From Zero Digital Presence to a Full RFQ Pipeline — Regional Lifting Company
How we built organic and paid search visibility for an Ontario crane and lifting specialist, generating qualified project RFQs from across the province.
Before engagement
- Monthly organic visitors
- 40
- Rankings for target keywords
- 0 of 20 target terms in top 50
- Monthly RFQ inquiries (digital)
- 1–2
- Google Ads spend
- $0
- Domain rating
- 3
After 10 months
- Monthly organic visitors
- 680 (+1,600%)
- Rankings for target keywords
- 14 of 20 target terms in top 10
- Monthly RFQ inquiries (digital)
- 18–22
- Google Ads CPA per qualified RFQ
- Within target for project economics
- Domain rating
- 22
The Challenge
A regional lifting and engineering company with 20+ years of field experience had almost no digital presence. Their work spoke for itself — referrals kept the business running — but their pipeline was entirely relationship-dependent. When a key referral partner retired, the business felt the exposure immediately. The company's website was a 2015-era static page with no mobile optimization, no content, and no Google presence. They needed a digital pipeline that could generate qualified RFQs from project managers, general contractors, and industrial clients across Ontario — without relying on any single referral relationship.
What We Built
Website rebuild — performance and SEO foundation
The existing site was non-indexable on mobile and scored 28/100 on Google PageSpeed Insights mobile. We rebuilt on Astro: Core Web Vitals green on launch (LCP 1.4s, CLS 0, TBT 0ms), SSL, XML sitemap, structured data. The rebuild was treated as an SEO-first project — URL structure, heading hierarchy, and schema were designed before design was finalized.
Service and application-specific content
Lifting and crane services are searched by application (tower crane rental Ontario, industrial rigging GTA, SPMT transport Ontario) not just by service category. We built 16 service + application pages targeting the specific queries that project managers and GCs actually use when researching lifting partners. Each page was 1,200+ words, included technical specifications, FAQs, and project scope examples — demonstrating the depth of expertise that qualifies a company for complex projects.
Google Ads — high-intent project query targeting
Because lifting projects have high contract values and long sales cycles, paid search is economically viable even at high CPCs. We built a Google Ads account targeting 34 high-intent commercial queries: 'crane rental Ontario project', 'heavy lift contractor GTA', 'industrial rigging company Ontario', and related terms. Tight match types, project-qualified landing pages, and an RFQ form calibrated to collect enough detail to qualify leads before any phone time is spent.
Authority and trust signals
In B2B lifting and engineering, trust is non-negotiable before an RFQ is even submitted. We built: equipment specifications pages (with actual lift capacities and certifications), a project portfolio section with real completed projects (anonymized for client privacy), certifications and compliance pages, and Google reviews generated from completed project stakeholders. Authority-building content targeted trade publications and contractor association directories.
Process & Methodology
Month 1: website rebuild in parallel with keyword research — the rebuild was SEO-informed from day one. Months 2–3: content production (4 service/application pages per month) and Google Ads soft launch with conservative budget while conversion data accumulated. Month 4: Google Ads expanded as conversion patterns emerged; link building campaign began targeting contractor associations and trade directories. Months 5–10: compounding phase — content cluster expanded, domain authority built, organic rankings for primary terms reached page 1. By month 8, organic RFQs were exceeding the Google Ads volume, allowing budget reallocation from Ads to content expansion.
"We went from being invisible online to being the company that GCs find when they search for lifting work in Ontario. The RFQs coming in now are qualified — they know what we do before they call."
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