SEO For Cleaning Companies (Definitive Guide)

You are looking for guidance on how to turn your website into a lead generation engine for your commercial cleaning company. We know a a fair bit about SEO for cleaning companies, and you are here, so we succeeded .

We have done lead generation and SEO for commercial cleaning companies for more than 5 years, and SEO for manufacturing, food tours, and SaaS, for more than 10 years. In this article we will share the main success factors for getting leads from your website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) for a commercial cleaning business is hard and dominated by national cleaning franchises like ServiceMasterClean, JanKing, JanPro, and many others. So if you are trying to find a way around them, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’ll be happy to share.

Most cleaning business websites, and businesses in general, are not getting any traffic from search engines. In fact, 90% of the world’s websites are NOT getting any traffic from search engines. The main reason is that most businesses create a website that looks pretty and to communicate what THEY want to say.

That is NOT how it works when you want to get traffic from search engines.

90% Of Websites Are Not Getting Any Traffic From Search Engines

When you read blog posts that suggest you should “start blogging” … STOP. You are headed down the road with 90% others who are wasting their time on creating content that no one will ever see, never generate new clients, and leave you with frustration.

Search engines have a clear purpose, to find the information that a person is looking for. Without a search engine it would be impossible to find information, websites, and information on “SEO for cleaning companies”.

So rather than start creating a cleaning company website based on how pretty it should be, you need to first find out what popular search phrases YOUR perfect-fit-customers are using when they look for a service that you provide.

How to create a website that gets traffic from search engines

SEO Tools that you will need

Keyword research is absolutely necessary if you are to succeed getting organic traffic from your website. To do keyword research you will need a tool that will help you understand what the popular search terms are, that you should be using.

When selecting keywords it’s important to select keywords with low competition, when possible, and pick the ones that have some commercial intent, so you are not just creating content for entertainment purposes.

SEO tools that we use:

For keyword research we use Ahref, SEMrush, MOZ

For monitoring rankings and spotting content that needs to be optimized, we use the same SEO tools.

The SEO tools are great for monitoring keyword rankings, if the page is ranking for the keyword, as intended, but you can also just use Google Search Console and set up your SEO reporting in Google Data Studio.

#1 – Find popular search terms (keywords)

When doing SEO for cleaning companies there are two main categories of keywords: local keywords and non-local keywords, local keywords, and other keywords.

Local keywords

Local keywords keywords where the users intent is to find a local service, like a cinema, restaurant, or janitorial service. These keywords also have a close commercial intent (people ready to buy) which makes them very competitive.

There are variations of the local keywords in both kind, monthly search volume, and local competition, but there is no way around it, the local keywords are limited and you have to include them.

Other keywords (keyword topics)

Other keywords are non-local keywords which means “open season” for everyone across the english speaking world. These keywords can be like “commercial cleaning guide”, “school cleaning checklist”, or “what is the difference between sanitizing and disinfecting?”.

#2 – Decide on the focus keywords

Before you can create a content map (keyword map), you need to settle on the specific service pages and associated keyword (singular) per page.

Keyword Topics For Your Cleaning Business

Keyword topic is a cluster of keywords that related to the same topic, similar to when you go to the library and look for book titles in a certain category or genre.

As an example your TOPIC keyword/page could be “Commercial Cleaning Services” and then associated keywords/service pages could be “Office Cleaning”, “Floor Cleaning” etc. The associated services/keywords must have their own page as “Commercial Cleaning” includes all the other services, in order to be considered “complete content”. Do not stuff a bunch of services on to the same page, it will never rank, and only vaguely describe you services to a poor visitor.

This will take time, a lot of writing to create the best content available, and a lot of patience … as Gary Venertuck says: “Be patient with the results, not your activity and actions”.

NOTE: We have seen hundreds of cleaning business websites that has one “service” page where all cleaning services are mentioned, which will NEVER rank for anything. A specific service page must be at least 1.500 to 2.000 words in order for search engines to be able to “understand” what the page is about and consider it for ranking, and to compete with top ranking cleaning pages.

Why Make Content For Long Tail Keywords?

In general you want to make long-tail keyword content, because

1. You want to show prospects and search engines that you are a “Commercial Cleaning Company” and therefor they should consider your cleaning business’ services / content in related search results.
2. You also want to create great content to visitors on your “Cleaning Business” website, to help differentiate your self and e.g. guide the prospect on their buying journey towards selecting the right cleaning company … your cleaning business.

When creating content, always research the content that search engines rank as the top 1-10 organic results, and make sure yours is better. The world does not need more content, but better content. Most content is clearly made for search engines and not by experts, so use your expertise to create great content in a personal tone.

Hint: Stock images on a website is not going to help much to beat the competition, and a visitor can recognize stock images after visiting 5-10 cleaning websites. Showing your self and your team in cleaning situations, plus a video, will go along way. Visitors will see you, and at least know some of the people behind you cleaning business, and it will help convert more prospects from visitors to prospects and walk-throughs.

#3 – Create a map of content and associated keywords

A keyword-map, or content map, is the structure of content and pages that will be used to create the website. It will consist of a “home” page, which should not rank for anything, an about-us page that should rank for your cleaning business name and you main service and associated services, targeting each their own keyword.

#4 – Create content that answers the popular search terms

Now that you know which pages to include on the website and which keyword each page should be focusing on, it’s time to start writing the content.

On-Page SEO optimization

To improve search ranking for you website’s content there are a few on-page optimization elements that you need to work on.

