Optimizing Your Moving Company’s Website
As a moving company, it’s important to ensure your website is shown to your ideal customers at the exact moment they are searching for movers.
If you’re not visible in that moment, you’re not an option.
Search engine optimization is critical in making sure your website appears as high as possible in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Being high in the search results renders your business visible.
Think of Google as the “referee” of your visibility. If your website doesn’t appeal to Google, your website won’t be shown to your customers.
SEO for movers can help your moving business appeal to Google and thus receive more website visitors, which (obviously) can lead to more customers and more business. SEO can also help you build trust and credibility with potential customers, as well as help establish your business as an authoritative brand in your industry.
What is SEO?
“SEO” is an acronym for “search engine optimization” and refers to the process of improving a website to improve its visibility in Google, Bing and other search engines. By optimizing their website, companies can give themselves the best opportunity to appear as high as possible in the “Map Pack” (the search results which display in the little map, as you see below) and regular search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing traffic and generating more leads and sales.
A company must have a well-optimized website to succeed in the online world. But optimizing what’s on your website is mere “table stakes” in the competitive moving industry.
There are a dizzying variety of ways to improve a website’s ranking, and they vary depending on the search engine being used. Some common methods include optimizing the website’s content, structure, and code, as well as building backlinks from other websites.
But importantly, search engines issue guidelines only; they don’t tell you exactly why they like “Website A”, but not so much “Website B”.
Why?
Because if they did, many websites would do everything exactly the same: same content, same links, same technical SEO…everything.
So who should Google select as #1?
SEO is important for businesses of all types, but it can be especially beneficial for moving companies. People who are looking for moving services are often ready to pay for the services quickly, and will just as quickly use search engines to find companies that meet their needs.
What are the benefits of SEO optimizing a website?
Fundamentally speaking, executing a monthly SEO campaign will usually and eventually increase website traffic — or the number of visitors per month.
More visitors generally means more customers and more revenue. Your phone rings more, your inbox has more inquiries when you wake up in the morning.
Here are some additional benefits of doing moving companies SEO.
Brand Development
In addition to helping you get more website visitors, SEO is great for building trust and credibility with potential customers for your moving company. When people see your moving company website appearing high in search engine results pages, they view your company as being more credible and trustworthy.
People are more likely to remember and trust a moving company that appears at the top of search results. A trusted brand is more likely to succeed in the long term.
People searching for your business by its name is called a “brand search”. Google considers “brand searches” (e.g., when someone searches for “boomcycle digital marketing”) a trust signal because it means the entity is known and trusted to varying degrees.
The Expert Advantage
The popular moving companies are those at the top of Google search results. And when people see your web page appear at the top of search results, they will tend to consider you a moving expert in most cases.
This is naturally a competitive advantage over other companies that don’t invest in SEO. Being seen as an expert can help you to win more business and increase your market share among local moving companies.
Reliable Results
Another benefit of SEO is that it can provide you with steady and reliable results.
Once your website ranks high in search engine results, you are likely to maintain that position for a long period of time. This gives you visibility and a steady stream of website visitors and potential customers without the need to pay for each click as when buying Google Ads.
While SEO is an investment up front, in the long run, it reduces your marketing expenditures as a company and can increase your profits.
How can a moving company optimize its website for SEO?
Every company’s SEO needs are different, but certain best-practices can be used to optimize a moving company website. Here are a few of my best SEO tips:
Understand your audience
Who are you trying to reach with your website? What needs do they have? What are their key interests?
As movers, your target audience will likely be people moving to a different home in a different town or state, or companies shifting to different business premises. But your particular geography or sub-niche within the broader topic of “moving”, might suggest very different types of clients.
Business movers vs. residential movers, perhaps.
Once you have a good understanding of your target audience, you can tailor your website content and web design to meet their needs.
