Google Ads for moving companies: the complete guide

I landed my first moving company as a client in 2022. It was my very first US client, which makes the moving industry particularly special to me. Over the past three years, I’ve managed Google Ads campaigns and audited accounts for about ten moving companies across the US.

This guide represents everything I’ve learned about running successful Google Ads campaigns for moving companies. Whether you’re launching your first campaign or troubleshooting poor performance, you’ll find actionable strategies to improve your results.

Moving company keywords

Before diving into campaign structure and settings, you need to understand how moving keywords work. There are two major categories: local and long-distance keywords. The rule is simple: if there’s no long-distance marker in the keyword, it’s a local keyword.

Local keywords

Local keywords are what most moving companies focus on. They include:

General, local, city-specific, and “near me” keywords belong in every local campaign. Item-specific, commercial, and storage keywords depend on your service offerings — if you don’t do these kinds of moves, make sure to exclude these markers with negative keywords.

Although I classify all these keywords as local, there’s an important nuance: some people use general moving keywords when they actually need long-distance services. However, this doesn’t happen often enough to rely on for capturing long-distance leads.

Additionally, depending on your keyword match type, long-distance search queries may occasionally match your general keywords since they share common “moving” intent. But this won’t happen frequently—long-distance keywords are much more expensive, so Google is less likely to show your local ads for long-distance searches.

Long-distance keywords

Long-distance keywords split into three clusters: general, city-specific, and destination-specific.

General and city-specific long-distance keywords have stronger search demand and volume potential. They’re broader and will drive more traffic, but they’re also more competitive.

Destination-specific keywords are gold. Since you have the full context (origin and destination), you can craft super-relevant ads to secure high CTRs and use relevant landing pages to ensure the best possible conversion rates. This cluster is often overlooked by moving companies, making it an easy win.

The downside? Destination-specific keywords are searched rarely, and there aren’t many city pairs worth targeting. Typically, it’s only the large city pairs that people are moving between most frequently.

Negative keywords: protecting your budget

Using the right keywords is only half the battle. Excluding the wrong traffic is equally important — especially in the moving industry where clicks are expensive ($10-$70 per click). Below are the essential negative keyword lists every moving company should maintain:

1. Branded (your company)

Include your company name and all its variations. This excludes branded searches from your non-branded campaigns, saving you from paying $10+ per click. To capture your branded traffic, you should use a dedicated campaign with lower bids, typically $3-5.

Apply this list to both local and long-distance campaigns.

2. Branded (your competitors)

Search for moving companies in your area and proactively add their brand names. Once your campaigns are launched, review your search query report regularly, as there are many moving companies people directly search for.

While you can occasionally get conversions from competitor-branded keywords, it’s better to focus your budget on purely non-branded searches.

Apply this list to both local and long-distance campaigns.

3. Bad locations (local campaign)

Start by adding all US states except yours. This prevents wasted clicks when people in your area search for movers in other states.

Then, continuously update this list as you review search queries. Add any city names that appear where you don’t provide service. You want zero impressions for searches like “movers in {BadCityName}”.

Apply this list to your local campaign.

4. Bad locations (long-distance campaign)

Similarly, create and maintain another list but for your long-distance campaign with the destinations you don’t serve (like Alaska or Hawaii). This one probably won’t require as much maintenance, but make sure to update if needed.

Apply this list to your long-distance campaign.

5. Bad intent

All those markers specific to items, services, and types belong here:

• if you don’t do item-specific moves → exclude: piano, hot tub, pool table, furniture, bed
• if you don’t do commercial moves → exclude: commercial, office, equipment, business
• if you don’t offer storage → exclude: storage

Next bad-intent cluster includes markers showing weak or no transactional intent:

• how
• best way
• reviews
• top 10
• jobs
• tips
• overseas
• international
• truck rental
• shipping
• containers
• diy

Apply this list to both local and long-distance campaigns.

