These days, all businesses need good web traffic. This is true whether your business is online or offline. Though Delray Beach SEO is my specialty, I’ve offered SEO services to a variety of industries, in a variety of areas. In the ‘SEO For…’ Series, I explain how SEO works for different industries.

What Makes Moving Company SEO Different

In many industries, one of the goals of SEO is to keep a potential customer on the website for as long as possible. The longer they’re on your website, the thinking goes, the more comfortable they become with your business brand. And the more comfortable they are with your brand, the more likely they are to actually buy from you.

That’s not how it works for moving companies.

If you’re looking for a moving company, chances are you’re not looking for a long-term business relationship. Moving is one of the three most stressful events someone can go through in their life, so most customers are going to have a simple goal: find a moving company they can trust, then do the move.

Blog writing is still important, but it’s not because you’re looking to build a relationship with your potential customers; instead, it’s more important as an indicator to Google that your website is continually updating.

Link building is also important, but link building for moving companies comes with its own quirks. You see, it’s not just about getting high-quality sources to link to your website.

It’s about getting the right local links.

It’s All About Location

To understand why moving companies need to keep their SEO as locally-focused as possible, we should use an example. Take “Chicago Movers,” a search term which gets an average of 2,400 searches a month.

The vast majority of people typing “Chicago Movers” into a search bar are going to be looking for a Chicago moving company. Sounds like the sort of person you want to attract!

What’s the first thing they’re going to see?

Pay-per-click ads (PPC ads, for short) are the first thing that pop up on most search engine results pages (SERPs, for short). They’re a subject for another post, but I will say this: while PPC ads can be valuable, especially for new businesses, most younger people skip right past them. Frankly, they’re not the search results that instill trust in your business.

Instead, that distinction belongs to the next group of links they see.

This is the Local 3-Pack, which is where moving companies want to rank highly. You want to rank well in the 3-Pack because it contains the first non-PPC result that customers will see.

So the question becomes, how do you rank highly in the Local 3-Pack?

You have to focus on getting links from local websites. Make sure you’re in the right directories, that your name, address, and phone number are consistent across all the sites mentioning your name.

That takes a lot of time and energy, plus a little bit of know-how. But I can’t tell you exactly how I do it. If I gave away my tricks, what sort of business would I be running? 😉

Moving Company SEO is Brutal

Honestly? A lot of moving companies are already doing great SEO. They’ve got blogs and a high-quality link profile. They’ve spent thousands building their websites, making sure everything runs properly.

If you look at moving search terms for most metropolises, you’ll find that the first several pages of results are filled with websites that have committed to good SEO practices. Truthfully, this isn’t about finding some new technique that’ll demolish your competition.

A lot of moving company SEO is about catching up to the competition.

Are you not on the first page for “[Your City Name] movers”? If so, you’re missing the vast majority of customers that could be coming your way.

As I’ve hopefully proven in this article, I know my stuff. I can help you get your search rankings where they need to be.

Interested? Contact me for a free 15-minute consultation.