If there is one free thing a removalist should do before spending a single dollar on marketing, it is this: properly set up and optimise your Google Business Profile.
It is the listing that decides whether you show up in the map results when someone searches “removalists [their suburb]”. Get it right and your phone rings. Leave it half-finished — like most of your competitors have — and Google quietly hands those calls to someone else.
The frustrating part is that this isn’t hard, and it isn’t expensive. It takes about an hour to set up and a few minutes a week to maintain. Yet most removalist profiles are missing categories, have three photos, no posts, and a Q&A section that’s completely empty. That gap is your opportunity.
This guide walks through exactly how to build a profile that ranks, in plain language, with no jargon. It’s part of our broader local SEO guide for removalists — read that for the full picture, or stay here for the deep-dive on the single highest-leverage asset in local search.
What a Google Business Profile actually is (and why it beats your website)
Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the free listing that powers two things: the map “3-pack” at the top of local search results, and the panel that appears on the right when someone searches your business by name.
When someone types “removalists near me” or “movers [suburb]”, Google shows three businesses with map pins above the normal blue website links. Most clicks never make it past those three. According to Semrush’s local SEO research, businesses in the local map pack get 126% more traffic and 93% more calls, direction requests and clicks than businesses ranked in positions 4 to 10.
That’s the whole game. Your website matters — and we cover it in our guide on building a removalist website that converts — but your Google Business Profile is what gets you seen in the first place. For a service where almost every job is local, it’s the most valuable piece of digital real estate you own, and it costs nothing.
How Google decides who ranks in the map pack
Google’s own documentation on local ranking is refreshingly clear. It weighs three things:
- Relevance — how well your profile matches what the person searched for.
- Distance — how close you are to the searcher or the suburb they searched.
- Prominence — how well-known and trusted you are, based on reviews, links and how complete your profile is.
You can’t move your depot closer to every customer, so distance is largely fixed. But relevance and prominence are entirely within your control — and that’s what the rest of this guide is about. A complete, active, well-reviewed profile will routinely out-rank a competitor who’s been in business for twenty years but has never bothered to fill theirs in.
Setting up your profile properly — the full checklist
Claim and verify your profile at business.google.com (verification is usually by video or postcard), then work through every one of these. The order doesn’t matter. Completing all of them does.
Choose the right categories
Your primary category should be “Mover” or “Moving company” — this is one of the strongest relevance signals Google uses, so don’t get cute with it. Then add secondary categories that genuinely apply: “Storage facility” if you offer storage, “Piano moving service”, “Packaging supply store” if you sell boxes. Each accurate category is another search you can show up for.
Set your service area
Removalists are a service-area business — you go to the customer, not the other way around. List every suburb you actively service, and only the ones you actually cover. Google cross-checks against your review data, so listing suburbs you never work in can hurt you rather than help.
Write a description that does a job
Use the full character count. Lead with what the customer gets, name the suburbs you serve, and state the types of moves you do (local, interstate, office, packing). One clear sentence on what makes you different is worth more than a paragraph of “family-owned with 10 years’ experience”.
Upload real photos — at least 10
Trucks, your team in uniform, a neatly loaded van, gear, blankets and trolleys, the outside of your depot. Real photos, not stock. Google has stated that businesses with photos receive roughly 42% more requests for directions and 35% more click-throughs to their website than those without. Refresh them every few months so the profile looks alive.
List your services individually
Don’t lump everything into one line. Add local moves, interstate moves, packing, unpacking, piano moves, furniture removal, and storage as separate service entries, each with its own short description. Every entry reinforces your relevance for that specific search.
Fill in hours — including public holidays
Profiles with accurate, maintained hours rank better and look more trustworthy. Update them around Christmas, Easter and long weekends — those are exactly the periods when people are moving.
Populate the Q&A section yourself
The Questions & Answers box is owner-editable, and an empty one looks like a dead business. Add and answer the obvious questions yourself: “Do you provide boxes?”, “Do you charge a call-out fee?”, “Do you do interstate moves?”, “Are you insured?”. You control the narrative and feed Google more relevant text.
