Case Study: Manufacturing & Export

Helping a specialist lighting manufacturer win technical buyers in 30 countries

Sanforce makes the components that keep emergency lights on when the power fails. Its buyers are engineers and installers who default to long-established brands. Since 2019 we have helped Sanforce become the supplier that answers their questions first, in their own language.
760K
Google impressions in the last 12 months
+37%
Website traffic growth in 2024/25
5
Languages the site now speaks
12
Keywords at #1 on Google in the UK
The client

A specialist that keeps the lights on when the power goes out

Sanforce Technology (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd. has manufactured emergency lighting components in Shenzhen since 2008. Its LED emergency drivers, fluorescent emergency ballasts, conversion kits and custom battery packs sit inside the light fittings that guide people out of buildings during a power cut.

It is a narrow, technical, safety-critical field. Sanforce products carry EMC, RoHS, CE and SASO certification and are sold to lighting manufacturers, electrical contractors and distributors across around 30 countries. The people who buy them are engineers and installers who need exact specifications, wiring details and compliance documents before they will even request a quote.

2008Manufacturing in Shenzhen since
~30Countries where its products are sold
4Certifications: EMC, RoHS, CE, SASO
B2BSold to manufacturers, contractors and distributors

What buyers come to Sanforce for

LED emergency drivers Fluorescent emergency ballasts Emergency conversion kits Dimmable emergency modules Custom battery packs Emergency LED lights
The brief

Why Sanforce came to us

Sanforce had the products, the certifications and the factory. What it did not have was a way to be found by the engineers and buyers researching emergency lighting in other countries, most of whom had never heard of it and defaulted to long-established Western brands.

Competing with brand names buyers already trust

Emergency lighting is dominated by a handful of long-established names. Specifiers and installers search for those brands, their part numbers and their wiring diagrams by habit. A specialist manufacturer from Shenzhen had to earn a place in that research before a buyer would consider it as an alternative.

Technical buyers with technical questions

Engineers search for wiring, compatibility, run times and compliance. A product catalogue alone could not answer those questions, so the research happened on other sites.

Thirty markets, one language

Sanforce sells from the Gulf to Southeast Asia and Europe, but buyers in those markets search in Arabic, Vietnamese, German and Russian, not only English.

Interest that did not turn into enquiries

Visitors were downloading brochures and product documents, but too few of them were getting in touch, so the sales team could not follow up.

Search moving to AI answers

More technical research now starts in AI assistants and AI Overviews, which only cite sources they understand and trust.

The work

What we did for Sanforce

We have been Sanforce’s search partner since 2019, working as a remote extension of its marketing team and growing the programme from English-language SEO into a multilingual, international one.

Search research and structure

A site organised the way buyers search

Research into how engineers, contractors and distributors search for emergency lighting, then a site structure of product, category and industry pages built around that demand, reviewed as the market moved.

  • Search demand research across products and markets
  • Product, category and industry pages aligned with buyer intent
  • Regular reviews as search behaviour changed
Technical content

Answers for the people who install the products

A long-running content programme that answers the questions engineers and installers actually ask, so the research that used to happen on competitors’ sites happens on Sanforce’s.

  • Installation, compatibility and compliance guides
  • Buying guides for specific countries and building types
  • Product specification guides
International SEO

Speaking each market’s language

International and multilingual SEO so buyers in the Gulf, Southeast Asia and Europe find Sanforce in their own language, with content written for their market rather than simply translated.

  • Russian, Arabic, Vietnamese and German versions of the site built
  • Market-specific content for priority countries
  • Local presence in target markets
Authority

Building a name in the industry

Industry mentions, links and a presence in the places technical buyers compare notes, so search engines and buyers see Sanforce as an established supplier.

  • Ongoing authority building from relevant sites
  • Presence in industry directories and technical discussions
AI search

Visible where research now starts

AI search optimisation so Sanforce’s guides are clear, structured and trusted enough to be cited in AI Overviews and AI assistants.

  • Content structured for AI answers
  • A growing number of Sanforce pages cited by AI tools
  • Mentions that support AI citations
Enquiries

From product research to requests for quotation

A shift in focus from blog traffic to product pages and enquiry capture, so interested buyers leave their details and the sales team can follow up.

  • Product pages strengthened as landing points
  • Enquiry journey and reporting by market
Where it led

Where the work led

In 2024/25, total website traffic grew 37% and search traffic 30%, with most of it arriving through content we produced. Growth came from the markets Sanforce was prioritising rather than the US, and the site now shows up for the technical searches installers make every day, including searches that name long-established competitor brands. Its pages are also being cited more and more often in AI Overviews and ChatGPT answers.

Traffic growth in priority markets, 2024/25

GermanySaudi ArabiaPhilippinesUnited Kingdom

Non-branded technical searches where Sanforce ranks in Google’s top 5, mid-2026

2 lamp ballast wiring diagram pdfemergency light with battery backup wiring diagramled driver symbolsfluorescent light ballast wiring diagramled emergency ballast wiring diagramemergency ballast wiring diagramemergency light for warehouseemergency panel lightballast vs driverem ballastemergency light ballast

Market growth from Queens Digital’s 2024/25 annual report for Sanforce. Rankings are average Google positions from Search Console, July to September 2026. Around 12 tracked keywords ranked #1 in the UK at the time of the annual report, and the site earned about 760,000 Google impressions across more than 30 countries in the 12 months to September 2026.

Timeline

How the engagement unfolded

  1. 2019

    Search partnership begins

    Monthly SEO and reporting for the English-language site, followed by a long-tail growth strategy in 2020.

  2. 2021

    Search demand research and page alignment

    Products and pages aligned with how buyers search in Sanforce’s markets.

  3. 2023 to 2024

    Content and industry pages

    A steady content programme, industry-specific pages and a refreshed set of priority searches.

  4. 2024/25

    A year of growth

    Traffic up 37%, with strong gains in the UK, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.

  5. 2025

    International rollout

    Arabic, Vietnamese and German versions launched, with market-specific content and local presence.

  6. 2026

    Multilingual content and AI visibility

    Content published in several languages each month, authority building aimed at AI answers as well as search, and a rising number of pages cited by AI tools.

What stayed with the client

What Sanforce came away with

A seat at the technical table

Visibility for the everyday technical searches installers and engineers make, alongside the brands they already know, and increasing citations in AI answers.

Reach in its buyers’ languages

A site in five languages, with market-specific content that opens doors in the Gulf, Southeast Asia and Europe.

A site that brings in enquiries

A website that now receives requests for quotation, not just brochure downloads.

Technical buyers do not respond to slogans. They respond to the supplier who answers their question first. Our job was to make sure that, more and more often, that supplier was Sanforce.

Queens Digital project team
Services used

Services behind this work

Manufacturing or exporting to buyers in other countries? Read how we approach getting cited by AI, or see the services we used for Sanforce below.

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