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In transport, part of the freight goes through freight exchanges, chartering platforms and forwarding agents. On Google, these intermediaries and business directories hold the first page as soon as the search is general. I'll be frank, you won't take their place. Yet your company has two audiences to reach directly. The first is the shipper, a manufacturer or trader, looking for a regular haulier for its flows. The second is the driver, whom many companies in the sector are trying to recruit. I organise your website so each of them finds a precise answer.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroSeven results, only one that owns lorries
A logistics manager is looking for a haulier for pallets leaving Cognac. The top six lines are a freight exchange, two chartering platforms, a comparison site, a directory and a guide. Your company, which runs that route twice a week, is in seventh position. Move it up.
Fig. 1. Seven results for pallets leaving Cognac. Six of them don't drive a single lorry. (The shipper wanted the same driver every week. The freight exchange offered a new one with every shipment.)
What this means for you. I write on your pages what an intermediary can't say: your goods, your routes, your departure days and the name of the person in operations.
SEO for a haulier is the work that makes the company visible on Google to two audiences: shippers looking for a provider for a type of goods or a route, and drivers looking for an employer. It relies on one page per type of transport, per sector served and per area covered, on a complete recruitment section and an up-to-date Google Business Profile. It's judged by the quote requests received directly and by applications from drivers.
The problem
For “haulier” followed by a region, or “pallet transport quote”, the top results are freight exchanges, chartering platforms, comparison sites and directories. They put hauliers in competition on the price of a journey. On these broad searches, a company website barely appears.
The home page displays the fleet, the year the company was founded and a map of France. The logistics manager wants to know something else: which goods, which packaging, which regions, how often. Without those words on the page, Google doesn't link you to any of their searches.
You're short of drivers, and your website offers an email address at the bottom of a “Join us” page. Drivers compare several employers from their phone. They want to know the rounds, the hours, the equipment and the conditions. If they find nothing, they apply elsewhere.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
Your transport and logistics partner
Responsiveness, reliability and proximity: we carry all your goods, any distance.
Request a quoteFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Here are six plausible searches, four on the shippers' side and two on the drivers' side. They're only examples. The audit draws up the real list based on your activities and your routes.
What works
Each activity has its own page: the equipment, the goods accepted, the constraints, the sectors served, a contact in operations. I start from your profitable activities. A “transport, logistics, chartering” list on a single page answers no search at all.
Your regular routes and your delivery areas are your real offer. I write them out clearly, town by town, with frequencies. I don't create a page for a region your lorries don't go to: the shipper would notice on the first call.
A “You're shipping” section brings together what a shipper wants to read before calling: your activities, your routes, your delivery tracking, your lead times as you phrase them. It ends with a short quote request, sent to the right person.
One page per type of job describes the rounds, the schedules, the equipment provided, how often drivers get home and how to apply in two minutes from a phone. You approve every piece of information, since it commits you to your future employees.
Shippers and drivers read your profile. I put your real photos, your operations hours and your activities on it. On the website, I present your transport licences and certificates based on the documents you send me, without commenting on their content.
What costs dearly
An image of a map contains no words Google can read. Nor does the shipper know whether you deliver to their town every day or once a month. Areas need to be written out.
That's the intermediary's phrase, which they can live up to because they subcontract. A haulier gains by saying what its own vehicles do well and regularly.
A vacancy published as a poster can't be picked up by Google or by job sites. Each vacancy needs its own page in text, with the job, the location and the type of contract.
The same form serves the private individual moving a piece of furniture and the manufacturer shipping twenty pallets a week. Two or three questions tailored to each activity sort the requests as soon as they're sent.
The method
Four steps. Shippers and drivers each have their own strand, and I run both in parallel.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 200 searches a month for a haulier on your route or speciality, 3% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €15,000 per client. Click-through rates by position are rough estimates, and they've been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your numbers
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
In Charente, transport follows what the département produces. Around Cognac, bottles, glass, cartons and boxes have to be carried to bottling sites, then to the ports. Around Angoulême, print and packaging workshops ship pallets all over France. A shipper searches with the name of their goods and their town. I know this département, where I co-founded the Newp agency, and I write your pages in those shippers' words.
Cognac houses, glassmakers, carton makers and label printers depend on one another, and each expects an on-time delivery. If you serve this sector, a page says so, with the precautions you take for fragile, high-value goods. Only name a client with their agreement.
Workshops around the town receive raw materials and ship finished products, often on pallets. A haulier that passes through these business parks every day can say so: regular collections, pickup times, groupage to neighbouring regions.
Drivers compare employers on rounds, starting location and getting home in the evening. A page naming your depot, the areas served and the types of rounds answers their questions. It speaks first to candidates who live nearby.
Beyond Google
A logistics manager now describes their flow to an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral, as they would to a colleague. For example: “I ship fifteen pallets of bottles a week from Cognac to the Lyon area, I'm looking for a regular haulier rather than a freight exchange. Who should I contact?”. A driver does the same to find out which companies are hiring near them.
The AI answers with what it has read on websites, Google Business Profiles, trade directories and job ads. A haulier that writes down its goods, routes and frequencies gives it an answer. “Palletised bottle transport, departures from Cognac twice a week to the south-east” can be repeated. “Your transport and logistics partner” can't.
Question asked to an AII ship fifteen pallets of bottles a week from Cognac to the Lyon area. Which regular haulier should I contact?
Three options for this weekly flow:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
These three haulage companies are made up. They show different starting points. The plan for yours will come after the audit.
It depends on two large clients and a freight exchange for its return loads.
Its warehouse is half empty and its website mentions it in a single sentence.
Its lorries sometimes stay at the depot for lack of staff.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
The big chain has sat up there for years, hogging every click. Grab the piece and slide it into the slot.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds to topple a giant.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
On general searches, no. I'm not selling you that. For a type of goods, a route between two regions or a town, a haulier's page can show up. The shipper typing those searches wants a regular provider, not a price for a single journey.
No. They help fill a return load or a quiet week. SEO aims at something else: direct, regular clients who take up more of your business over time. You keep both and watch how each one's share changes.
Do the sums with your own numbers. A regular flow represents many journeys a year, sometimes for several years. Two or three serious contacts a quarter can be enough. If your routes don't match any search, the audit will show it and we'll leave it there.
It helps, without solving the problem on its own. A complete recruitment section and vacancies published as text make you visible to drivers searching near home. The conditions you offer are still what decides. My job is to make sure they're read.
Only what you send me. You tell me your licences, your certificates and what they cover. I present them where the shipper looks for them. I don't explain any road haulage rules and I write nothing about an activity you're not licensed to carry out.
You do. I provide a structure: the job title drivers type, the starting location, the type of round, the contract. The content of the ad and its compliance are your responsibility. I take care of how it's published and found.
Rarely. A price depends on weight, volume, distance and the return trip. Explain instead what you need to quote and how quickly you reply. A shipper prefers a fast, accurate answer to a rough price table.
By stating clearly that you work for businesses, on the Google Business Profile and at the top of the website. I target business searches and adapt the form's questions. A few will still come in, which your operations team can turn down with a standard reply.
Yes, if it's a real part of your business. Shippers want to know what travels in your vehicles and what you hand over to other hauliers. A separate page for each way of working avoids misunderstandings. You confirm to me what your licences allow you to advertise.
Not the way you do. My trade is SEO, which I've practised for fifteen years, with more than 200 websites followed. I know how to find what your shippers and future drivers type. For the rest, I rely on what your operations team explains to me during the audit.
See also
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