Best practices are to always target a specific audience – a generalized website will likely result in lower rankings. The following are some ways to target your audience:
- Use keywords your customers would use to find a service like yours – these are the words or phrases that potential customers are likely to use when searching for your products or services. These words could include local movers, long-distance moving services, residential movers, or even commercial movers.
- Use long-tail keywords – these are more detailed and specific versions of popular keywords. Long-tail keywords are less competitive and can be easier to rank for, for example, “best local movers for grand pianos” or “affordable long-distance movers for valuables“.
- Use geo-targeted keywords – these will target a specific location. This is especially important for moving companies, as you want to make sure that potential customers in your area can easily find your website. Examples of geo-targeted words include “movers in Miami” or “local movers in Dallas”.
Answer your customer’s frequently-asked questions
It’s easy to find the questions that people are asking in your industry: Google will actually tell you if you simply search on a commonly-searched moving phrase.
For example, when I search for “moving companies near me”, I get a map pack and the usual search results, but Google also shows their “People also ask” or PAA section, as shown in this example:
These are actual questions that searchers are typing into Google!
Clicking into any of the questions reveals even more questions. You can go pretty deep down this rabbit hole. Suffice it to say, the questions are clearly out there, and the more of these questions you answer on your website, the more authoritative Google will consider your website’s content.
Research the competition
Part of understanding your audience is understanding the competition. What are other moving companies in your area doing to reach their target customers? For instance, they might be blogging about prices for local moves, running campaigns on social media or investing in paid ads.
Did you know that you can actually spy on your competitor’s website and see which keywords they rank for, and which keywords are actually sending visitors to their website? This is an incredible competitive advantage — if you know where to look (yes, we’re happy to help you with that!)
How can you differentiate yourself from your competition? Conducting a competitive SEO analysis can give you some valuable insights into how to optimize your own website. It is important to research your competition because:
- You learn what strategies they are using
- You learn what works and what doesn’t
- You discover new opportunities
- You stay ahead of the competition
- You make better decisions
Research moving company keywords
Target keyword research is an essential part of SEO. This involves finding the keywords that your target audience is searching for and then incorporating those keywords into your website content.
There are a number of tools that you can use to do keyword research, such as the rather broad (but free) Google Keyword Planner and the (unfortunately expensive) Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. These tools can help you to find the right keywords for your business and even know the search volume for your page. The right keywords will help you:
- Attract the right kind of visitors
- Improve your chances of ranking high in search engine results
- Get more clicks and conversions
- Improve the quality of your traffic
- Understand what your customers are looking for
Once you’ve isolated the most essential and often-used keywords, you should be sure that you’ve included them in the most logical places on your website: your title tags, meta descriptions, URL “slug” and, naturally, in the web page copy, itself since these are all ranking factors for Google.
Build citations
Citations are little listings on business directory websites (BBB, YellowPages, CitySearch, etc.) and so-called Web 2.0 (Yelp, Facebook, etc.) that typically contain your company’s Name, Address and Phone or “NAP”. Google references many of these (usually quite terrible) websites to additionally verify that the company is consistently and reliably stating who they say they are.
Sadly, it’s important that your business is included in these citation sources and that the essential information is consistent across the web so that Google reckons your business is more credible.
Start a blog and keep your website content up to date
Another way to optimize your website for SEO, for movers, is to start a blog about your moving company. A blog can help you to attract more website visitors to your on-page SEO, as well as give you an opportunity to show off your industry expertise.
A blog allows you to offer useful information for your target audience.
For instance, you can write articles about packing checklists, preparing items for storage or transport, apps to help people sell things they don’t want to move, and tips on how to prepare for a move in the months, weeks, or days leading up to the actual moving day.
Make sure to post new content regularly and keep it up to date. A blog section is important as it:
- Positions you as a helpful expert
- Gives you a platform to share your knowledge
- Helps you connect with your audience
- Increases your website’s visibility by boosting your SEO efforts
- Drives traffic to your website
- Can help you build relationships with other businesses.
Create Videos
People do business with people they know, like and trust. So take this content marketing tip to heart: make videos.
