SEO For Shipbuilding — your market is a few hundred people on earth. Reach them.
A yard wins a handful of orders a year. Search volume is tiny, so traffic is a meaningless number here — and anyone selling you visitors has misunderstood your business. Shipbuilding SEO does one job: be there when a technical manager researches retrofit capability, class approvals, or a newbuild at three in the morning.
Currently taking on 2 new clients this quarter — I keep the roster small so the work stays senior.
What industrial SEO does for a shipyard.
SEO for shipbuilding means being visible to shipowners, technical and fleet managers, offshore and energy operators, marine contractors, and naval procurement teams. It is a small, specific, extremely valuable audience.
Start with the thing that makes this industry different from every other one on this site. Your entire market is perhaps a few hundred people on the planet. A yard wins three to six orders in a good year. Search volumes for your terms are measured in dozens, not thousands.
Which means traffic is a meaningless metric here, and anyone quoting it at you has misunderstood the business. You are not optimising for a market. You are optimising for a small number of named technical managers, and the only question that matters is whether your capability page is there when one of them goes looking. If a single retrofit contract comes from it, the programme has paid for itself many times over. That is not marketing arithmetic — it is just arithmetic.
And there is a rare opening right now. Decarbonisation regulation is creating demand faster than the industry is publishing about it. Owners are working out EEXI and CII compliance, weighing methanol and ammonia dual-fuel conversions, scheduling ballast water and scrubber retrofits — and searching for yards who can actually do the work. What they find is very little. A yard that writes plainly about retrofit capability today walks into a category with almost no competition in it.
What a managed program includes
- Full industrial SEO audit (80+ checkpoints)
- Technical fixes: crawl, indexation, Core Web Vitals
- Capability data pulled out of PDF brochures
- Class & approvals pages (DNV, LR, ABS, BV)
- Retrofit & compliance content — EEXI, CII, dual-fuel
- Every delivered vessel as a real reference page
- Dock dimensions, crane capacity, berth availability
- International SEO for owners in Greece, DACH, Gulf, Asia
- Enquiry-level reporting — never traffic vanity
Measured in enquiries, not traffic charts.
In an industry where one contract can dwarf a decade of marketing spend, counting visitors is beside the point. What matters is whether the right people found the right page.
Maritime & industrial expertise
Class-led qualification, retrofit-driven demand, and the very small buyer universe that makes shipbuilding SEO unlike anything else.
Decarbonisation content
EEXI, CII, dual-fuel and retrofit work — the searches owners are running right now, and finding almost nothing.
AI-powered SEO strategy
Custom agents run audits, competitor monitoring and content operations. Senior output without agency overhead.
International SEO
Hreflang and country targeting for owners in Greece, Germany, Singapore and the Gulf — and German-language SEO written natively.
Dedicated SEO manager
The strategist and the implementer are one person. Nothing is lost between the plan and the build, because there is no handover.
Honest reporting
I will not dress up a traffic graph in a business that runs on six orders a year. You get rankings on the terms that matter, and who arrived.
Every shipbuilding SEO service — under one strategy.
Start with the audit, or run several together as a managed program. Each exists to move one number: qualified enquiries received.
Technical SEO For Shipbuilding
Crawl, indexation and speed — plus getting dock dimensions, crane capacities and class approvals out of PDF brochures. Benefit: usually the fastest gain available.
Fix my foundationsRetrofit & Compliance SEO
EEXI, CII, dual-fuel conversion, ballast water, scrubbers. Benefit: the biggest open opportunity in maritime search — regulation is creating the demand and nobody is answering it.
Claim this categoryClass & Approvals SEO
DNV, Lloyd's Register, ABS, Bureau Veritas — a page per approval scope. Benefit: you stop being screened out before anyone speaks to you.
Show my approvalsProject & Reference Page Optimization
Every delivered vessel as a real page — type, dimensions, class, propulsion, yard number, and what was hard about it. Benefit: your best proof, finally readable.
Build my referencesOn-Page SEO For Shipbuilding
Capability pages rebuilt around vessel type, dock capacity, and what you can actually take on. Benefit: pages a technical manager can shortlist from.
Optimize my pagesOff-Page SEO For Shipbuilding
Authority from maritime trade press, class societies and industry bodies. Benefit: one strong link lifts every capability page at once.
Build authoritySEO Audit For Shipbuilding
80+ checkpoints across technical, content, class, international and authority, ranked by impact. Benefit: you learn which fix produces an enquiry first.
Get my free auditSEO Consulting For Shipbuilding
For yards with a marketing team already in place — strategy, training, monthly advisory. Benefit: your team works the priorities that matter.
