Most cleaning services provide similar information on their websites: contact details, services offered, and an about page. That’s essential information for people visiting your website. But first, you have to actually get potential cleaning clients to your website. 

If you haven’t optimized your website for search engines, people searching online for a maid service won’t even know your business exists. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) increases your chances of appearing on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs). Businesses who show up on the first page of Google are the ones that get the most phone calls and recurring clients – and bring in the most money. 

One of the most important components of SEO is optimizing your webpage for the right keywords, or the terms, that your ideal clients use when searching for a company like yours. 

Jonathan Rodriguez, home service SEO expert, helps his clients show up on the first page of search results by thinking strategically about keywords. Read on for his keyword tips and learn how he optimized a single keyword to attract a windfall of clients for his cleaning service. 

How the right keyword can grow your business exponentially

If you’re skeptical about the power of keywords, consider the story about how one keyword changed the course of Jonathan’s maid service. 

The keyword led to a phone call from a billionaire who wanted to hire Jonathan’s cleaning service for post-construction cleanup at his penthouse in Park City, Utah. That job led to more jobs with the contractor for other projects. That led to jobs with other contractors and builders. Soon, Jonathan’s team was deep into a high-dollar niche that included cleaning at condos, restaurants, and car dealerships. 

So what was the one keyword Jonathan optimized a section of his site for? Park City. 

Imagine the results if he had optimized for “post-construction cleaning” as well. 

Get creative with your keywords

So how do you choose keywords that will propel your website to the top of search results for your ideal clients? Think beyond the keywords that all the other maid services are using. 

Keywords like “maid service,” and “cleaning service,” are the most searched, but also have the highest competition. That means it’s very difficult to land on the first page of search results for those keywords – there’s just too much competition. 

The good news is that your ideal clients are often searching for more specific keywords when they’re looking for a cleaning service. Just like Jonathan’s billionaire client, they’re not just looking for a cleaning service, they’re looking for a cleaning service who is either in their location, specializes in the kind of cleaning they need, or both. 

What are some of the speciality services that you offer? Are you including them in your keywords? If you do specific types of cleaning, optimize for those keywords. Examples are move-out cleaning,  green cleaning, Airbnb cleaning, real estate cleaning, event cleaning.

SEO tips to complement your keywords

SEO is a long game with many moving parts. Here are other things to consider as you optimize your website.

Set up your Google My Business Page: Your free Google business profile influences how you rank in search engine results. For an effective Google My Business page, choose the category that best represents your maid service’s specialty or niche. Remember, Google always displays specialists first. 

Also, make sure that the content on your Google My Business page aligns with the content on your website. That means if your website highlights your expertise in move-out cleaning, your Google My Business page should do the same. If it highlights a different specialty or niche, Google may not understand where to place you in search results. 

Add relevant content to your website: Blog posts and other information about who you are, what you do, and why you’re the best at it, helps search engines understand your business so it displays you as a result in the right search results. 

Add content like how-to articles, cleaning tips, and customer stories to show that you are an authority and expert in your niche and market. 

Other websites, such as news outlets or websites about local businesses, can link to your content (with links known as backlinks), which can increase your authority in the minds of search engines. That helps you climb up in the search results.

Beware of software and plugins that offer quick fixes: SEO requires a lot of testing and time. Before you invest in software that offers a fast and easy path ranking high in search results, research the product thoroughly. How exactly does it optimize your page? How is it different from working with a human SEO consultant who you can communicate with?

Review keywords periodically for relevance

If you review your processes every year, add a keyword review to your task list.  Look at the keywords that you’ve optimized for and ask yourself if they’re still relevant and important to your business. Are there new keywords that should be added? Any that should be retired?

In the same way that you update your systems to keep up with the growth of your business, update your keywords so that you’re always attracting the right clients for your maid service. 

About the presenter

Jonathan, founder of The Search Specialists, is an internet marketing consultant and former cleaning company owner who has helped hundreds of clients grow their cleaning businesses with SEO and online advertising.

Jonathan recently did a live Q&A session inside the ZenMaid Mastermind where he did free website evaluations, answered questions about SEO and Google My Business and talked about how to outrank your local competition online! You can watch the replay here: https://fb.me/e/2B41THam9 

If you want to book a call with Jonathan to get your questions answered, you can do that here.

This talk first aired at the 2021 Maid Service Success Summit.

The Maid Summit is an annual online event that brings together the most successful leaders in the cleaning industry, like Debbie Sardone, Angela Brown, Courtney Wisely, Amy Caris, Chris Schwab and more. Get free access to masterclasses and workshops that will help you to grow, scale and automate your cleaning business so you can get more leads and create more profit. Make sure you’re on our email list to find out how to get free tickets to the next event.

Learn more:

For more resources on how to grow and perfect your cleaning business, check out the replays from the 2021 Maid Summit, hosted by ZenMaid. The summit featured more than 60 presentations from other maid service owners who shared tools and strategies to help you achieve the highest levels of success in your business. 

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