Ongoing search query analysis

Each click in the moving industry is expensive — you don’t want your budget allocated to irrelevant search terms. Set a weekly reminder to review your search queries and ensure you are not wasting your budget on irrelevant clicks that drive bad or no conversions.

Pro tip: When you find an irrelevant search term, exclude it in exact match (this marks it as excluded in your report) and also add the bad marker in broad match to your relevant negative keyword list for broader protection.

Google Ads account structure for moving companies

If you offer both local and long-distance moving, always separate these services into two distinct campaigns. This approach gives you independent budget and bidding control for each service, making your Google Ads account easier to manage and optimize.

Recommended structure

My recommendation is to reflect the grouping mentioned in the previous section:

Local campaign:

• General ad group
• Local ad group
• City-specific ad groups (create one for each major city)
• Near me ad group
• Item-specific ad groups (create one for each item)
• Commercial ad group (if you offer this service)
• Storage ad group (if you offer storage)

Long-distance campaign:

• General long-distance ad group
• City-specific long-distance ad group (you can merge it with General)
• Destination-specific ad groups (create one for each key city pair you service)

Branded campaign (recommended):

• Single ad group with all brand name variations

I’ll explain why a branded campaign is important in a moment.

Why this structure works

Account structure directly impacts campaign performance. The key principle is data consolidation. When conversion data is concentrated in fewer campaigns, Smart Bidding learns faster and performs better. However, you should never combine local and long-distance moving in one campaign, as their cost per click differs too much ($10–20 vs. $25–70), requiring separate bidding strategies for each.

At the campaign level, skip over-segmentation and SKAGs (single keyword ad groups). Too many ad groups spread conversions too thin and confuse the algorithm.

If you want, you can add new ad groups, for which I’d use clear markers to group similar keywords (“near me”, “storage” or item-specific terms). This helps you easily track performance by cluster and write more relevant ads that match each intent.

However, do it only for keywords with enough search volume. Creating ad groups that get five clicks a month isn’t harmful, but it’s also not worth the effort.

Should you run a branded campaign?

Whether to use a branded campaign is a controversial question, but in today’s Google Ads environment, I believe you should. Here’s why:

The main problem is that Google will match your branded keywords with the moving industry, especially if you have “moving” or “movers” in your company name. Essentially, when people search for your company specifically, they’ll likely see your competitors’ ads.

Given that branded CPCs are low (typically within $5 per click), the monthly spend on your branded campaign will range from $200 to $1,000 depending on how often people search for your company. Overall, I think it’s worth minimizing the risk of losing a lead to competitors by having a branded campaign and paying Google for that protection.

How to set up a branded campaign:

• Create a dedicated search campaign
• Add all variations of your company name as exact match keywords
• Select Manual CPC as your bid strategy and set lowered bids ($3-5)
• Pin ad headline with your company name to show in position 1
• Use simple ad copy reinforcing trust (“Official Site”)
• Send traffic to your homepage or main quote page

Also, don’t forget to add your brand name to your negative keyword lists in non-branded campaigns to avoid paying $10-20 for clicks that should cost $2-5 in your branded campaign.

As you run the branded campaign, make sure to periodically check your Avg. CPC, Search impression share (IS), Search top IS, Search abs. top IS. Aim for 90% and adjust your bids accordingly.

Do you need a remarketing campaign?

While remarketing is highly touted in digital marketing, I’m skeptical about it for most moving companies. Here’s why:

• Short decision window: Most moving leads convert fast. If someone lands on your website looking for a mover, they’ll likely make a decision within a week — often within days.
• Small audience sizes: Because of the short decision window, you need to use very short-duration audiences (1-3 days). A short audience means a small list size, and the minimum is 100 users for display remarketing eligibility. Search remarketing requires 1,000 users.

So, unless you have 100+ visitors per day, you won’t be able to build audiences large enough for your campaign to start getting impressions and clicks.

