Local SEO Tips For Movers

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1. Make Use of Google My Business Listing

As a moving company, you must make use of Google My Business Page listing to attract more local customers. Add your business address, contact details, opening hours and photos to the listing.
Remember, Google will show your listing when locals search for “movers near me” or “packers and movers in my city”. Statistics say that since 2011, “near me” searches have skyrocketed by 34 times.
Likewise, at least 50% of the people who do a local search tend to visit a business the same day. The best part of Google My Business Page is that it is a free tool.
Quick Tip: Google allows customers to review your business. If customers leave good reviews, thank them.
If someone raises an issue through a review, answer the person right away. It will increase your credibility.
Another tip to establish trust is to add videos of your services/company to Google My Business Listing. Videos will help your site rank better in searches.

2. Produce High-quality Engaging Content

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Never underestimate the value of good content. There is a vacuum for good content related to Packing & Moving. Create a blog targeting your audience. Educate your audience with infographics, blogs, videos, how-to guides, packing and moving tips.
People often search for moving checklists, city guides and packing ideas before moving to a new location.
Leverage your blog content and convert them as your customers. Don’t forget to promote such content on platforms such as Pinterest. Creating engaging and quality content will make your site a traffic magnet.
Ensure your content has the right keywords, but avoid keyword stuffing. Search for common queries related to Packing and Moving in platforms such as Quora and create unique content around it.
“How to find the right packers and movers?” is one such query.
Give answers to people’s moving-related questions as a mover. There is a high chance for them to consider you in future when they are ready to move to a new place.

3. Optimize Your Website to Stay On the Top

Optimizing your website for mobile devices is no more an option but a necessity now. Around 60% of searches come from handsets. If one lands on your moving company’s desktop site on their handset, chances are high for them to exit immediately even if your site provides value.
Google, in 2018, started implementing mobile-first indexing. The algorithm is now considering the mobile version of a site as against the desktop version to rank it. So make your website mobile responsive.
See how a leading moving company created pages for every city they serve.
Another key aspect you need to pay attention to is your moving company’s site navigation. You may want to add topics such as ‘Pricing’, ‘Free Estimate’, ‘Types of Rental Services’, ‘How It Works’ to your website. Make sure to categorize your contents aptly under the right heading.

4. Use the Right Keywords to Grab Potential Customers

Think from a website user’s point of view. How would you search for packers and movers?
You are likely to use phrases like “moving services near me”, “affordable movers” and “best movers in my city”.
If you want to find more keywords, create a free Google AdWords account. Once you are in, you will get free access to Google Keyword Planner tool.
You can find how much traffic each keyword(s) generates. Once you are ready with a list of keywords, you can categorize them into two broad types.

• Keywords With Buying Intent
• Keywords With Research Intent

Keywords such as “Furniture movers in Orlando” have strong buyer intent. Whereas, keywords such as “How to pack furniture for moving” have research intent.
You should create content and pages around Buyer Intent Keywords for best results. That does not mean you should not concentrate on Research Intent Keywords. The searchers may consider you in future if you provide answers for their questions.

5. Build Citations and Earn Links for Your Website

A citation is nothing but your business NAP’s (name, address and phone number) online listing in directories. Yelp, Yellowpages, BOTW, AboutUs, Foursquare and Spoke are some of the credible directories.
For E.g., Take a look at this moving company citation from Foursquare
People assume that directories are dead. But it is not true. Search engines’ algorithms reward a site if it has a listing in high-quality online directories.
As links are still a ranking factor, local citations are now a tiny ranking factor. On the other side, local citations bring traffic to your site directly.
Links, on the other hand, play a major role in making your site rank higher in Google listings. Not all links are good. You have to have links from quality sites.
In other words, sites, where your prospects spend time, must be your focus. Links from local realtors, warehousing, cleaning and truck rental services will send quality traffic to your site.
Another SEO tip for local businesses is getting links from local dailies and high-authority sites. Angie’s List, Consumeraffairs and Expresit are some of the high-authority sites. It will dramatically boost your moving company’s Google ranking.

6. Have Multiple Service Pages to Target Multiple Cities

Movers often operate between different cities. But many do not have a separate service page for each location where they do business.
Having a dedicated page for every service location can bring a tonne of traffic to your site. The reason is that people do searches with location-specific keywords. “Movers in Springfield”, “San Diego moving companies” and “Miami movers” are a few.
Supposing you have a separate page for each of the locations you operate, Google will rank your site based on those pages. Also, you develop a connection with a moving company searcher from a suburb like Fish Hawk of Tampa, Florida when he/she lands in your site that says “We offer moving services in Fish Hawk”.
Likewise, have a FAQ page and fill it up with the most common questions.
Frame questions such as:

• “How much does it cost to hire your company?”
• “How do you move my piano?”
• “Do you move antiques/fine arts?”
• “How do you move my items during rain?” and
• “What are the benefits of hiring your moving company?”, and give appropriate answers.