Videos make people feel as if they know you. And if you come off as a reasonably likeable authority in your niche, they may even learn to like and trust you.
Videos need not be Hollywood-style productions. Marketers often make the mistake of creating one very expensive “uber video” and plastering it all over social media. As if everyone wants to watch their commercial.
5 years later, they have 37 views.
A much more effective strategy is for any client-facing team members to create videos of specific types of moves, furniture packing tips, storage tips…basically, anything that would position the employees of the company as experts.
Start a link-building strategy
Link building is an important part of your company’s SEO. This involves getting other websites to link back to your website. The more links you have, the higher your website will rank in search engine results.
There are a number of ways to build links, such as guest blogging and directory listings. You can also use social media to promote your website and build links. Links help you to;
- Improve your search engine ranking
- Get more traffic to your website
- Build relationships with other websites
- Increase your brand awareness
- Boost your credibility
A little-used but reasonably simple (conceptually, at least!) way to get relevant backlinks is to do what used to be called a “link exchange” between your website and other geographically local, related businesses. This can increase your geo-relevance, which can help you better rank for searches with geographic specificity (e.g., “movers in san ramon”).
Make your website conversion-friendly
Conversions are important for any business website. Adding calls to action (“Contact Us for a Free Moving Quote”, etc.) and easy-to-use lead capture forms to your website can increase the potential for conversions, and make your website design more engaging. This is important because it;
- Helps you to get more leads
- Increases your chances of selling your services
- Helps you to measure your marketing efforts
- Improves your ROI
- Helps you to understand your clients better
Check Your Website’s Speed
This next factor can be a true technical rabbit hole, but the amount of time it takes to load your website is also important for SEO. People are likely to leave a website that takes too long to load, so it’s important to ensure that your website runs quickly. You can use the dreaded Google PageSpeed Insights or much friendlier GTMetrix tool to check the speed of your website and get tips on improving it.
Speed is vital as it helps to:
- Improve the user experience (and Google “notices” this)
- Increase conversion rates (ditto)
- Improve search engine ranking
- Save money on hosting costs (well, potentially, in the most extreme cases)
- Reduce bounce rates
List your business on Google Business Profile (GBP)
Another way to optimize your website for a moving company’s SEO is to create a Google Business Profile, or “GBP” (formerly “Google My Business” or “GMB”). Your GBP is a free listing that appears in Google’s Local Business results.
To create a Google Business Profile, you need to provide some basic information about your moving company, such as your business name, address, and phone number. You also need to provide a description of your business and some photos. This is important as it:
- Helps you to appear in search results
- Helps you to improve your SEO
- Allows you to share information about your business to consumers
- Helps you to connect with potential customers
- Helps you to build trust and credibility.
How can a moving company track its SEO progress?
There are a number of ways to track your SEO progress. They include:
Set up SEO tools to track your website’s SEO performance
There are a number of different tools that you can use to track your website’s SEO performance. Google Analytics and Google Search Console is a free tool suite that can help you to track your website traffic. Adobe also has a web analytics offering, and you can also use paid tools like Moz and Ahrefs to track your backlinks and keyword rankings.
You can also use even more sophisticated tools, such as the surprisingly good (and free!) Microsoft Clarity. Clariy shows “heat maps” (where people clicked on your website) and can even do screen recordings, showing as a “movie” of how people interacted with your website.
Beware though that the more tools and tags entering your code, the slower your website will load.
Regularly check the status and performance of your site
It’s important to regularly check the status and performance of your website. This will help you to identify any potential problems and make sure that your site is running smoothly. Google Business Profile Insights, Google Analytics and 3rd party tools like Moz, Ahrefs and Semrush are useful for regularly tracking your website’s performance.
A simple de-personalized Google search can also reveal interesting results.
For example, I updated this article when I made the gruesome discovery via a Google search for “SEO for moving companies” that, while it was optimized to the N-th degree, it nevertheless had dramatically fallen in rankings.
