We have been moving pianos and families out of Huddersfield since 1977. In that time the job itself has not changed much: careful hands, the right kit and a crew who know what they are doing. What has changed completely is how customers find us. Almost nobody picks up a paper directory any more. They search on their phone, and more and more of them now simply ask an AI assistant who to call.

What running our own websites taught us

As a family firm we look after a small group of piano and removals websites ourselves, and we have learned most of it the hard way. A site can look lovely and still be close to invisible. Google might not be able to read half the pages. It might be slow or awkward on a phone. Sometimes a single setting is quietly telling ChatGPT and the other AI tools to stay away, and the owner has no idea.

None of that is obvious if your trade is plumbing, hairdressing or moving pianos rather than websites. And when we went looking for help in the early days, most of what we found was jargon, or a monthly contract to sign before anyone would explain what was wrong.

Best Rated Company: our sister project

That experience is why the same family started Best Rated Company, a free directory for small and medium sized businesses. Every listing is checked before it goes live, and listing is free. It started in the UK at bestratedcompany.co.uk and is now open to businesses across the United States and Canada as well.

A free SEO check, in plain English

Alongside the directory sits a free website SEO check that any business can use, listed or not. You type in a web address and in about ten seconds it tells you three things: whether Google can read the site, how it looks on a phone, and whether AI assistants are being blocked from it. No email address is needed for the free check.

If you want to go further, the full report is a single payment, with no subscription and no sales call afterwards. It covers:

  • whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini recommend the business for its trade and town
  • what Google actually sees, including the words people use to find you and any pages Google may be skipping
  • who links to the site, how that has changed over the past year, and any broken links
  • mobile speed and ease of use
  • a to-do list in priority order, with ready-to-use wording
  • a plain-English PDF guide to every section of the report

The full report is $9 in the United States, C$12 in Canada and £7 in the UK. It is written for owners who have never touched SEO, so you can make the fixes yourself or hand the list to whoever built your site.

SEO, AEO and GEO, without the jargon

SEO is getting found on Google. AEO, answer engine optimisation, is being the business that gets quoted when someone asks a direct question, such as who moves pianos near them. GEO, generative engine optimisation, is being recommended by AI tools like ChatGPT when they put an answer together. You do not have to like AI to care about the last two. Your customers are already using it, and the businesses it names are the ones that get the call.

Know someone running a business in the US or Canada?

Plenty of our customers have family, friends or old colleagues across the Atlantic, often running a small business of their own. If that is you, the most useful thing you could do is pass this on. The SEO check for US businesses and the Canadian version both start with the free ten second check, so it costs them nothing to see where they stand. They can list their business on the directory for free while they are there.

And if your business is here in the UK, the same check is at bestratedcompany.co.uk.

Still the same Huddersfield removals firm

None of this changes the day job. We are still the family-run crew moving homes across Huddersfield and Kirklees, with piano removals across the UK and furniture storage when you need somewhere to keep things between moves. If you are planning a move, get a free removals quote and we will take it from there.