Logistics and transportation
Shipping
Ocean movement and the paperwork around it.
Ocean cargo moves on documents. A bill of lading, an HSN code, a berth window, a contract rate agreed in March. Every one of those is a question an importer now types into an engine before ringing anyone. Forwarders and brokers publish almost nothing on any of it, which leaves the answer to portals. That gap is the opening.
Where the answer is being lost
Shipping questions get answered long before the enquiry arrives.
Shipping runs on deadlines, and the reading happens at each one. Before the letter of credit is opened. Before the bill of entry is filed. Before the tender closes in March. By the time anyone rings a forwarder or a broker, they are already carrying a version of the answer: a bank's checklist, a tariff lookup, a market commentator's view of where rates are going. What they carry is usually broadly right and specifically wrong, and in this trade the specifics are the whole cost. The correction arrives as demurrage on a held container, a re-filed shipping bill, or a rate fixed at the top of a cycle. The firm that could have supplied the right version on the day was not in the answer, because it has never written any of this down.
How we win this
The programme for shipping
Answer the paperwork questions
A first export order generates twenty questions in a week. Incoterms, letter of credit terms, certificate of origin, e-BRC, what a shipping bill actually contains. Forwarders answer these on the phone and publish none of it. answer-pages and blogs that walk through each document, who issues it and when it must exist, become the source an engine reaches for.
Explain duty, never advise
Classification is where the money is and where the risk is. So the writing explains the rule, the chapter note, the circular and the date it took effect, and stops short of ruling on a specific consignment. That distinction is stated on the page. It makes the content usable by an engine and safe for the broker whose licence is on the line.
Show how a rate is built
Nobody publishes ocean spot rates and nobody should. The structure behind them holds: BAF, THC at each end, peak season surcharge, what a contract commitment buys against the spot market, how the season moves. Writing that explains the mechanism gets cited when a shipper asks what is happening to rates, without ever putting a number in public.
Be verifiable, not marketed
Terminal business does not arrive through a search. A line's operations head books a berth through a commercial agreement, not a website. What content can do is make the terminal easy to verify: draft, crane productivity, rail connectivity, licence and concession detail, all machine-readable. schema and listings carry that. We do not claim it produces enquiries.
The mix that carries it
Content
Answer and comparison pages
Cost, process, eligibility and comparison pages built for direct extraction, not for a reader who scrolls.
Content
GEO blogs and authority content
The definitive written answer to the questions your buyers put to an engine, structured so it can be lifted and attributed.
Foundation
Entity and schema engineering
Structured data and entity definition so engines know exactly what you are, where you operate, and what you are credible in.
Authority
Directories and profile consistency
Every listing, registry and profile saying the same thing, so the entity resolves to one business instead of three.
Authority
Digital public outreach
Earned mentions, trade coverage and third-party citations — the corroboration a model checks before it names you.
Measurement
AI Presence tracking
Standing measurement of inclusion, share of answer and competitor movement as models update.
The constraint we work inside
Nothing we publish rules on a live consignment. A heading, a valuation, a duty position on somebody's actual goods is a licensed opinion with a bill attached, so the writing explains the rule and stops at the line where it would become advice, and it says so on the page. Rates stay off for a separate reason: an ocean number published today is a number a shipper quotes back at you in September, long after the market moved under it. Berth and terminal business is contracted under concession, ship by ship, so we do not sell content as a source of it and the ports work is priced accordingly.
Specialisations
4 total
The pitch is different for each one, because the buyer, the trigger and the rules on what may be published are different for each one. Open the one that is yours.
An export manager has to decide whether to fix a rate for the year or ride the spot market, and he makes that decision months before a single container is booked.
The question deciding this today
“How do ocean freight rates move through the contract season”
- Who they sell to
- Shippers moving containers and bulk by sea
- Who signs
- Export or import manager
- What starts it
- Contract season, rate spike, capacity shortage, route disruption
- Cost of staying invisible
- Rates locked at the top of a cycle
"How do ocean freight rates move through the contract season" is a question about what happens next, and everything an engine can reach to answer it describes what already happened. Indices report the week that has gone. The shipping press reports an announcement after it is made. Neither explains the shape of the year: when lines open negotiation, what a minimum quantity commitment obliges when spot falls below the contract rate, which surcharges are inside the agreement and which are levied on top of it. Carriers and NVOCCs know the shape precisely and publish sailing schedules. So the shipper builds his negotiating position out of last week's numbers and his own theory of the mechanism, and the people who could correct both are absent from the answer.
What we would run
- 01GEO blogs and authority content
A contract season explainer maintained through the cycle: how annual tenders are structured, when lines open negotiations, what a minimum quantity commitment obliges on both sides, and how surcharges reset. Updated, dated, no rates.
The export manager researches this in the weeks before the tender, which is the only window where an outsider can enter a relationship-led purchase.
- 02Answer and comparison pages
A line-item page for every charge on an ocean invoice. BAF, CAF, THC at origin and destination, peak season surcharge, congestion surcharge, detention and demurrage clocks, and what each one is actually recovering.
Invoice queries are the one moment a shipper searches outside their forwarder. Being the explanation they find puts you in the conversation without dislodging anyone.
- 03Entity and schema engineering
Structured entity data for the service: trade lanes operated, ports of call, sailing frequency, equipment types including reefer and out-of-gauge, and transhipment hubs. Facts an engine can retrieve when a question is lane-specific.
A question about reefer capacity to Jebel Ali or out-of-gauge on a Colombo transhipment has a short list of correct answers, unlike a question about rates. An engine can only put you on that list if the lanes and the equipment exist as data rather than as a line in a sales deck.
- 04LinkedIn
Short operational notes when a route is disrupted: what a Red Sea diversion does to transit time, where equipment is short, which transhipment hub is backing up. Written by someone who runs the desk.
Export managers follow disruption on LinkedIn in real time, and that is the moment relationships get tested and occasionally replaced.
What we would not recommend
- Reviews and testimonials. A shipper judges a carrier on rolled bookings and schedule reliability, and both are already measured weekly by third parties. A gathered testimonial cannot be read alongside a reliability table without looking like an answer to a question nobody asked.
- Original data and benchmarks. The only original data an ocean operator holds is its own booking and rate history. Publishing it hands your negotiating position to every line and forwarder on the lane, and rate information circulating in public between carriers is not ground for improvisation.
What a lead looks like
It arrives as a request for a second opinion. An export manager already holding a quote from his forwarder writes to ask whether one of the surcharge lines on it is what you would expect, because he has your invoice breakdown open and that entry is not on it. He is not moving the booking. He wants to know whether he is being told the truth about the market, and if the answer is useful he puts you on the list when the tender goes out.
What we measure
- Inclusion on contract season questions
- Named on lane-specific queries
- Tender invitations traced to content
- Surcharge pages cited by engines
What changes
An SME owner sending a first consignment to Rotterdam gets in touch having already read your document walkthrough, and wants a forwarder for the shipment rather than a quote to compare. An import manager arrives with a detention notice and a classification they have already half-answered from your page. An export manager wants to talk contract cover before the season closes. Fewer price shoppers, more people who have already decided you know the file.
Start here
See who gets named in shipping today
We put your buyers' real questions to the live models and come back with the businesses they name, the sources behind those answers, and the gap between that list and yours.