How to leverage remarketing lists:

Even if you can’t run dedicated remarketing campaigns, you can still leverage remarketing lists to improve your search campaigns. Here’s my go-to strategy:

• Create a 540-day list of all website visitors and add it for observation.
• Create a 30-day list of all converters and exclude them from your campaigns.
• Create a 540-day list of confirmed customers and add it for observation.

Campaign setup nuances

The wrong campaign settings can drain your budget on worthless clicks. Here are the critical settings to get right.

Network settings

Your Network settings should look like this:

• Search Partners: OFF
• Display Network: OFF

Disable Search Partners. They’re notorious for generating fraudulent traffic that won’t convert into paying customers. For one moving company I worked with, search partners spent about 50% of the daily budget. We did receive conversions, but these were calls from people looking for a job — not customers. After discovering this, we quickly disabled search partners.

Regarding Display Network, I have never seen it outperform Google Search. Additionally, you should avoid mixing search traffic with display traffic within the same campaign, as this complicates analysis and distorts campaign-level data. Make sure to keep the Display Network disabled for better and cleaner results.

Location targeting

For safety, start with presence-only location targeting. This ensures you’re only showing ads to people physically in your service area, not people who are just interested in or searching for your location.

For local campaigns, target your service area (city, county, or metro area).

For long-distance campaigns, this gets trickier. You may need to target multiple origin cities or states depending on where you operate. The added complexity comes from having multiple locations referenced in the keyword context itself (origin and destination cities), which makes the location matching algorithm somewhat unpredictable. This is another reason to use presence-only targeting — it allows you to better control who and where your ads are shown.

Keyword match types

For local campaigns: I recommend starting with exact match, then gradually expanding to phrase match, and finally broad match. This approach helps scale campaigns efficiently without overspending early on, especially before you have a solid negative keyword list in place.

For long-distance campaigns: Use exact match only. Long-distance clicks are not cheap ($25-$70+), and you can’t afford to waste budget on loosely related searches. If budget isn’t a concern and your search impression share is above 50%, you can experiment with phrase match.

Bidding strategy progression

Don’t jump straight into Smart Bidding if you’re just starting out. Here’s how to progress:

1. Start with Maximize Clicks or Manual CPC
2. After two weeks and depending on conversion volume, switch to Maximize Conversions
3. Two to four weeks later, add Target CPA if your conversion volume is strong (aim for 30+ conversions per month, ideally 50+)

This is applicable for both local and long-distance campaigns. However, for long-distance, due to its expensiveness, it may be hard to consolidate enough data.

Budget recommendations

One of the most common questions I hear is: “How much should I spend on Google Ads?” There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but here’s the framework I use:

Minimum budget guidelines

Local campaigns: $3,000+/month

• Based on $10-20 per click (varies by state and competition)
• Target: 10+ clicks per day to generate 40+ conversions/month

Long-distance campaigns: $7,500+/month

• Based on $25-70 per click (depends on routes and competition)
• Target: 5+ clicks per day to generate 25+ conversions/month

These minimums ensure Smart Bidding has enough conversion data to optimize effectively. Below these thresholds, the algorithm struggles to learn and perform well.

What if you can’t afford these budgets

If these numbers aren’t feasible right now:

1. Consider Local Services Ads first. LSA operates on a pay-per-lead model, which eliminates the risk of spending money without getting results. It’s also easier to set up and maintain, making it a safer starting point while you build revenue to invest in Google Ads.
2. Focus on a one campaign type. Don’t spread your budget thin across both local and long-distance campaigns. Pick one (typically local, as it’s cheaper per click) and focus there to generate consistent results and consolidate enough conversion data.
3. Stick with Manual CPC bidding. This strategy doesn’t require conversion data and gives you full control over your bids. You’ll need to monitor and adjust them yourself, but it’s the best way to manage costs while you’re still building conversion data.
4. Pick high-intent keywords. Skip vague keywords like “movers” and concentrate your budget on city-specific keywords and exact match “near me” searches — they tend to convert better and deliver better ROI on limited budgets.
5. Run ads only during business hours. This ensures you’re available to capture both phone call leads and form submissions in real-time, maximizing your lead quality and response time when potential customers are actively searching.