7. Increase Your Local SEO Authority to Increase Your Reach

Guest-articles are a great way to show Google that your site has value aka local SEO authority. Guest-articles are a hook to catch people’s attention.
To begin with, you need long-form articles, preferably between 3,000 and 5,000 words, written around the local keyword(s) such as “Movers in Denver”. Also, write articles that have around 1,000 words and summarize them into an easy-to-read one.
A piece such as “7 common mistakes people make while moving” will do fine. Make local media outlets publish these articles with links to the main one on your site.
Ensure your site’s presence in leading industry-specific directories. Make the most of Google maps and develop live citations.
For E.g., Take a look at the citation profile of this Moving company in Austin.
BrightLocal, a local marketing company, says movers who rank 1 to 3 in Google Maps at least have five live citations. Work hard to make your audience engage with your listings.
Add photos and videos of your team’s on-site work, such as packing and shifting. It will prompt the audience to ask questions. Make sure you answer all the questions.

8. Get Unbiased Reviews for Your Website

Good reviews are great social proof. Ask your customers to leave a review on Google or your website or your social media pages.
Reviews are a great local SEO strategy that will help your site rank higher. Reviews signal engagement to Google. The more reviews you get, the higher the chances for a cold customer to start considering your packing and moving company.
Some ask questions in reviews; keep an eye on such replies, and respond quickly. It will build trust among your prospects.
As a moving company, you can also work with review and comparison websites. Keep a tablet or an iPad ready at your office for customers to write reviews.
If you want to go the traditional way, give them a printed handout with instructions on how they can review your services online.
Review websites like trustedpros.ca, truspilot.com and homestars.com allow people to review your company’s services. For that, you must create your company’s listing on such sites.

9. Optimize Your Content For Locals

If you are a moving company operating at the Southern states of the US, you are not going to get a customer from Nevada. Hence, optimize your content for locals.
Get in touch with the local merchants and media persons to get noticed. Curate content that specifically caters to the needs of your local audience.
Learn about the moving problems faced by the locals and include local SEO keywords in your blog. Ensure long-tail keywords in your content. Remember: Using long-tail keywords is a rewarding local SEO strategy.

10. Reach Out to Influencers Relevant to Your Brand

Make a list of influencers in the Moving and Packing world and connect with them.
Influencers can help you in two ways:

• Publishing your content on their site, and
• Spreading it in their circle.

Another great local SEO tip is your connections with local media outlets. Magazines and neighbourhood newspapers can make your moving company popular among the audience. They use Expert Opinion, Interviews and Featured Articles to achieve this.

11. Make Use of Question and Answer Platforms

As a mover with a blog, you need to give answers to the questions your audience have. Make use of Question and Answer platforms such as Quora, Yahoo! Answers, Wiki Answers and Answerbag to find questions related to the moving industry.
Pinterest and Reddit are another two great sites to find what doubts people have on packing and moving. Create content around such questions and soft-sell your services.
You can use quora.com to find such questions. For E.g., Take a look at this example.
Provide answers to the burning problems faced by your audience and start watching your traffic spike. Pain-point SEO targets high-intent keywords rather than high-volume keywords.
The idea behind this local SEO strategy is not to achieve traffic growth but to get leads, real leads. The process goes like this:

• Finding customer pain points/burning problems,
• curating contents around their problems,
• finding the right keywords to attract them.

12. Increase Your Page Speed & Reduce Bounce Rate

Another local SEO strategy one must pay attention is site speed. Website users’ attention span has decreased drastically over the years.
Ideally, an average website user expects your site to load in 2 seconds or less. If a user exits your website due to slow speed, the person suggests Google that your site does not provide value.
Use Google PageSpeed Insights tool to increase your site’s speed. Keep your Google PageSpeed Insights metric as high as possible.
If yours is a WordPress website, use WP Rocket, a sophisticated plugin, to increase the Insights score. Users say the score increases anywhere between 20-30% while using this plugin.
Similarly, pay attention to your site’s Navigation and Look & Feel. Cluttered and unattractive websites chase away visitors. If visitors go back to the search results right after landing on your site, Google will throw your site farther down.
Use Google’s open-source program Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to increase your site’s speed.

List of Popular Moving Company Directories

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Moving.com

According to moving.com, the site has over 60 million unique monthly users. It only allows licensed and insured companies to be listed. Moving.com is an exclusive partner of the American Moving & Storage Association (AMSA).

Moversdirectory.com

Movers directory is one of the leading directories for moving companies. The site attracts good traffic by giving free moving quotes, moving tips and tricks, and guides. Akin to moving.com, moversdirectory.com too accepts only licensed companies.

Movewithmovers.com

Movewithmovers.com is a mover’s delight as it allows you to list your company for free. It claims to be the world’s largest domestic & international movers directory with 10,000+ companies listed in its site.

Moverworldwide.com

Moverworldwide allows moving customers to contact the movers from its portal directly. Companies can list themselves for free. The site has an option to list your company in Bold letters with your company logo and a link to your site.
Are you looking for Local SEO for your moving company? You are in the right place. We are experts in ranking moving websites across the globe. Reach us to get a customized quote for your website.