Home / Industries / Removals and storage
When a family is planning a move, they type “removal company” and their town, then fill in the first form they come across. Very often, that form belongs to a comparison site that passes the request to several companies at once. You pay for the lead, and you fight four competitors over it on price. I work on your Google Business Profile and your site so the request reaches you directly, with the date, the volume and both addresses.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
200+ sites tracked every day
1M / month visits to my e-commerce site
They trusted me with their visibility
Darty
Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroThe map, a month before the move
A family in Cognac is looking for a removal company for the end of June. Google shows three listings on its map: a chain branch in Angoulême, a van hire company and a business with no address. Your depot is in Cognac, and your listing is in fourth place. Get it into the top three.
Fig. 1. A search in Cognac, three listings, no removal company from the town. (Your depot was five minutes away. Your listing filed you under transport.)
What this means for you. I fill in your profile with your depot, your services and your photos, so Google recognises you as the town's removal company.
SEO for a removal company is the work that makes a removal business appear on Google when an individual or a company in its area is planning a move. It relies on a well-filled-in Google Business Profile, separate pages for each package, each service and each regular route, and reviews left after delivery. Its aim is simple: get survey and quote requests you don't have to buy from a middleman.
The problem
On most removal searches, group-quote sites and national networks come before local companies. They have pages for every town in France. You won't overtake them everywhere, and it's better to know that before you start.
The same request goes to three or four removal companies. The customer gets as many calls within the hour and mostly remembers the price. Your lorries, your team and your care no longer count in their choice.
Requests are concentrated in the warmer months and at the end of the month. The rest of the year, the crews are less busy. A site that only talks about house moves for individuals doesn't help you fill those periods.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
Move with peace of mind
Individuals and businesses, anywhere in France and abroad. Free, no-obligation quote.
Free quoteFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Here I list six possible searches for a removal company. Take them as illustrations. The real searches in your area will show up in the audit.
What works
The map appears before the quote sites, and a comparison site has no depot to show there. I set the category, area, opening hours and number. I add photos of your vehicles, your team and your warehouse.
Economy, standard, all-inclusive: your customers don't know these words before reading you. Each package has its page, saying who packs, who dismantles, who supplies the boxes. The customer reaches the quote knowing what they want.
If you often drive to Bordeaux, Paris or the coast, these routes are searched for by name. I create one page per route you actually run, with your frequency and the option of shared loads if you offer it.
These activities have their own searches and their own calendar. Taking them out of the “Our services” page gives them a chance of being found. They also bring customers outside the summer.
Preferred date, addresses, floor, lift, estimated volume: a well-designed form saves you a pointless first call. The customer also sees that the request is going to a removal company, not into a resold list.
What costs dearly
Hundreds of identical pages where only the town name changes: comparison sites do it with resources you don't have. Google discards these copies. Ten genuine pages are worth more.
No depot address, no photo of a lorry, no name. Visitors see no difference from a middleman. Show the company: it's your first argument against a quote site.
On a phone, people give up at the third. Ask for the essentials, then offer to call back to arrange the survey.
It's your customers' main fear. Explain in a few sentences how you protect furniture and what happens if there's damage, using the terms of your policy.
The method
Four steps. I set the schedule around your season, so the pages are ready before the busy months.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 600 searches a month for a removal company in your town, 5% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €1,400 per customer. Click-through rates by position are rough orders of magnitude, and they have been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Run the numbers with your own figures
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
In Charente, a move often involves a detached house, so a large volume. Some routes stay within the département, others leave Angoulême or Cognac for Bordeaux, Poitiers, the coast or Paris. The customer types the name of their departure town, sometimes that of the destination. A company based in the département can show its address, its lorries and the routes it runs.
Up on the plateau, you can't park a lorry just anywhere and some staircases won't let any furniture through. If you have a furniture lift and know these streets, write it down. It's information a customer in the centre really looks for.
Transfers and new hires bring moves paid for or organised by an employer. A page aimed at businesses and their transferred employees puts you in front of the right contact.
In the countryside, volumes are large and access sometimes needs a small shuttle vehicle. Newcomers look for a removal company that knows the area. Naming the areas where you deliver reassures them.
Beyond Google
Today a customer asks an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral to help plan their move. For example: “I'm leaving a four-bedroom house near Angoulême for Bordeaux at the end of June, who should I ask for a quote?”. The AI draws up a to-do list, then suggests names. It mixes comparison sites and companies.
To pick a company, it needs facts it can check: an address, routes, packages, reviews describing a real move. A page on “Angoulême to Bordeaux, home survey, written quote” is useful to it. A site that only promises a “stress-free move” gives it no facts to pick up. I organise your information so it is readable by a person and a machine alike.
Question asked to an AII'm leaving a four-bedroom house near Angoulême for Bordeaux at the end of June. Who should I ask for a quote?
Three leads for this move:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
I made up these three companies to illustrate different starting points. They are not clients. Your roadmap will depend on what the audit shows.
Almost all its requests come from a comparison site it pays per lead.
The warehouse is half empty and the site gives it one line.
It mainly moves individuals in summer and looks for work in winter.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
Clickbait titles, fake reviews, copied pages: your market is a jungle. Grab the piece and slide it into the slot.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. Ten snakes for one spot, as usual.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
On the Google map, often, because they have no local premises. In the standard results, it's possible on specific searches: a route, a service, a town. On national searches, I don't promise you that.
Not straight away. Keep that source as long as your direct requests aren't enough. I help you measure what a signed move costs through each channel. You will then cut back what costs too much.
Several months before. A page needs time to be taken into account. Work started in autumn or winter has a chance of paying off in spring. Started in June, it will mostly serve the following year.
A firm price without a survey makes no sense, and your customers understand that. You can, however, explain what counts in a quote: volume, distance, floors, package, date. This transparency sets you apart from calculators.
Ask for them the day after delivery, when the boxes are in place and everything has gone well. A short message with the link is enough. Reviews mentioning the route and the team help the next customer a lot.
It depends on what your network contract allows, and that's for you to check. Where it's permitted, a Google Business Profile and a site in your name bring you requests that don't go through head office.
Yes, on a separate page. It's a small service, in demand all year round, including from individuals moving on their own. It makes your name known and fills half-days.
Precisely for that reason. You constantly need new customers, and today you pay a middleman for them. Pages that belong to you keep bringing in requests with no per-lead invoice.
They can fill a quiet month. On removal searches, you bid against comparison sites, and clicks are contested. I prefer to set up the profile and the pages first, then test a small campaign on a specific service.
Photos of your vehicles and your crews at work, a description of your packages, your usual routes and your insurance terms. The Newp team writes from what you explain to us, then you review.
See also
30 minutes · video call · with me
Together we look at where you stand on Google and in AI, and what should change first.