Remember: even with adequate budget, poorly optimized campaigns will waste money. Budget alone doesn’t guarantee results — proper setup and ongoing optimization are equally important.

Seasonality and budget adjustments

The moving industry follows a clear seasonal pattern, with peak demand from May to August. Budgets should be higher during this time to capture the surge in traffic. Many companies advertise heavily in these months, driving CPCs and competition up, so you’ll need more budget to stay visible.

Outside the peak season, demand drops, but competition often remains. Leads may cost more, yet keeping your ads running helps maintain a steady flow of jobs while others scale back.

Ad copy & ad assets for movers

Your ads are competing against dozens of other moving companies. Generic copy won’t cut it.

Ad copy principles

1. Reflect keyword context

Your ad copy should mirror what people searched for:

• Near me ad group → “Moving Company Near You” or “Local Movers Near You”
• {CityName} ad group → “Movers in {CityName}” or “{CityName} Moving Company”
• Destination-specific ad group → “Movers from {City1} to {City2}”

2. Include pricing

Numbers work well for CTR. More importantly:

• If your pricing is your competitive advantage, put it front and center
• If your prices are higher and you’re after a premium audience, pricing helps filter out bargain hunters

Example: “Moves Starting at $XXX”.

3. Use path fields effectively

The display URL path helps reinforce relevance:

• yourdomain.com/movers/{city}
• yourdomain.com/long-distance/moves

4. Add strong calls-to-action

Don’t be passive. Tell people what to do:

• “Get Your Free Quote Today”
• “Call Now for Same-Day Service”
• “Book Your Move Online”

5. Include social proof with numbers

As mentioned above, numbers drive better CTR:

• “500+ Five-Star Reviews”
• “10,000+ Moves Completed”
• “20 Years in Business”

For message consistency, ensure every bit of your ad copy is aligned with your landing page.

Stand out from competitors

Analyze your competitors’ ads using Google’s Ads Transparency Center. All you need is their domain name, and you can see all their past and active ads.

Look for patterns in their messaging, then differentiate yourself. If everyone is using the same phrases, find a different angle. Consider:

• What unique services do you offer?
• What guarantees can you make?
• What pain points do you solve that others don’t mention?

Complete ad assets checklist

Ad assets (formerly called extensions) help your ad stand out and take up more screen real estate. Use all of these:

Business name and logo: Super-simple to set up, but requires account verification. Do this first. The business name should match your legal name or domain. The logo should match your website’s favicon.

Call assets: Enable people to dial you directly from the ad without visiting your website. Critical for moving companies. Add an asset schedule so your phone number only shows when you actually answer calls — don’t pay for clicks when prospects will get voicemail.

Sitelinks: List your services or moving destinations. Don’t be slack — add sitelink descriptions, which are often overlooked but improve performance. Examples:

• Local Moving → “Residential and commercial moves within {area}”
• Long-Distance → “Interstate moves to all 50 states”
• Packing Services → “Full-service packing and unpacking available”

For long-distance campaigns, add sitelinks with popular destinations to increase CTR and ease the navigation to a relevant landing page.

Callouts: Use these for your unique selling propositions:

• Free Estimates
• Flat-Rate Pricing
• On-Time Guarantee
• Licensed & Insured
• X Years in Business
• Family-Owned
• No Hidden Fees

Structured snippets: List your service types:

• Local Moves
• Long Distance Moves
• Packing Services
• Storage Solutions
• Commercial Moving

Images: Add at least 5 square images and 3 landscape images showing your trucks and team at work. This asset isn’t available for fresh accounts, but add it as soon as you can. Real photos of your team and trucks build trust.

