Moving is one of the highest-intent local search categories, customers need someone now and they're comparing 3 results in under 5 minutes.
Local SEO for movers means showing up when someone searches "movers near me," "moving company [city]," or "local movers [zip code]", queries that happen every single day from people who have already decided they need to move and are choosing a company right now.
The challenge for moving companies: you're competing not just with other movers, but with aggregator platforms (HireAHelper, Moving Help, Angi, Thumbtack) that rank above organic results and cherry-pick the best leads to resell. This guide covers how to rank above those aggregators, capture direct leads from Google Maps, and build the review volume and service area coverage that keeps your phone ringing.
The same local search tactics apply to other verticals, including local SEO for self storage.
The same approach carries over to neighboring categories, as our guide to local SEO for courier services shows.
Moving companies face a unique local SEO landscape:
Multi-city service areas: Unlike a restaurant that serves one neighborhood, a moving company might serve 20 cities across a metro area. Each of those cities is a separate ranking opportunity, and each requires its own optimization.
Aggregator competition: HireAHelper, Angi, Thumbtack, Moving Help, and Yelp rank on page 1 for "movers near me" in most markets. These platforms take a cut of every lead they send you. The goal of local SEO for movers is to own enough real estate in Google Maps and organic results that you don't need to pay for those leads.
Seasonal demand spikes: Moving demand peaks May–August. Businesses that build their SEO foundation in Q4 and Q1 are positioned to capture the summer surge. Waiting until June means you miss the peak.
High intent, fast conversion: Someone searching "movers near me on Saturday" has already decided to move. The click-to-call rate for moving queries is among the highest of any local service category.
📊 Flento Data: Flento's analysis of moving company GBP profiles shows that companies with 50+ reviews and service area pages for 5+ cities receive 4.1x more inbound quote requests than companies with fewer than 10 reviews and no service area pages.
For a closely related vertical, see our guide to local SEO for piano tuners.
Your GBP is the primary ranking signal and the primary source of direct phone calls. Here's how to build it out completely:
Primary category: "Moving Company" is the correct primary category. Don't use "Mover" or "Trucking Company", "Moving Company" is the category Google uses to match against "movers near me" queries.
Secondary categories: Add every relevant type: "Storage Facility" (if you offer storage), "Moving and Storage Service", "Piano Mover" (if you handle specialty moves), "Long-Distance Mover" (if you do interstate), and "Packing Service" (if offered)
Each secondary category expands your query eligibility, especially for modifying searches like "piano movers near me" or "moving and packing company."
Service area: Add every city and zip code you serve. Google uses your declared service area when ranking your listing for searches in those cities, even if your physical address is elsewhere in the metro. Cover your full service radius.
Services list: Add explicit services in the GBP Services section: local moving, long-distance moving, residential moving, commercial/office moving, packing and unpacking, furniture assembly, storage solutions, and specialty items (pianos, antiques, safes)
Description: 250–300 words covering your service area, years in business, license/insurance status (customers look for this), and what makes you different. Include "licensed and insured," your primary city, and key service variants.
Hours: Moving queries happen outside business hours. Your GBP hours should show that you respond to inquiries 7 days a week if that's true, many moving searches happen on weekends.
⚠️ Common Mistake: Setting service area to just one city when you serve 15. Every city you don't list is a market where you can't appear in Local Pack results, regardless of your proximity.
The same approach carries over to neighboring categories, as our guide to local SEO for solar companies shows.
Reviews are the primary ranking differentiator in moving company local SEO. A company with 150 recent reviews at 4.8 stars will outrank one with 20 reviews at 5.0 in the same area, every time.
The Moving Company Review System:
Moving companies have a natural advantage for review generation: every job ends with a direct interaction. Use it.
At job completion: Train crews to ask at the point of satisfaction, right after the customer confirms everything went well and is clearly happy. "We really appreciate your business, a quick Google review would mean a lot to our team. Here's a card with a direct link."
Post-job text: Send an automated text 2–4 hours after job completion with a direct Google review link. Keep it short: "Thanks for choosing [Company]. If everything went smoothly, we'd love a 30-second Google review: [link]"
Follow-up email: Day 1 after the move, send a follow-up email checking that everything arrived safely. Include a soft review request at the bottom.
QR code on receipts and paperwork: Every piece of paper the customer gets should have a QR code linking to your Google review page.
Review response is not optional: Every review, positive and negative, needs a response. For moving companies specifically, negative reviews from unhappy customers are a buying signal for future prospects. How you respond tells potential customers whether you're the kind of company that makes things right.
Volume benchmarks: In most mid-size metro markets, moving companies in the Local Pack top 3 have 80–200+ reviews with ratings of 4.5+. In major metros (NYC, LA, Chicago), the benchmark is 300+ reviews.
🔥 Quick Win: Look at your last 20 completed jobs and identify which customers left no review. Text them today with a direct Google review link and a single sentence asking for feedback. Even getting 5 new reviews this week changes your competitive position.
A single-page website or a GBP-only presence limits you to ranking in your immediate area. Moving companies that dominate multiple cities do it through dedicated service area pages.
What a service area page needs:
For each city you serve, create a page with:
Each page needs a title formatted as "Moving Company in [City Name] | [Your Company Name]" and a URL like /moving-company-[city-name] or /locations/[city-name]. Fill the page with specific content about moving in that city, neighborhoods served, common apartment complexes or office districts, and any local quirks (parking, elevator reservations, local traffic patterns). Include your license number and insurance information to build trust, the distance and time from your location to theirs, customer testimonials from that specific city, an embedded Google Map of the service area, and LocalBusiness schema with the city-specific address point.
