A Step-by-Step Framework for Auditing Your Moving Company's SEO

An SEO audit is not a single report — it's a structured review of every factor that affects how Google finds, understands, and ranks your moving company's website. Most audits worth running cover four distinct layers.

• Technical SEO: Can Google crawl and index your site without errors? This includes page speed, mobile rendering, HTTPS status, crawl errors, structured data, and sitemap health.
• On-Page SEO: Are your pages optimized to signal relevance for the searches your customers use? This includes title tags, meta descriptions, heading structure, keyword placement, and internal linking.
• Local SEO: Does your site support your local ranking signals? This means reviewing NAP (name, address, phone) consistency, city-specific landing pages, schema markup, and how well your site reinforces your Google Business Profile.
• Content Gaps: Are there service types or geographic markets you serve but don't have dedicated pages for? Gaps here directly limit the searches you can rank for.

These four areas are not equally urgent. Technical issues that prevent Google from indexing your pages correctly are always the first priority — there's no point optimizing a page Google can't read. Local SEO issues tend to be the second priority for moving companies because local pack rankings drive a large share of move-request leads. On-page and content work comes third, once the foundation is solid.

What makes a moving company audit different from a generic website audit is the weight placed on local signals. A national e-commerce site can largely ignore GBP. A moving company in Columbus, Ohio cannot — local intent dominates nearly every search that matters to your business.

Before touching a single keyword or writing a single page, verify that your site's technical health isn't actively working against you. These checks do not require expensive tools — several free options (Google Search Console, PageSpeed Insights, Screaming Frog's free tier) cover the basics.

Core technical checks for moving company websites

• Crawl errors: Open Google Search Console and check the Coverage report. Any pages marked as 'Excluded' or showing 404 errors should be investigated. If Google can't reach a page, it can't rank it.
• Mobile usability: Use Google's Mobile-Friendly Test on your homepage, your main service pages, and your contact page. Most moving searches happen on mobile — a site that renders poorly on a phone is losing leads regardless of rankings.
• Page speed: Run your homepage and your highest-traffic service page through PageSpeed Insights. Focus on the Core Web Vitals scores, particularly LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). Slow pages rank lower and convert worse.
• HTTPS: Verify your entire site serves over HTTPS with no mixed-content warnings. This is table stakes in 2024 and a trust signal for both Google and visitors.
• Duplicate content: Check whether your site has pages that are nearly identical (e.g., multiple city pages with the same text swapped out). This is extremely common in moving company sites and suppresses rankings across all those pages.
• Sitemap and robots.txt: Confirm your sitemap is submitted in Search Console and that your robots.txt file isn't accidentally blocking important pages from crawling.

In our experience working with local service businesses, technical issues are found on the majority of sites that haven't been professionally audited. The good news: most technical fixes are one-time tasks that, once resolved, don't need to be revisited for months.

Once your technical foundation is sound, the next audit layer is on-page optimization combined with local SEO signals. For moving companies, these two areas are closely intertwined — your on-page content should directly reinforce your local relevance.

On-page checks

• Title tags: Does every service page have a unique title tag that includes the primary keyword (e.g., 'Local Moving Company in [City] | [Brand Name]')? Generic titles like 'Services' or 'Home' are missed opportunities.
• Heading structure: Each page should have one H1 that matches the page's primary keyword intent. H2s and H3s should logically organize the content beneath it.
• Service page depth: Thin service pages — ones with fewer than 300 words, no FAQs, and no specific details about the service — tend to rank poorly. Google wants to see pages that genuinely answer what a mover does for that specific service.
• Internal linking: Are your city pages and service pages linked from your main navigation and from relevant blog or resource content? Isolated pages that aren't internally linked are effectively invisible to crawlers.

Local SEO checks

• NAP consistency: Your business name, address, and phone number should be identical across your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, Angi, and any other directories where you're listed. Even small formatting differences (St. vs Street, Suite vs Ste.) can weaken your local authority.
• City landing pages: If you serve multiple cities, each city should have its own dedicated page with unique, specific content — not the same boilerplate with the city name swapped. Google has become increasingly effective at detecting templated local pages.
• LocalBusiness schema: Your site should include structured data markup that explicitly tells Google your business name, address, phone, service area, and business type. This is a direct local ranking signal many moving company sites are missing.
• Review signals on-site: Displaying legitimate customer reviews on your site (not just on GBP) reinforces trust signals and adds relevant, keyword-rich content naturally.