Post every week
Publish a Google Post once a week — a moving tip, a seasonal reminder (“book your end-of-month move early”), a recent five-star review, or a current offer. Google rewards active profiles with better visibility, and most of your competitors stopped posting the day they set theirs up.
A profile that ticks every box above will out-rank a competitor with twice your reviews but a half-built profile. It really is that direct.
Reviews: the fuel your profile runs on
Reviews are the single biggest prominence signal Google uses for local businesses — and removals is a high-trust industry where customers are handing strangers everything they own. The bar is high. BrightLocal’s research consistently finds reviews are the top factor people use to judge a local business, and Google leans on the same data to rank you.
Four things matter: how many reviews you have (more than your nearest competitor), your average rating (below 4.0 is a serious problem), recency (a steady drip beats 200 reviews from three years ago), and whether the owner replies to them. Reviews that mention “removalist”, “moved my house”, or specific suburbs and routes also reinforce what you rank for.
The fastest way to build them is a system, not chasing each job individually — a thank-you SMS within an hour of finishing, a follow-up email the next day, the review link on every invoice. We’ve broken the whole system down in our dedicated guide on getting more Google reviews for your removalist business. It’s the natural next step once your profile is built.
Common mistakes that quietly kill removalist profiles
- Inconsistent name, address and phone number. If your details differ across your website, your profile, and old directory listings, Google trusts you less. BrightLocal found 62% of consumers would avoid a business after finding incorrect information about it online — and Google notices the inconsistency too.
- Keyword-stuffing your business name. Adding “Best Cheap Removalists Sydney” to your actual business name violates Google’s guidelines and can get your profile suspended. Use your real trading name.
- Letting it go stale. No posts, no new photos, no fresh reviews. An inactive profile slides down the rankings while active competitors climb.
- Ignoring negative reviews. Not responding looks worse than the complaint itself. A calm, professional reply often builds more trust than a spotless record.
- Claiming suburbs you don’t service. It dilutes relevance and can trigger Google’s spam filters.
Want it set up properly, once?
Building the profile is straightforward, but doing it well — the right category mix, suburb strategy, schema on your website to match, and a review system that actually runs on autopilot — is where most owners run out of time. If you’d rather have it done properly the first time, our sister agency Apollo Digital builds and optimises local search for service businesses across Australia, tying your profile, website and rankings together as one system rather than disconnected jobs. It’s the same team behind this guide.
For where Google Business Profile sits against the other channels — and what to prioritise first — see our breakdown of the best digital marketing strategies for removalists. And if you need bookings this week while your profile builds momentum, run Google Ads in parallel.
Your profile captures demand. It doesn’t create it.
Here’s the honest limitation. Even a perfectly optimised Google Business Profile only catches people who are already searching for a removalist. That’s a big audience — but it’s also the one every removalist in your area is fighting over in the same three map spots.
There’s an earlier moment. The week a homeowner lists their property for sale, they start thinking about who’s going to move them — before they’ve Googled anything, before they’ve compared a single quote. Reach them then and you’re not competing in the 3-pack at all; you’re the first name they’ve heard.
That’s exactly what Move First does. It monitors new property listings in your service area and automatically sends a personalised, branded letter to every new lister — so your name lands in their letterbox days after they decide to move, before your search competitors get a look in. Australia Post puts the open rate on physical mail above 90%, and with 2,700+ homes listed for sale every day nationally, it’s a ready-made audience most removalists never touch.
The two work beautifully together. Your Google Business Profile catches the people who search. Move First catches the people who haven’t searched yet. We cover the full strategy in our guide on direct mail for removalists: how to reach people before they search Google.
The takeaway
Your Google Business Profile is the highest-leverage free asset in local marketing. Claim it, complete every field, add ten real photos, list your services and suburbs, post weekly, and build a steady flow of reviews. Most of your competitors won’t do all of it — and that’s precisely why doing it gives you the edge.
Start there, keep it active, and the bookings follow. For the full local search picture, head back to our local SEO guide for removalists; for everything else, the complete guide to marketing your removalist business ties it all together.