Link Building is the secret SEO tactic of top Moving Companies
Content is critical, but you must support it if you are in a competitive market.
Is Your Website a Jester or a King?
Google, Bing, Duckduckgo and Yahoo either respect your website, or view it as inconsequential. How do you gain the algorithms respect?
Multi-million dollar moving companies don’t just rely on “having a website” or buying shared moving leads. They receive hundreds of exclusive leads each month from search engines such as Google, Bing, Duckduckgo and Yahoo. It’s not enough to simply have perfect technical SEO, you must also promote your website and its webpages for all your target keyword phrases (Services + Service Areas).
1) Leverage Platforms You Control
Right now you have an opportunity to maximize your free online profiles and social platforms. Whether Google My Business, Facebook, Instagram, there is an About section where you can put a link back to your website.
There are hundreds of these types of websites, not just a few. If you have more time than money, it’s a great way to blanket your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) to form consistency across the web for your moving company, and show to Google not only is the information most likely accurate (because it’s ubiquitous on the web), but it’s also very popular.
Here are a few lists of websites you can register your moving company to and link back to your website.
2) Outreach to local bloggers ($ Paid Sponsored Posts)
There are many mommy bloggers and website owners in your State (maybe even city if you are in a major metro area) that blog about their daily lives. This should not be confused with PBN Backlinks, which are considered gray hat seo. These are real people who own, and care about their website. A checks and balance we like to use is to confirm they have at least 2 active social media accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter or TikTok. Sure, someone can fake all these metrics, but for the most part, it will filter out real opportunities.
In Google Search:
Blog “PR friendly” YOUR STATE
Or
Blog “Sponsored Post” YOUR STATE
Example:
Blog “PR Friendly” Wyoming
Contact them, and ask them their rates if you provide the text (content) or if they provide. If not too expensive, you just secured a content story and link back to your moving company website. We’ve had clients also receive real referrals and moving jobs based on these stories.
3) Outreach to local bloggers (Guest “Free” Posts)
How tired of these emails are you? Most of the “content” people are offering in exchange for a link back to their website is pure trash. If you can actually provide a quality story or angle, you can reach out to bloggers who desperately need content for their audience, and you can insert a link back to your moving company website. The price you pay is the content and time; keep in mind if the story doesn’t resonate with THEIR audience, they will most likely not publish it. Find opportunities such as:
Search:
Blog “Write For Us” YOUR STATE
Or
Blog “Guest Blog” YOUR STATE
4) Outreach to local realtors
Relationships with realtors can grow your moving company faster than any other marketing. Many established realtors will already have relationships with movers who they refer their work out to, and are often compensated per client (all good business relationships improve both sides financially). This is a hybrid approach where you can reach out to local realtors to add value to their website, as well as introduce yourself, and have them refer business to you.
**It’s best to contact new realtors, or ones who own their own website versus ones found within a brokerage website**
Search:
YOUR STATE “Realtor” “Contact Us”
Or
YOUR CITY “Realtor” “Contact Us”
You’ll want to find a contact email or form on the website:
Hello PERSONS NAME,
I’m reaching out because I’m a mover in YOUR STATE. I would like to create a webpage all about yourself and company such as this:
**CREATE A WEBPAGE ABOUT A LOCAL BUSINESS HERE ON YOUR WEBSITE. THIS CAN BE A NON REALTOR COMPANY**
To get added to our website, please reciprocate by creating a basic webpage which links back to our website.
This will help your realtor website in search engines and also help network with local businesses in the community.
P.S. Any successfully booked moving jobs you send our way we will send you 10% of the move value gross as a thank you for the referral.
5) Outreach to other movers (non competitors)
It’s lonely at the top, but you can leverage a mutually beneficial relationship with other successful moving companies, in NON competing states or cities.
Google Maps Search:
LOCATION Moving Company
Gather a list of all the moving companies who have over 100 reviews in Google (that are in a different state than your own). Then go through this list and email them something similar to this:
Hello NAME OF BUSINESS,
I’m reaching out because I’m a fellow mover, in a non-competing state of YOUR STATE. I would like to create a webpage all about your moving company such as:
**CREATE A WEBPAGE ABOUT ANOTHER MOVER NOT IN THEIR STATE**
To get added to our website, please reciprocate by creating a basic webpage which links back to our website.
This will help your moving company website in search engines and also help network with local businesses in the community.
