Client: An international logistics company with offices in eight countries
The Kricon Group is an international logistics company that specializes in the transportation of liquid cargo using tank containers and flexitanks. The company serves B2B clients worldwide, including chemical and petrochemical companies, manufacturing plants, traders, processing facilities, and food industry businesses. Its key markets include Germany, Poland, the Baltic states, Middle East, Turkey, and Central Asia
The Kricon Group operates in a narrow, highly competitive market. Globally, there are around 50 companies in this segment, with no more than 20 being large international players. A defining characteristic of the industry is that clients typically find service providers offline through recommendations, personal connections, and industry exhibitions. As a result, online promotion remains largely unexplored for most companies, creating low competition and significant untapped potential in digital channels.
The Kricon Group has been operating in the international transportation of liquid and dry cargo for over 15 years. The company employs 125 people across eight offices in different countries.
Challenge: The new website was ineffective
At a certain point, the Kricon Group decided to relaunch its website. The previous version had been in use for more than ten years, mainly as a business card. Without regular updates, it no longer aligned with the company’s business objectives. The new website was designed to be more modern and informative, with an updated structure and clear descriptions of services.
However, SEO was overlooked during the relaunch. The website was launched on a new domain, which meant that it was essentially “empty” from a search engine perspective:
- Domain Rating (DR): 0
- Organic traffic: 0
- The website did not rank even for branded queries
- For keywords such as flexitank, the site ranked far beyond the first pages of Google
The problem was obvious: even in Estonia, where the Kricon Group holds the largest market share, the company was outranked in search results by businesses that were not even direct competitors. The reason lay in missing basic SEO foundations.
Goal: Achieve top organic search rankings for core keywords in target markets
After the website relaunch, it became clear that organic search could serve as an additional growth channel, especially in international markets. To understand whether SEO could actually work in such a narrow B2B niche, the Kricon Group decided to test the channel in practice.
According to Juri Udre, Business Development Manager at the Kricon Group, the primary objective was to increase the DR of the new domain and bring the company’s website to the top of Google search results in priority countries for specific keywords, allowing potential clients to discover the Kricon Group through organic search.
To achieve this, the company decided to use paid placements in international online media with dofollow links via the PRNEWS.IO platform. Using the platform’s media catalog, the Kricon Group selected suitable media outlets based on geography, industry relevance, and other criteria, placing articles directly without intermediaries.
The project was launched as an experiment, with a limited budget and no expectations of immediate results.
Results: Top Google rankings in target countries and high-quality B2B leads from organic search
The Kricon Group took its first steps in building its backlink profile between November 2023 and April 2024 to improve the website’s Google rankings.
The impact was not immediate. Initially, the website’s DR increased from 0 to 13, which was considered a strong result for this industry. By April 2024, the company ranked first on Google for the anchor text flexitank in Poland and second in Germany. Later, the website reached first place on Google for the same anchor text in at least three European countries. In addition, the domain gradually entered the top 10 search results for the keyword in several other European countries and beyond.
“At first, we only saw growth in marketing metrics — the website’s DR was increasing, and positions in Google were improving. The real business results came later,” says Juri Udre, Business Development Manager at the Kricon Group.
At the beginning of 2026, the domain’s DR hit 20, which placed it among the industry leaders that are much bigger than the Kricon Group
A few months later, the company began receiving its first qualified inbound leads through the website, including high-quality requests from potential clients with clear, specific needs. By 2025, 5–10% of all inbound leads were coming from organic search.
“Over time, we realized that leads coming from the website are one of the best ones,” Juri Udre adds. “These are not random people. These are clients who already understand what they need and come with specific requests. For us, this is a key signal that organic search is an important channel for acquiring qualified leads in our industry.”
Process: Building website SEO using paid media placements
The Kricon Group moved step by step, consistently testing hypotheses without risking the budget. It was important for the team to understand how search engines would respond to backlink placements in their niche and across selected markets before scaling up activity.
Stage 1: Testing the hypothesis in a priority market
They started with Germany, one of the company’s key markets. The Kricon Group prepared and placed its first ten paid articles in relevant international outlets, all using the same anchor text, flexitank.
When selecting platforms, the focus was not on well-known media brands, but on niche websites with an Ahrefs DR of at least 60, monthly traffic of at least 10,000, placement costs under $300, and the ability to include dofollow links.
Since the Kricon Group initially had no experience in writing articles for paid media, they used PRNEWS.IO’s content creation service to launch quickly and establish the correct format. Later, they began preparing articles internally, as the process proved to be straightforward. All article requirements — text guidelines, link rules, and formats — are clearly specified in PRNEWS.IO’s media catalog. This approach made it possible to publish content at a convenient pace without lengthy editorial approvals.
Stage 2: Scaling the proven approach
Once the initial placements delivered visible results, including improved search rankings and increased DR, the company decided to continue with the same approach. The Kricon Group launched two additional publication cycles, each consisting of approximately ten placements. This allowed the backlink profile to grow gradually and reinforced SEO performance without a sharp increase in the monthly budget.
At this stage, the team also began strengthening existing articles with second-tier links. For this purpose, they used SEO Boost, a ready-made package on PRNEWS.IO that enhances existing articles through additional placements across a network of relevant websites. This increases the transferred link equity, accelerates results, and improves DR growth stability without increasing the number of direct placements.
Using SEO Boost made it possible to scale the existing strategy more efficiently and reinforce DR growth.
Stage 3: Moving to universal English-language SEO
To cover multiple markets simultaneously, the Kricon Group shifted to placements on English-language platforms with a European reach.
An additional advantage was the nature of the product itself: the term flexitank is spelled the same in all languages. This simplified promotion, as a single keyword worked across multiple countries and languages.
“I handle this project myself. It usually takes one to two hours, three at most, per month: selecting platforms, placing articles, and later checking how rankings and positions change,” says Juri Udre, Business Development Manager.
PRNEWS.IO team: Paid media placements proved highly effective for a business historically reliant on offline marketing
This case is particularly interesting because it involves an extremely narrow international B2B niche where SEO has traditionally been underused as an acquisition channel. The Kricon Group had no organic traffic or stable search visibility; therefore, the channel itself was viewed more as a hypothesis than an obvious solution.
By using paid media placements and gradually increasing SEO metrics, the company was able to test how organic search performs in this industry and acquire its first qualified leads through this channel. The Kricon Group case demonstrates that even without agency support, SEO can become a source of high-quality B2B leads, provided the company has a tool that enables independent management of placements, scalable strategies, and full process control.
Testimonial by Juri Udre, Business Development Manager
“For us, this was an experiment, since we had never worked with SEO before,” says Juri. “It was impossible to make things worse than they already were, so we knew that we were at ground zero. And the initial risk of the cost was definitely worth the potential reward. In the end, the website improved across all key metrics, and most importantly, we started receiving real inquiries from our target clients. Now we clearly understand the value of organic search and plan to continue developing this area.”
Next steps: Scaling up SEO and entering new markets
The Kricon Group plans to continue its SEO expansion into new markets, including Turkey, and to broaden content formats by adding expert materials about the product, the market, and the company. PRNEWS.IO enables the team to independently manage placements, control publication parameters, and develop organic visibility in international markets at a pace that suits the company. Even in a narrow and conservative B2B niche, organic search can become a source of high-quality leads when an SEO foundation is built systematically through paid media placements.
