A Trade Buyer Can't Enquire About a Supplier They Can't Identify

If you import or export goods, your next customer is probably already researching suppliers, and most of that research happens before anyone fills in a form. This guide explains what search engine optimisation and generative engine optimisation mean for trade firms, and how to start. If you want the service view, our Export / Import Businesses GEO services page covers how we work on the AI side.

What SEO means for export and import businesses

SEO is the practice of making your website the right answer when someone searches. For a trade business the searcher is rarely a consumer. It is a buyer at a retailer, a purchasing manager at a manufacturer, a distributor looking for a new line, or a founder sourcing a first product from overseas.

Their searches tend to be specific: a product type plus a material, a certification, a minimum order, or a country of origin. That specificity is good news. A small company with a well-structured site can compete for narrow searches that large trading houses ignore.

Good trade SEO usually rests on four things:

• Clear product and category pages. One page per product family, with specifications, materials, capacities, packaging, lead times and the markets you serve.
• Credibility content. Certifications you hold, quality processes, factory or warehouse details, and how an order moves from enquiry to delivery.
• Buyer-led guides. Pages that answer what a buyer asks before they are ready to talk, such as how to compare suppliers or what documents come with a shipment.
• Technical health. Fast pages, clean URLs, correct language and region signals, and structured data so search engines can read the site.

Our Export / Import Businesses marketing agency page explains how these fit together, and our SEO service covers the technical side in more detail.

What GEO is and why it matters now

Buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews to shortlist suppliers or explain a sourcing question. The answer they get is assembled from sources the system trusts, and your company is only included if those sources describe it clearly.

GEO is the work of making that more likely and more accurate. It means:

1. Stating exactly what you make or trade, where, and for whom, in plain language.
2. Keeping company details consistent across your site, directories, trade associations and marketplace profiles.
3. Publishing factual, well-structured pages an AI system can quote without guessing.
4. Checking what the assistants currently say about you and correcting gaps at the source.

There are no guarantees here. AI systems change, and nobody controls what they cite. What you can control is whether the facts about your business are available, consistent and easy to extract. Read more on our GEO service and AI answer optimisation pages.

SEO vs GEO: which comes first

SEO comes first for nearly every trade business, because GEO draws on the same foundation. If your product pages are thin, your company details conflict across the web, or your site is hard to crawl, adding GEO work on top will not help much.

A sensible order looks like this:

Getting started

You do not need to do everything at once. Start with an honest look at how you appear today.

• Search for your main products the way a buyer would, and note who appears.
• Ask an AI assistant who supplies those products and see whether you are mentioned, and whether it is accurate.
• List your ten most important products and check each has its own page with real specifications.
• Make sure your legal name, address and contact details match everywhere.

A mention of a regulation on your site, such as import documentation or export licensing, should always be checked by someone qualified, because rules change and differ by product and destination.

When you want a baseline, our free audit looks at your search and AI visibility, and our content writing service can produce the product and guide pages once priorities are clear. If paid search is part of your plan, see our ads service.

Information Gain

Compare a vague product enquiry with a sample brief containing the details your team needs. Explain the most consequential omission and who confirms it. Let recurring gaps guide content, keeping customer specifications private and destination eligibility, suitability and delivery terms within transaction-specific review.