Client name withheld under NDA.
Logistics is a hard category for search. A shipper looking for a forwarder compares several firms, asks for quotes, and often takes weeks to decide. The searches that matter are specific, such as air freight rates to a particular city or how customs clearance works for a certain cargo type. Large global forwarders own the broad terms, so a mid-sized Singapore company has to win on clear service pages and honest answers.
This client handled air, sea, warehousing and customs for manufacturers and traders. For two years a freelancer had written 12 blog posts a year on general industry topics. The work was tidy and the posts were well written, but there was no keyword plan behind them and nobody had looked at the technical side of the site. Service pages were short, the quote form asked for too much, and only 7 enquiries a month from search were good enough for sales to follow up. We recorded these figures before touching anything.
We crawled the site, checked indexing and speed, and then went through all 24 posts the freelancer had written. We matched each one to the search data. Posts that already brought steady visits stayed untouched. Posts that covered the same topic were merged into stronger pages, with permanent redirects from the old addresses. We fixed duplicate titles and broken internal links as well.
The earlier writing was not wasted. Some of it ranked and was kept as it was. Merging the rest gave search engines one clear page per topic and saved the company from starting again.
We rebuilt the air freight, sea freight, warehousing and customs pages around the questions shippers ask: lanes served, cargo types, transit times, documents needed and how a quote works. Each page got a plain-language outline, a short FAQ and a clear route to the quote request. The customs page needed input from the operations team, so it went live a month later than planned.
Buyers in logistics read the service page before they ever fill in a form. Pages that answer their questions earn trust, and they match the specific searches that bring in serious enquiries.
We built a content plan from keyword research, grouped by service and by buyer question. Over the next months we published articles on topics such as how to choose between air and sea freight, what a freight quote includes and how to prepare cargo for customs. The sales team supplied real questions from calls, which shaped the headings and the answers.
A plan tied to search demand meant every article had a reason to exist. Using questions from real sales calls kept the content practical, so readers could see the company understood their daily problems.
We shortened the quote request form, kept only the fields sales needed first, and added tracking for form starts, form sends and calls. Each month we reviewed the numbers together. We agreed a simple rule with the sales team on what counted as a qualified enquiry, and they marked each lead in a shared sheet every week. Reports then counted qualified enquiries, not raw form fills.
With a long sales cycle, traffic alone tells you little. Counting qualified enquiries showed which pages brought real prospects, and a shorter form meant fewer people gave up halfway through the request.
We kept link building light and focused on relevant sources: trade associations, industry directories, supplier partners and a few guest articles in trade publications. We also refreshed the best pages with new data and added internal links from articles to service pages. Air freight terms stayed on page two at month nine, because global forwarders dominate them, so we stopped chasing them and put the effort into sea freight and warehousing.
Steady links from relevant sites supported the rebuilt pages without risky shortcuts. Being honest about which terms were out of reach let the effort go where it could win within the budget.
After nine months, qualified enquiries from organic search had gone from 7 to 21 a month. Organic visits rose from 1,200 to 3,300, and keywords in the top 10 grew from 14 to 71. Visits to the service pages tripled, which matters more than blog traffic for a firm that sells freight. The quote form completion rate climbed from 31% to 58%, and referring domains grew from 38 to 61.
Audit finished, old posts merged and redirected, air, sea and warehousing pages rebuilt. Little movement yet.
Rankings began to rise from month 4. Content plan running, shorter quote form live and qualified enquiries counted weekly.
Customs page ranking, link building steady, and qualified enquiries reached 21 a month.
Of the 24 earlier posts, the ones that ranked stayed as they were and the rest were merged. Changing the approach did not mean throwing the freelancer's work away, and it saved months of effort.
Service page visits grew from 420 to 1,260 a month. In logistics, buyers judge a firm by its air, sea, warehousing and customs pages, so those pages deserve the first rebuild before any new blog posts.
Long sales cycles hide the truth in raw numbers. Agreeing with sales what counts as qualified showed that enquiries went from 7 to 21 a month, and that gave the company a reason to keep investing in search.
Tell us about your lanes and services. We will review your site and show you where search can bring in better enquiries.