1. Length and titles
2. Snippets
3. Images and alt tags
4. Breadcrumbs
5. Videos with “keyword mention” in the narrative
6. SEO Title & Meta Description

I the footer of you website you should have Name, Address, Phone (NAP). The NAP should be exactly the same on the website as on your other online business profiles.

Provide links in the footer to you main online profiles like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube, where they can learn more about your business online, if they are not ready to reach out to you, just yet.

Home Page

In general the home page should not be optimized for any keyword. In practice the home page will often rank for your brand name, which is great. The home page you can use for communicating anything you want but consider it a “distribution” page, where you help the visitor find what they are looking for, fast.

About Page

This page should be optimized for you brand name, but as this page may be the fist page the visitor sees when looking for you online, you should explain that you are e.g. a “cleaning company” and provide an explanation of the differentiators and the services you provide.

A video is great as an introduction, as well as images of key people, so that the visitor connects with you, rather than a collection of stock images.

Cleaning Services

In each local area there will be variations of local search terms e.g.

• dc commercial cleaning business
• nyc commercial cleaning business

So if your “commercial cleaning services” page is optimized for that keyword, it will have a positive effect to show the “Areas We Serve” on that page, in the form of a Google map AND a list of cities you serve, like “Washington DC”, “New York City” etc. This helps search engines that this page is relevant for variations of the keyword that includes those “city names”.

Local Search for “Construction Cleaning”

Local search for e.g. floor cleaning services, is slightly different than general search, as you can focus on “nyc construction cleaning”, as these keywords often has less competition and helps avoid head-on competition with the large national cleaning franchises, which is harder and will take a lot longer to rank for.

Add video for better ranking.

Google is able to understand voice and what is being said on an “english” video, which means that if you record a video that starts with “This is Tom from XYZ Cleaning, today I’ll be sharing our process of “construction cleaning” … Adding video to your content will help push you in front of competition is search engine ranking.

It can be a bit of a personal challenge to video record your self, but it will dissapear once you have tried it a couple of time. You just got to hit the record button and get on with it. I had a podcast for a couple of years, so I can definetly

Office Cleaning Services:

Floor Cleaning Services:

#5 – Optimize Page Load Speed

Page Load Speed, also know as Google Core Web Vitals.

As with anything SEO, it’s not written anywhere how important page load speed is for SEO ranking. But as Google ranks content according to user experience in a mobile first world, it’s fair to assume that it has importance. This is supported by research done by various SEO experts like Brian Dean at Backlinko.

I will not go into detail in the article on Core Web Vitals as this is a topic on its own. In brief you need to consider which website platform you are using, the hosting platform, and the amount of bling-bling you put on your website.

We recommend using WordPress, specifically GeneratePress and hosting on a fast website hosting platform like Kinsta.

To further increase page load speed we have great experience with WP Rocket and Imagify.

#6 – Local SEO for cleaning companies

Local SEO for cleaning companies, means that you have optimized your company and services pages for local keywords, AND optimized your online business profiles on

• Google My Business page
• YouTube
• Twitter
• LinkedIn business page
• Facebook business page
• Pinterest, etc.

Optimizing you online cleaning business profiles, means they all have the exact business information, NAP, on every profile.

Google My Business Page

Your Google My Business page (GMB) is not just a badge in search rankings, it’s an opportunity to post content like you do on LinkedIn and Facebook, use it.

The categories that you select on your GMB are important as they relate to keywords, and together with an optimized website for local keywords, you will also show up in the 3-pack search result.

Use it to post articles, images, and videos

#7 – Create your cleaning business profile in online business directories

A link to your website is a positive “vote” on you website. The specific links and amount of backlinks, from which websites, is debatable, but top ranking websites have a lot in common, and one of them is a lot of inbound links.

There are a few services available that will help you create you online business profiles for a fee. It is well worth doing, as you will pull you hair out of frustration if you start doing it yourself. It is simply not worth your time compared to the cost of signing up for a service like TheHoth, Moz, or similar.

There are a few ways to create inbound links to your website, such as

• Great content that people share
• Guest posting
• Content distribution by outreach

Post On Social Media

Does posting content on social media improve SEO rankings? – Not really.

The reality is that social media plays a big role in getting your brand and content in front of your audience. That leads to different things that benefit SEO, such as more backlinks, improved engagement signals, and more search engine results (SERP) when people search for your brand name.

An Opportunity To Get More Backlinks

While social media does not part of the factors that help rank better in search engines, it is a very important way to distribute the content on your website that you wish to rank for. By using social media for distributing the content you wish to rank for, people may link to your content via their own website, and this helps your content rank better. Share worthy content is rarely your cleaning service pages so make sure you create share worthy blog content, which can be an in-depth cleaning guide, cleaning related statistics, a video on how to do commercial kitchen cleaning etc.

Get More Appearances in Search Results

The videos you post on facebook may appears in a search result when people search for your brand name, and filling up an entire search result page on your brand name gives people an impression of authority, and many ways to engage with your online.

Conclusion

There are 2 million cleaning companies in the US, which means a lot of websites. If you consider the large national cleaning franchaises that pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into SEO and paid advertising in search (adwords etc), the competition is fairly tough.

Getting to the top of search results in your local area will require that you create great content, structured right, and keep producing great content. It will take 3, 6, 9, 12 months before you see traffic coming from the effort, so be persistent and patient.

Loud Carrot is a lead generation agency, so take it with a grain of salt, but your time is not well spend learning SEO when you are building and running a cleaning business, the market is simply too competitive, and it will take time before you learn the ropes of SEO.

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