Logistics & Supply Chain · SEO Case Study

Zero to 58 Shipment Enquiries a Month — Built on Lane-Level SEO

Coastal Freight Solutions had two decades of reliable freight-forwarding relationships and a website Google never showed anyone. Here's how lane-level SEO and RFQ-optimized pages turned organic search into a real enquiry channel.

★★★★★5.0/5 9-month engagement Lane-level SEO + RFQ generation
0 → 58
qualified shipment enquiries a month
19
trade-lane pages ranking on page 1
6
new export markets sending enquiries
Logistics & Supply Chain
Lane-Level SEO
RFQ Generation
Client

Coastal Freight Solutions

Freight forwarder & customs broker, Chennai

Starting point

0 organic enquiries/month

Generic "services" pages, no lane-specific content, 100% referral-driven

Engagement window

9 months

Ongoing SEO + RFQ generation retainer

Services

SEO

Lane-level pages, RFQ landing pages, technical fixes

The challenge

Every New Enquiry Came From a Phone Call to an Old Contact

Coastal Freight Solutions had built two decades of trust with importers and exporters — entirely through referrals and repeat business. Its website was a single "Services" page listing air, sea and customs brokerage in generic terms, with no content for the specific trade lanes and cargo types that actual shippers search for. A new exporter searching "sea freight forwarder Chennai to Rotterdam" or "customs clearance agent for machinery exports" would never find the company, even though it had handled exactly those shipments for years.

0 organic enquiries and zero lane-specific content,
before this engagement began
01 — What we did

The Lane-Level SEO Playbook We Ran

1Week 1–2

Technical & Lane Audit

Fixed crawl and indexation issues, then mapped every trade lane and cargo type the company actually handled.

2Week 2–4

Lane-Level Page Architecture

Dedicated pages per origin-destination lane and cargo type — "Chennai to Rotterdam sea freight," "machinery export customs clearance" — matching real shipper searches.

3Month 1–3

RFQ-Optimized Landing Pages

Quote-request forms built around shipment details (cargo type, weight, destination) so every enquiry arrived pre-qualified.

4Month 3–5

Trust & Compliance Content

Certifications, customs-clearance expertise and case-study content that importers/exporters verify before choosing a forwarder.

5Month 5–7

Industrial Directory & Link Building

Citations across logistics and trade directories, cleaning up inconsistent listings that were splitting authority.

6Month 7–9

Export-Market Targeting & Reporting

Expanded lane pages toward emerging export markets, with monthly reporting tied to RFQs, not raw traffic.

i

Lane specificity is what made this rankable. Nobody else in the local market had built a page for "Chennai to Rotterdam sea freight" — thin competition meant the first lane pages hit page 1 within 8 weeks.

02 — Results

From Referrals-Only to a Real Enquiry Channel

Shipment Enquiries
0 → 58
qualified enquiries a month

Lane-level pages and RFQ landing pages built an organic channel where none existed before.

Rankings
19
trade-lane pages on page 1

Each targeting a specific origin-destination lane or cargo type, not generic "freight forwarder" terms.

Export Reach
6
new export markets sending enquiries

Markets the company had never received an inbound enquiry from before this engagement.

Organic Enquiries & Reach
9 mo
Enquiries/mo
58
Page-1 lanes
19
New markets
6
Keyword Rank Tracker
Live
KeywordPosition
chennai to rotterdam sea freight 2
machinery export customs clearance chennai 1
air freight forwarder chennai67 4
customs house agent chennai port54 3
chennai to dubai freight forwarding 5
03 — In their words

What the Managing Director Says

★★★★★

"We've handled thousands of shipments on reputation alone, but new exporters had no way to find us. Now we get quote requests from companies we've never met, already knowing exactly what lane and cargo they need moved."

MK
Manoj Kannan
Managing Director, Coastal Freight Solutions
Methodology

Enquiry figures come from tracked RFQ form submissions and call-tracking numbers on lane-level pages, compared against a zero organic baseline. Rankings tracked via a dedicated rank tracker. Timeframe and starting baseline stated above, as with every case study we publish.

Next Step

Want Shippers Finding You Directly?

Tell us your trade lanes and cargo types — we'll show you exactly where you rank today and what it would take to build a real organic RFQ channel.

Contact Sales →
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