An audit typically surfaces more issues than any team can fix at once. The goal of prioritization is to sequence work by impact — which fixes will produce the most ranking and lead improvement relative to the time required to fix them.

Use this scoring framework to triage your findings:

Priority 1 — Fix immediately (blocking issues)

• Pages blocked from Google indexing
• Critical crawl errors on your homepage or main service pages
• Site not served over HTTPS
• Mobile rendering failures on key pages

Priority 2 — Fix within 30 days (high-impact, moderate effort)

• Missing or poorly written title tags on service and city pages
• NAP inconsistencies across major directories
• Thin service pages with under 300 words
• Missing LocalBusiness schema markup
• No city-specific landing pages for your primary service areas

Priority 3 — Plan for the next 60-90 days (growth-stage work)

• Content gaps for secondary services (piano moving, corporate relocation, storage)
• Building city pages for secondary markets
• Internal linking improvements across existing content
• Page speed optimization beyond baseline

One principle worth holding: don't start Priority 3 work until Priority 1 issues are fully resolved. Content you add to a technically broken site doesn't rank well — and it creates a false impression that SEO isn't working when the actual problem is the foundation.

If your audit surfaces more than 8-10 Priority 1 or 2 issues, that's typically a signal that a professional review — rather than self-remediation — will save you more time and deliver faster results. The cost of fixing the wrong things in the wrong order often exceeds the cost of getting expert input upfront.

Not every SEO issue requires an agency or consultant. Some fixes are genuinely straightforward and can be handled by a moving company owner or an in-house admin with a few hours and the right tools. Others involve technical depth or strategic judgment that produces better results with professional support.

Fixes most owners can handle

• Updating title tags and meta descriptions in your CMS
• Adding or correcting your NAP information on directory listings
• Writing or expanding thin service page content
• Claiming and completing your Google Business Profile
• Adding a basic sitemap via a plugin (for WordPress sites)

Fixes that typically benefit from professional support

• Diagnosing and resolving crawl issues (especially on larger or older sites)
• Implementing structured data markup correctly
• Redesigning your site's URL structure without creating redirect chains
• Building a city landing page strategy across 10+ service area cities
• Recovering from a manual penalty or a significant traffic drop after a Google algorithm update

A useful rule of thumb: if the fix requires changes to your site's code or server configuration, or if getting it wrong could actively harm your rankings (as with URL changes or robots.txt edits), professional review is worth the investment.

If you've run through this audit framework and found significant issues you're unsure what to check, [prioritize by ROI](/resources/moving-company/moving-company-seo-roi), and when to call in... or fix, a one-time professional audit gives you a clear remediation roadmap. That's often more cost-effective than spending months on trial-and-error fixes — especially in competitive moving markets where your competitors are not standing still.

For moving companies ready to move from diagnosis to action, you can request a professional SEO audit for your moving company and get a prioritized plan specific to your site and market.

Some audit findings are routine maintenance. Others are warning signs that your site has a structural problem requiring urgent attention. Knowing the difference protects you from months of wasted effort.

Red flags to treat as urgent

• A sudden, unexplained traffic drop: If Google Search Console shows a sharp decline in impressions or clicks without any site changes on your end, investigate immediately. This can indicate a manual action (penalty), a significant algorithm update, or a technical error like a misconfigured robots.txt accidentally blocking your entire site.
• Duplicate versions of your site being indexed: If both http:// and https://, or www and non-www, versions of your site are accessible and not redirected to a single canonical version, Google may be splitting your ranking signals across multiple URLs — diluting your authority.
• Your branded searches don't return your site: Type your business name plus your city into Google. If your own website isn't the first organic result, something is seriously wrong — either a technical issue, a penalty, or a competitor doing aggressive local SEO targeting your brand.
• Every page on your site is being flagged as 'Discovered but not indexed': This means Google has found your pages but is choosing not to index them — often because the content is too thin, too duplicative, or signals low quality.
• Your GBP listing shows a different address or phone number than your website: This inconsistency actively undermines local rankings and can confuse customers at the moment of conversion.

Any of these red flags should move to the top of your priority list ahead of any optimization or content work. They represent situations where your site may be actively losing rankings or traffic you've already earned — and each day without a fix is compounding the loss.