What not to do: Don't create 20 pages that are all identical except the city name swapped in. Google detects thin location pages and won't rank them. Each page needs genuine city-specific content.
Minimum viable city page: 500–800 words covering the city genuinely. Mention specific neighborhoods, landmarks, common move types (apartment moves, suburban home moves, office moves), and any local considerations.
Schema for service area pages: Use areaServed in your LocalBusiness schema to declare each city, and add serviceArea with geo coordinates for each page.
Understanding how customers search is the foundation of moving company keyword strategy. The search vocabulary has clear patterns:
High-intent primary queries (target these first): "movers near me", "moving company [city]", "local movers [city]", "moving companies in [city]", and "affordable movers [city]"
Service-specific queries: "residential movers [city]", "apartment movers [city]", "commercial movers [city]", "office movers [city]", "long distance movers [city]", and "piano movers [city]"
Modifier queries that indicate readiness: "same day movers [city]", "last minute movers [city]", "movers available this weekend", and "movers [city] reviews"
Budget queries: "cheap movers [city]", "affordable moving company [city]", and "moving quotes [city]"
Map your service area pages and blog content to these query clusters. Your homepage targets the primary "moving company [your main city]" query. Each service area page targets "[city] movers" for that city. Blog content targets the long-tail modifier queries.
Backlinks from local and industry-relevant sources build the prominence score that moves you up in competitive local markets.
The best link sources for movers:
Real estate connections: Real estate agents, brokers, and apartment complexes regularly refer movers to clients and tenants. A partnership where an agent lists you as their preferred mover, with a link from their website, is a high-value local citation and backlink in one.
Local business directories: Chamber of Commerce, local neighborhood associations, Business Improvement Districts. These are high-authority local links that also function as citations.
Relocation guides and moving resources: Local newspapers, city visitor guides, and neighborhood blogs often publish "moving to [city]" articles. Pitch to be featured as the recommended mover.
Industry directories: AMSA (American Moving and Storage Association) member listing, Angi pro listing, Moving Help profile, these are high-authority citation sources with strong domain authority.
Home services platforms: A complete Thumbtack, Angi, and Houzz profile for moving services creates both a citation and a potential inbound link.
💡 Pro Tip: The easiest high-value local backlinks for movers come from real estate agents who already refer you verbally. Ask 3 agents you know to add your company as a "recommended mover" resource on their website. One agent's website referral page is worth more as a backlink than 20 generic directory listings.
Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) appear above everything else in Google search results, above the Local Pack, above organic results. For moving companies, LSAs are a complement to local SEO, not a replacement.
LSAs for movers: Local Services Ads show your company name, rating, review count, and "Google Guaranteed" badge, charge per verified lead (phone call) rather than per click, and require a background check and license or insurance verification to run. Building your Google review profile pays off here too, since reviews on LSAs feed into your GBP.
Running LSAs while building your organic local SEO coverage gives you two points of visibility on the search results page. The long-term goal is to reduce LSA spend as organic rankings improve, but having both during the build phase maximizes lead volume.
areaServed schema field lists all service citiesStart free on Flento →, Flento monitors your moving company citations, tracks GBP performance, and alerts you when any listing changes from your canonical data.
How long does local SEO take for moving companies? Most moving companies see measurable ranking improvement within 60–90 days of completing GBP optimization, citation cleanup, and launching review generation. Service area pages take 8–12 weeks to rank for their target city queries after indexing. Full dominance across multiple city queries in a competitive metro market typically takes 6–12 months of consistent effort. Businesses that start in Q4 are often well-positioned by the following spring/summer peak.
How many reviews does a moving company need to rank on Google Maps? In most mid-size metro markets, the Local Pack top 3 for "movers near me" requires 80–150+ reviews with a 4.5+ rating. In major metros (NYC, LA, Chicago, Miami), 200–400+ reviews is often needed to compete in the most searched areas. Review recency matters, 100 reviews from the past 12 months outperforms 300 reviews from 3+ years ago.
What are the best keywords for moving company SEO? The primary keywords are "movers near me," "moving company [city]," and "local movers [city]." High-value modifiers include "affordable movers," "residential movers," "apartment movers," "commercial movers," and "same day movers." For service area expansion, target "[city] movers" for every city in your service radius with a dedicated page. For blog content, target "how to find movers in [city]," "moving checklist [city]," and "average cost of movers in [city]."
Do moving companies need a website to rank on Google Maps? You can rank in Google Maps without a website, but a website dramatically expands your ranking potential. Without a website, you're limited to the signals from your GBP profile alone. With a website, you can create service area pages for each city, add schema markup, build backlinks, and rank for long-tail queries that don't appear in Maps. Most moving companies that rank in the top 3 across multiple cities have strong websites with 10–30 location pages.
How do I get more leads from Google for my moving company? The fastest path to more Google leads: (1) claim and complete your GBP profile with all service areas and service types, (2) generate 50+ reviews through post-job requests, (3) create a service area page for your top 3 target cities, and (4) run Google Local Services Ads to capture leads while your organic ranking builds. These four steps together can increase inbound leads by 3–5x within 90 days in most markets.
What is the difference between local SEO and Google Local Services Ads for movers? Local SEO produces organic ranking in Google Maps and search results, it doesn't cost per click or per lead, but takes time to build. Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) appear at the very top of search results and charge per verified lead. They run immediately with a Google Guaranteed badge. Most effective moving companies use both: LSAs for immediate lead volume, local SEO as the long-term base that reduces your dependency on paid leads over time.