Price asset: Reflect your pricing structure if possible. Even if you don’t show exact prices, you can show ranges or starting prices.

Promotion asset: If you’re running any special offers, use this asset to highlight them.

Location asset (use with caution): This is great for highlighting your local presence — your address and city will be added to your ad. However, be aware that location asset clicks drive traffic to your Google Business Profile, not your website. The conversion rate from GBP visits is often lower than website visits. This usually requires testing to see if it works for your market.

Conversion tracking for moving companies

Your tracking setup is critical for two reasons: it helps you measure results, and it feeds data to Google’s algorithm so it can optimize your campaigns. The more accurate your tracking, the better your campaigns perform.

There are two levels of tracking: basic (tracking leads) and advanced (tracking revenue). Most moving companies should start with basic tracking and progress to advanced as they grow.

Basic tracking: leads

With this approach, you’re tracking leads from calls and forms. Every unique call or form submission counts as a conversion. This is straightforward to implement, yet many moving companies don’t have it set up correctly.

Tracking form submissions

Avoid tracking form button clicks — this is unreliable and prone to overreporting (people click multiple times or click without completing the form). Instead, use a JavaScript event that fires on successful form submission or track thank-you page views after form completion.

To improve your form tracking accuracy, implement Enhanced Conversions. To fully leverage EC, normalize your data before sending it to Google: emails in lowercase, phone numbers in E.164 format (e.g., +12125551234).

Tracking phone calls

You need to track two types of calls:

1. Calls from ads: these happen when someone clicks your call asset or call ad
2. Calls from website: these happen when someone clicks your ad, visits your website, and dials the phone number listed there

Both call types can be tracked either using built-in Google Ads functionality or with a third-party call tracking service provider, like CallRail or WhatConverts.

They will cost you extra ($30+ / month), but have some advantages:

• track calls from any source (Google Ads, LSA, Organic, Direct)
• track forms, allowing you to see all leads in a single interface
• provide robust reporting (call recordings, transcripts)

When to use which: If Google Ads is your only significant traffic source, the free native tracking works perfectly. If you have meaningful traffic from multiple channels (LSA, Google Maps, Google Organic), invest in a third-party tool to see the complete picture.

Regardless of which path you take, make sure your conversion tracking setup in Google Ads counts only one conversion, not every, and your call duration threshold is 60+ seconds.

Advanced tracking: revenue

Getting a cost per lead (or cost per conversion) is simple if you followed the conversion tracking setup above. But since not every lead is equally valuable, you need to know how Google Ads performs in terms of ROI (return on investment), not just cost per acquisition.

This is crucial for scaling profitably, and it helps optimize your Google Ads campaigns.

Why cost per lead isn’t enough

Consider two scenarios:

• Scenario A: $50 cost per lead, 30% close rate, $1,250 average job value = $375 revenue per lead = 7.5x ROAS
• Scenario B: $30 cost per lead, 15% close rate, $1,000 average job value = $150 revenue per lead = 5x ROAS

Scenario A has a higher cost per lead but better ROI. If you only looked at CPL, you’d make the wrong decision.

Recommended tracking setup for measuring revenue

To track generated revenue, you need these components seamlessly linked:

1. Google Ads (drives traffic)
2. Tracking software (captures leads from calls and forms)
3. Booking software (tracks confirmed jobs and revenue)

When a lead converts to a booked move, an offline conversion with the revenue should be uploaded to Google Ads. You can do this manually, but using tools like WhatConverts or CallRail makes it much easier, as they act as the link between your booking system and Google Ads.

This all is hard and time-consuming, but it’s well rewarded if you’re in the moving business seriously and for the long term.

Traffic channel comparison

Having a solid end-to-end tracking setup allows you to see which channels perform better. This is critical for making smart budget allocation decisions. But even if you don’t bother with advanced tools, you can (and should!) use at least Google Analytics, so you know how your website traffic converts.