There’s always time to improve!
What are some common SEO mistakes moving companies make?
Not focusing on local rankings or moving companies ranking
One common SEO mistake that moving companies make is simply not being aware.
Who is ahead of you for your most important search keywords?
Local rankings are critical for moving companies because their services are most relevant to customers moving from or to their local area. Good local rankings are, therefore, more likely to lead to paying customers. Paying no attention to local rankings means that a moving company is missing out on many potential customers.
Not paying attention to their online reputation
Another common SEO mistake that moving companies make is not paying attention to their online reputation. This means that they are not monitoring their online reviews and ratings, which can hurt their search engine rankings.
After all, what good is it to rank #1 in the map pack if your #1 ranking comes with a 3.0 star rating?
Online reviews are particularly important for customers looking for moving services because they want to work with brands that have a solid reputation for timeliness (they will move them or their property in the stipulated time) and proper care of their belongings (especially for valuable possessions like pianos), and reliable communication.
Not tracking their results
Finally, another common SEO mistake that moving companies make is not tracking their results. This means that they are not using the appropriate tools to track their website traffic, backlinks, and keyword rankings.
If you can’t tell whether you’re achieving the best possible results (or any results at all) you’re also probably losing a lot of marketing money in the process.
Not keeping an eye on their competitors
Another common SEO mistake that moving companies make is not keeping an eye on their competitors. When you’re not at least occasionally monitoring your competitors’ websites and online activity, you may miss out on opportunities to compete or even gain an advantage in local search engine rankings.
Why Invest in SEO? Benefits of Hiring an SEO Expert
There are a number of reasons why a moving company should invest in SEO by hiring a qualified SEO company. As we’ve belabored, doing SEO can improve your website’s search engine rankings, which makes your company, at the very least, an option. More people will be able to find your website when they search for keywords related to your business.
1. Save time
One of the main benefits of investing in SEO is that it can save you time. Handling your own SEO would mean taking a lot of time learning how to perform tasks like keyword research or backlink building. SEOs have access to tools that help automate some activities, but tools cost money, and learning to use them costs time.
2. Focus on your business
Another benefit of investing in outsourced SEO is to help you to focus on your business. Handling it yourself would take you away from your core business activities and your business might suffer as a result. With an SEO expert, you get to do what you do best while allowing the experts to handle the marketing activities you may not be equipped for.
3. Better results
Hiring an experienced SEO professional always means better and faster results. Because they’ve done this sort of work before and are up to speed on the latest SEO trends, you’ll start to notice improved website search engine rankings for your website in much less time than it would have taken if you handled it yourself.
4. One measurable expense
When you hire an SEO expert, you’ll know exactly what services you’ll get and what to expect. Unlike traditional marketing, which can be difficult to track and quantify, SEO provides a variety of data points that can be used to easily measure progress and ROI.
Why Choose Boomcycle as Your Moving Company SEO Agency?
There are very good reasons why you should choose Boomcycle as your moving company SEO agency:
1. Measurable Results
At Boomcycle we deliver measurable results. This means that you will be able to track your website’s progress and see the impact of our work.
2. Full-Service Web Solutions
Boomcycle offers full-service web solutions, meaning that we can help you with all SEO-related tasks like website design, custom web development such as online calculators and other tools, and strategic digital marketing.
3. Research-Oriented SEO Services
Boomcycle is a research-oriented SEO agency, which means that we focus on finding the right topics and keywords for your website. We also build links and can help you create content designed to improve your website’s search engine rankings.
Get Started Today
Moving companies have a lot to gain by optimizing their websites for SEO. Not only will this help them attract more customers, but it can also give them a competitive edge and ensure reliable results.
At Boomcycle, we offer full-service web solutions that can help your moving company get the most out of its website. We offer research-oriented SEO services that focus on measurable results so you can track your progress and see tangible improvements in your website’s performance.
Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve success with SEO.