Book a consultSEO Content Strategy For Shipbuilding
Compliance explainers, fuel-pathway comparisons, drydock planning guidance — what a technical manager reads while deciding. Benefit: you enter the decision early.
Plan my contentKeyword Research For Shipbuilding
Vessel type, capability, class, and compliance intent. Low volume, extremely high value — the opposite of how keyword research is usually done. Benefit: effort where the orders are.
Map my keywordsLink Building For Shipbuilding
Earned coverage from maritime publications and industry bodies. No networks, no bought placements. Benefit: credibility in an industry built on it.
Earn real linksDigital PR For Shipbuilding
Deliveries, dock investments, class approvals, retrofit milestones — news the maritime press will run. Benefit: authority a competitor cannot buy.
Launch a PR campaignSchema & Core Web Vitals
Structured data plus LCP and INP on sites heavy with vessel and dock photography. Benefit: a manager on poor connectivity at a port office still reaches you.
Speed up my siteCompetitor SEO Analysis
Which yards surface on your vessel types and retrofit terms, with which pages and links. Benefit: you contest the handful of searches that matter.
Analyze my rivalsInternational & Enterprise SEO
Hreflang and country targeting for owners in Greece, Germany, Singapore and the Gulf, across several yards. Benefit: reach at a fraction of a delegation's cost.
Go internationalHow the work runs — discovery through continuous optimization.
SEO discovery
Your yard, docks, tonnage, class approvals, vessel types, retrofit capability, markets, and what a good enquiry looks like.
Website audit
80+ checkpoints across technical, on-page, content and authority, delivered as a ranked action list.
Technical SEO audit
Crawl, indexation, speed, schema — usually where the capability brochure turns out to be invisible.
Competitor analysis
Which yards outrank you on your vessel types and on retrofit terms, and with what.
Keyword research
Low volume, high value. Vessel type, capability, class, compliance — ranked by distance from a contract.
Class & approvals pages
DNV, Lloyd's Register, ABS, Bureau Veritas — the filter an owner applies before anything else.
Retrofit & compliance content
EEXI, CII, dual-fuel, ballast water, scrubbers. The category nobody has claimed yet.
Capability page optimization
Dock dimensions, crane capacity, tonnage, berth availability — and a clear enquiry route.
Reference pages
Every delivered vessel as a page. Your track record turned from a photo grid into evidence.
Link building
Maritime trade press, class societies and industry bodies — authority in an industry that runs on it.
Performance tracking
Rankings on the terms that matter, and which companies are landing on which pages.
Monthly reporting
A plain-language report and a call. No traffic theatre in a business that runs on six orders a year.
What your business actually gains.
More qualified B2B leads
Owners and technical managers with a vessel and a deadline.
Higher Google rankings
On the few dozen terms your actual buyers type.
Retrofit & compliance work
Regulation-driven demand in a category nobody has claimed.
Class approvals visible
You stop being screened out before the conversation starts.
More marine enquiries
From owners and operators who had never heard of the yard.
Government & offshore leads
Visible during the quiet prequalification nobody sees.
International opportunities
Owners abroad researching before they ever travel.
Better Core Web Vitals
Vessel photography that no longer costs you the port-office visitor.
Better brand visibility
Credibility in an industry where reputation is the whole currency.
Higher ROI
One contract can dwarf a decade of marketing spend. The maths is simple.
Built for every kind of yard and marine business.
A naval procurement officer and a yacht buyer search nothing alike. The playbook adapts to what you build.
Commercial shipbuilders
Newbuild yards across tankers, bulkers and container vessels.
Naval shipbuilders
Defence yards where prequalification happens long before tender.
Offshore vessel builders
OSVs and offshore support for energy and wind.
Cargo ship builders
Bulk and general cargo tonnage for commercial owners.
Cruise & passenger
Passenger vessels with long cycles and complex outfitting.
Ship repair & drydock
Repair yards competing on slot availability and location.
Retrofit & conversion yards
The growth story: EEXI, CII, dual-fuel, ballast water, scrubbers.
Marine engineering
Engineering and design houses serving owners and yards.
Boat manufacturers
Workboats, patrol craft and commercial small craft.
Yacht builders
Superyacht and leisure yards with a very different buyer.
Maritime equipment
Propulsion, deck and marine systems suppliers.
Multi-yard groups
Groups running several yards and service lines.
Representative engagements — problem, solution, result.
Clients are anonymized, and outcomes are described directionally rather than dressed up with figures I cannot show you. Referenced detail is available on a call.
Repair yard · Retrofit & compliance content
Problem: The yard could do ballast water and scrubber retrofits and had never written a word about it. Owners facing compliance deadlines were searching for exactly that and finding nothing.