Google Ads vs. Organic Traffic

A typical comparison I run is Google Paid Traffic vs. Google Organic Traffic. If your Google Ads traffic is converting worse than organic traffic, something might be wrong with your campaigns.

However, keep this nuance in mind: a significant portion of your organic traffic likely comes from brand terms, and those visitors are expected to convert at a higher rate (they already know you). Do a thorough comparison accounting for branded vs. non-branded traffic.

Google Ads vs. Local Services Ads

This isn’t a direct comparison because Local Service Ads (LSA) drive traffic to your profile page, generating calls and messages, while Google Ads direct users to your website, generating calls and form submissions. That said, you should calculate and compare cost per lead and ROI for both platforms.

If you spend more on Google Ads, it should be getting you the best results. If not, you need to fix your campaigns or reallocate budget to LSA. Don’t keep pouring money into a channel just because “everyone uses Google Ads”. Use data to make decisions.

Conversion rate optimization

Google Ads brings people to your website, but it’s your website’s job to convert them. Even the best campaigns will fail if your website doesn’t support the conversion.

Websites vs. dedicated landing pages

Most moving company ads drive traffic to websites, but there’s a different approach: creating dedicated landing pages.

Why use a website:

• It looks more trustworthy and established
• It has multiple internal pages, so you can funnel traffic using sitelinks
• It reinforce your SEO since you’re driving engagement and signals to your domain

Why use a landing page:

• It’s distraction-free and laser-focused on a single service
• It’s faster to launch and easier to optimize than a full website
• You can test designs, headlines, and offers without risking your SEO

I’ve tried both approaches, and both are viable. Generally, a landing page will convert better if done right compared to an average website. However, if your website is well-structured with dedicated service pages and optimized for conversions, I’d recommend sticking with the website first and perhaps experimenting with landing pages later.

Service-specific pages

Make sure your setup has dedicated pages for each key service:

• Local moving
• Commercial moving
• Item-specific moving
• Long-distance moving

These pages are beneficial not only for SEO but for Google Ads as well. When your ad promises “Professional Piano Moving,” sending people to a piano-specific page with relevant information dramatically increases conversion rates versus sending them to a generic homepage.

Match your landing pages to your ad groups. If someone searches for “movers in [CityName],” send them to a page specifically about moving services in that city.

Mobile optimization

People looking for moving companies primarily use mobile devices. Your mobile experience must be flawless:

• Fast loading speed: Don’t make them wait.
• Prominent call button: Make it impossible to miss. A sticky click-to-call button is ideal.
• Simple, short forms: Long forms kill conversion rate. Ask for name, phone, email, origin, destination, and date.

Get them into your pipeline quickly, then gather details during the qualification call.

Social proof

Add your Google reviews regularly. Ideally, these should be auto-pulled from your Google Business Profile so they’re always current. Many WordPress plugins can do this automatically.

Include:

• Star rating
• Number of reviews
• Recent review excerpts
• Video testimonials if available

But even a simple photo gallery of your team at work builds trust. Social proof is especially important for moving companies since people are trusting you with valuable possessions.

Message match

Your landing page should reflect what the ad promised. If your ad says “Flat-Rate Pricing”, that should be prominently featured on the landing page. If the ad says “Same-Day Service Available”, make sure that’s clear on the page.

Conclusion

Running successful Google Ads campaigns for a moving company requires attention to detail, consistent optimization, and a data-driven approach. The moving industry is competitive and expensive — here every click matters.

Getting Expert Help

I’ve worked with moving companies across the United States and have seen what works and what doesn’t. If you need help auditing your existing campaigns or setting up new ones properly from the start, feel free to reach out. Sometimes an outside perspective catches issues you’ve been missing.

The moving industry is particularly rewarding to work with because improvements show up quickly in the metrics. Get your campaigns optimized, and you’ll see the difference in your lead quality and cost per acquisition within weeks.

Good luck with your campaigns!