P.S. Once you create the webpage please reply and we’ll get you added right away. Best of all it is a win win, as we are non competing movers and happy to help each other.
6) Outreach to local businesses
Very similar to the other strategies, these are local, small businesses where there is only upside and very little downside for them to actually add you to their website. Furniture stores, Gun Safes, Storage, etc would be best for actual business relationships (you can offer them deals or % of sales for referrals).
Search:
YOUR CITY furniture store
Or
YOUR CITY Chiropractor
Etc
Hello NAME OF THE BUSINESS,
I’m a local mover and I’m reaching out because I would like to add you to our website. Example here:
**CREATE A WEBPAGE ABOUT A LOCAL BUSINESS HERE ON YOUR WEBSITE.**
To get added to our website, please reciprocate by creating a basic webpage which links back to our website.
This will help your website in search engines and also help network with local businesses in the community.
P.S. Once you create the webpage please reply and we’ll get you added right away. Best of all it is a win-win, as we are non competing and happy to help each other. Also, any successful moves you can refer to us, we will give you 10% of the gross value as a thank you.
7) Directories
Directories predated search engines as a way for humans to find businesses based on categories. Similar to Yellowpages, some are still curated and worth submitting to receive a link back to your moving company website.
Search:
Moving Company “Directory” “Submit”
You’ll find a plethora of places you can submit your listing. You can also add words like “payment” because many of the free ones take forever, or are simply abandoned. Then you’ll fill out a basic profile and hit submit.
8) Forums
Forums are a relic of an older internet where there were fewer communities, yet they were tighter knit. Myspace, Facebook and Youtube, TikTok, Twitch, etc have taken over for these mediums of back and forth exchanges which required thought out responses versus instant gratification of live chat.
Search:
Travel “Forum” “register”
Or
Moving “Forum” “register”
Or
Real Estate “Forum” “register”
Caution to those who just want to drop a link back to their website. You must add value to the community, before adding things like forum signatures, or simply a link within a thread. The effort it requires to become part of a community, is usually too steep unless you are a major brand.
9) Competitor Piggy Back
This strategy allows us to analyze what our competition is doing, and simply do it better or more of it. There are tools and software such as SEMrush, which helps reverse engineer a website’s organic SEO rankings, but also their backlink profile.
You can go to each webpage that links to your competitors, and see if you can get a link too (register, comment, post, etc). Some are more nuanced, and may require you to contact the website owner and ask them if you can collaborate together; provide either a guest post, or a sponsored post in exchange for a payment.
Sometimes if the content piece is long enough you can ask for a Niche Edit, which means they insert your company into pre-existing content and add a hyperlink back to your website (of course for monetary compensation)
10) Blog Comments
Blog comments are still viable today, because some companies and people still create awesome content (you’re reading it right now!), and they want to have engagement on their thoughts and ideas.
Search:
inurl:blog “moving” “leave a comment”
Any blog worth it’s salt will require comments to be approved by a moderator. If your comment is “Gee whiz, great post!” don’t hold your breath. Add value, and use your real name, and the author will most likely keep your link (your name will be the anchor text of your backlink).
11) Press Releases
Press releases are predicated on content syndication. You can do searches in Google to find a list of press release websites. Paid options typically are better to filter from the spam.
Search:
“Submit press release” “payment
Your content can get picked up by “PR Wires” which syndicate out to their network such as Google News. It’s best to not overuse one syndication service as there is a law of diminishing returns from multiple or sitewide backlinks.
12) Create Linkable Content
Major Van Lines publish studies or case studies. This makes it very easy for them to attract new links for journalists and people in the news. If you publish a very in depth, statistically based post on how many people you moved from X state to Y state, and the increase year over year, that would be interesting to not only the human beings visiting your website, but also bloggers looking to reference your city is growing fast, or there is a mass exodus out of one location.
This LA Times article is filled with statistics and quotes:
This article received over 126,000 backlinks across 692 websites!
This takes the most effort out of all the methods, but it’s well worth it, because you will become a thought-leader in your industry and service area.
We saw a 500% increase Year over Year Moves to EXAMPLE CITY
Link building is an advanced tactic that most moving companies fail to invest in properly because they aren’t ready to get to the next level of growth. Companies such as United Van Lines, and other serious businesses have link profiles with tens of thousands of backlinks from reputable websites, which enables them to receive the lion share of hyper-targeted, quality, organic search traffic, which results in more exclusive leads and booked jobs for your moving company.