Solution: Published clear retrofit capability content — what the work involves, dock requirements, timelines, class implications.
Result: Rankings in a category with almost no competition, and enquiries from technical managers at owners the yard had never worked with.
Commercial yard · References & technical SEO
Problem: Forty years of delivered vessels displayed as a photo gallery. Dock dimensions, tonnage and class approvals lived in a brochure PDF. The proof was there; Google could read none of it.
Solution: A page per delivered vessel, capability data onto real pages, indexation fixed.
Result: The track record became searchable, and enquiries began arriving referencing specific reference vessels.
Marine engineering · International SEO
Problem: New business came almost entirely from an existing network and two conferences a year. Owners in other markets never encountered the company at all.
Solution: Hreflang and country targeting, keyword research inside target markets, and capability content written for the technical manager rather than the brochure.
Result: Rankings established abroad, with enquiries beginning to arrive from owners outside the founder's network.
Feedback from marine businesses.
Shared with permission, names withheld. References available during your consultation.
"Every agency we spoke to promised us traffic. We don't want traffic. There are maybe two hundred people on earth who can give us an order, and we needed those two hundred to find one page."
— Commercial Director, commercial shipyard
"We'd been doing ballast water retrofits for years and never written about it. Owners were searching for it and finding our competitors' silence instead of ours."
— Yard Manager, ship repair & drydock
"Forty years of vessels, sitting in a photo gallery. It was the strongest thing we owned and Google couldn't read a single word of it."
— Marketing Head, marine engineering company
Why search matters even when the market is tiny.
A few hundred buyers
You are not optimising for a market. You are optimising for a small number of named technical managers. One of them finding the right page can change a year.
Traffic is the wrong metric
Low volume, enormous value. Anyone quoting visitor counts at a shipyard has misunderstood what they are selling into.
Regulation is creating demand
EEXI, CII, dual-fuel, ballast water. Owners are searching for yards who can do the work and finding very little. The category is open, right now.
Class is the filter
DNV, Lloyd's Register, ABS, Bureau Veritas. An owner checks approvals before anything else. Bury them in a PDF and you are screened out silently.
Tenders start long before the tender
Prequalification and shortlisting happen quietly, months ahead. Being credible during that period is what gets a yard onto the invited list.
Relationships have a limit
They get you into the room with people you already know. Search gets you into the room with the ones you don't — which is where growth actually lives.
Without vs. with professional SEO.
The 80-point SEO audit — run on your site, by me.
Not a template with your email address as the price. I look at your actual site and tell you what is broken, whether your class approvals and retrofit capability are findable at all, and what the next 90 days should look like. If it turns out you do not need me, I will tell you that instead.
Three ways to work together.
Cost follows your yard, your markets, and the competition in them. The written quote comes after the free audit.
Starter SEO
Audit-led foundations for yards taking search seriously for the first time.
- Full 80+ checkpoint SEO audit
- Technical fixes implemented
- Capability data out of PDF brochures
- Class & approvals pages
- Monthly performance report
Growth SEO
The full program, for yards making organic search a real source of enquiries.
- Everything in Starter, ongoing
- Retrofit & compliance content (EEXI, CII, dual-fuel)
- Reference page programme — every delivered vessel
- Link building & maritime trade-press PR
- Live dashboard + monthly review call
Enterprise SEO
Several yards, multiple service lines, multiple markets.
- Group-wide optimization at scale
- Multi-market international SEO
- Dedicated digital PR campaigns
- Conversion optimization program
- Quarterly strategy workshops
Questions shipyards ask most.
What is SEO for shipbuilding?
Our market is tiny. Does SEO even make sense?
Why do shipbuilding companies need SEO?
Can SEO generate marine industry leads?
How long does SEO take?
How much does shipbuilding SEO cost?
Which keywords should a shipyard target?
Why does decarbonisation matter for our SEO?
How do class societies affect our visibility?
What is technical SEO?
Do you optimize shipbuilding project pages?
Can SEO help with government and naval tenders?
Can SEO help us reach international buyers?
How important are Core Web Vitals?
What is an SEO audit?
How is ROI measured?
Be the yard they find at three in the morning.
The free audit shows whether your class approvals and retrofit capability are findable at all, what is broken technically, and what the next 90 days should look like. No commitment. And if your site turns out to be in decent shape, I will say so rather than invent work.
SEO for shipbuilding across Europe.
Delivered remotely, with keyword research done inside each target market and German-language SEO written natively for DACH owners and operators.
Highlighted locations link to a dedicated guide — more country guides are published regularly.