Planning a move from far away: the pages that answer it, in order

What we have not measured

We have not measured what people type into an assistant while planning a move, or how many moving inquiries start there. Our audit measured what 9,483 small business websites serve to an AI crawler, and its probe put one buyer question per business to Claude to see who was named; neither counted a single inquiry. The questions here follow the customer journey of a move, not query data.

What we can say is what each question asks of your site. With web search on, an AI assistant reads a handful of pages before it answers, and a household planning from far away asks about things only the mover can state: its routes, its survey, its moving day, its storage. A page that states each one in text gives an answer something to repeat, and gives the household reading your site the same answer.

The facts a moving question turns on are listed in the overview for moving companies. This article takes the long-distance household's questions one at a time, in the order the move happens.

The order of the move, and the page for each step

Each page is an answer page: the answer in its first two or three sentences, the detail after. The shape is set out in our template for a page built to be quoted, and what makes a passage quotable is in the article on passages an assistant can quote.

Who serves the destination

The first question from far away is whether you go there at all. A routes page answers it in text: the routes you run, how often a truck goes, which end your crew is based at, and what happens at the other end, whether your own crew unloads or a partner does, and under what name. Name both ends of each route the way a household would type them, with the city and the state or province.

One page listing every route, with a paragraph for the routes that carry most of your work, serves a household better than a page per city. Pages that differ only by a city's name come close to what Google's spam policies call doorway abuse, which includes pages targeted at specific regions or cities that funnel users to one page. Give a route its own page only when there is something different to say about it, such as the border crossing.

A quote without a visit, and what a video survey is

A household in another city cannot have a surveyor over for an hour, so the quote page says how else you do it: an in-home survey where you can reach, a video survey, or an inventory form, with what you need from the household for each and how soon the quote arrives. Link the quote terms from the same page, as in the terms a household checks before booking, so the reader learns what a price fixes before asking for one.

Give the video survey a page of its own, because a household cannot know what yours involves until you say. State what it is (a call of about [n] minutes in which the household walks your surveyor through every room), what device and connection it needs, what to show (closets, the garage or basement, items that are staying, anything fragile or heavy), whether the call is recorded and kept, and what happens if something is missed. That last line belongs in your quote terms as well.

If the page carries a video of a sample survey, keep the steps in the text beside it. A video gives a text fetch nothing to read, and the assistants' crawler documentation says nothing about running the scripts a player needs.

Moving day, and delivery at the far end

The moving-day page describes the fixed parts of the day in the order they happen: the arrival window, the size of the crew, the walk-through, protection for floors and doors, packing if it was booked, loading, the inventory the household signs, and a last check of the empty rooms. Add what the household arranges: parking for the truck, an elevator booking, keys, and a parking permit where the building or the city asks for one.

For a long-distance move, keep loading day and delivery apart. State the delivery window for each route as your terms set it, [n] to [n] days after loading, how the household is kept informed while the goods travel, and what happens at the far end: unloading, furniture placed by room, reassembly if it was booked, and when payment falls due under your terms.

Leave promises out of it. "On time, every time" is a claim nobody can check; "our crew arrives between [time] and [time], and we call if we will be late" is a fact the household can hold you to.

Storage between homes

Storage is the question a long-distance move adds when the old lease ends before the new home is ready. The storage page states where the goods are kept (a warehouse or containers, and in which city), the shortest and longest stay you offer, how it is charged ([price] per [unit] per [period]), whether and how the household can reach its things, how goods are recorded on the way in and out, and what your cover says while they are stored. Link it from the routes page, since a household may need both.

Where to start on your own site

In our audit, across all 40 trades, 61.5% of the 9,483 sites had no question-and-answer content, and 50.7% had a question as a heading with no answer under it that a machine could isolate. We publish no mover-only cut of either figure. The order to work in:

1. Write the routes page first, with both ends of each route named in text.
2. Add the quote page and the video survey page, and link the quote terms from both.
3. Write the moving-day page, with loading day and delivery apart for long-distance moves.
4. Add or rewrite the storage page, and link it from the routes page.
5. Open each page with scripts turned off and check it against the template: the answer in the first sentences, the detail after.
6. Take a reading before and after, by route and from both ends, as reading answers by route and move type describes.