around high-intent queries, cornerstone content, lead capture, email nurture, and authority backlinks from Forbes and industry associations. Same physics I now apply to manufacturers: technical product, skeptical expert buyer, six-month-plus buying cycle.
This result is from an adjacent vertical, not manufacturing. The first manufacturer to run this system gets founding-client terms, and becomes the case study everyone after them pays full price to see.
| AVG. SERP POSITION | 33.1 → 8.3 ▲ |
| AVG. WEEKDAY CLICKS / DAY | 112 → 444 ▲ 296% |
| PEAK MONTH | 555 / DAY |
| TOTAL CLICKS, 9 MONTHS | 87,000+ |
| TOP PAGE CLICKS | 35,040 |
| TOP PAGE IMPRESSIONS | 2.28M |
SOURCE: GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE, JUN 2025 – FEB 2026.
FULL CASE STUDY AVAILABLE ON REQUEST, WITH SCREENSHOTS.
"Great understanding of content writing and SEO, thank you!"
CMO · INDUSTRIAL REPAIR COMPANY
"Robert was exactly what we needed when we needed it. Very professional, helped us get a lot of high-quality content together in a short period of time. We went into the project using Robert as a bridge until we made our full-time marketing person hire, and it was a great experience. Definitely recommend."
CEO · MEDICAL DEVICE MANUFACTURER
"Bob is wonderful, fully communicates understanding of the scope of work, agrees to the timeline, and voices any concerns. Always delivered. Will be using Bob in the future."
MARKETING MANAGER · ENGINEERING SERVICES COMPANY
Quoted verbatim from public reviews across 200+ engagements.
I'm Bob Hanes. I was an engineer before I was a marketer, and it shows. Mechanical engineering degree. MBA in supply chain. I sold aircraft components to militaries at Zodiac Aerospace, managed multi-million-dollar government contracts, and co-founded a medical-device startup that raised $1.2M from the NIH for a 3D lung-on-a-chip drug-screening device. I've stood on shop floors and in cleanrooms. I know what a first article inspection is because I've waited on them.
Then I spent eight years and 3,000+ proposals building a content business from $12/hour to $110/hour, writing for Corning, OMEGA Engineering, Markforged, and ninety-some other industrial and engineering companies along the way. I can interview your engineer about thermal expansion coefficients and turn it into the page that gets cited by ChatGPT and read by your next customer.
Most B2B marketers are creative writers who don't understand the product, or technical writers who don't understand revenue. I'm the gap in that Venn diagram. And the gap is where your RFQs are.
Four fields, thirty seconds. I'll run your top five buying prompts through ChatGPT and Perplexity, free, no call required, and reply with screenshots of who's getting recommended in your category. If it's you, congratulations. If it's not, you'll know exactly what to do next.
Prefer email? Write to bob@first-article.com with your company name and website. Same five prompts, same screenshots.
// NO NEWSLETTER POP-UP. NO 14-EMAIL SEQUENCE. ONE ENGINEER, ONE REPLY, REAL SCREENSHOTS.
// SOURCES: ¹AVERI / MULTI-SOURCE ANALYSIS, MAR 2026 · ²EXPOSURE NINJA, 2026 · ³GARTNER PROJECTION