Medical facilities, educational institutions, grocery stores, and retail stores; what do these commercial and industrial buildings have in common? The answer: professional cleaning services. Today, cleaning companies across the nation are increasingly facing competition and rising customer expectations. These trends have created unique market challenges that cleaning businesses need to be aware of and overcome if they want to attract new customers and keep their existing ones. Cleaning services providers need to take advantage of valuable new opportunities that open up if they want to improve performance and grow their business. Now, cleaning may not seem like an Internet-focused industry, but nothing could be further from the truth. Cleaning is one of the world’s most used on-demand web services and therefore, businesses need to use various online advertising strategies to sell their services and keep up. Take a look at how important local SEO for cleaning companies is.
Customers are Increasingly Using Local Services
If you run a cleaning company, chances are your business thrives off loyal and long-term customers. However, this should not be the only crowd you are targeting. According to Google, approximately four in five people perform location-based searches, especially when they are trying to find local businesses. In addition, above 30 percent of these individuals visited the locations that they search on the same day. In other words, local results often lead users to take action. That’s why it has become so important to appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) when someone searches for something like, “cleaning companies in Hoboken.” There are several ways to get local searchers to see you in their results. One of the places to start is Google My Business and Yelp.
Local SEO Helps Cleaning Companies Grow
Word-of-mouth is an effective marketing strategy because people often trust or believe the recommendations of their friends or loved ones. Although this technique never gets old and is essential to help cleaning businesses drive organic growth, employing local SEO best practices also help increase customer visits, interactions, and social media shares. The more visits you get, the more contracts you earn. As a result, you increase your cleaning company’s revenue.
Organic, Local SEO for Cleaning Businesses Improve Brand Credibility
When cleaning services providers improve their rankings on the SERPs, they are also improving brand awareness. If your cleaning business website consistently appears on the first page of major search engines, such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, the process builds more trust among prospective customers than other providers that own less web presence. Today, traditional forms of advertising can only get you so far, cleaning businesses are increasingly investing in local SEO to build better brand awareness and achieve top rankings for keywords that are related to their companies. In other words, it is a must because search engines play a role that is significantly bigger role than before and can make or break brands.
Relevant Content is an Effective Medium to Engage Visitors and Potential Customers
One of the goals of SEO for cleaning businesses is earning more website visits in the most efficient way. Today, customers only want to know what they absolutely need to know, and they want answers fast! Google found that a majority of smartphone users purchase products or services from companies because they found the information useful, and they didn’t have to cut through any fluff to find the answers they need. It is important to keep the information on your cleaning company website to the point. Let visitors easily and quickly get in touch with you.
User-Friendly Websites and Organic SEO Make it Easy for People to Get and Stay in Touch
Local SEO helps cleaning business owners to create fast and smooth user experiences. While many business owners think of SEO as only optimizing for search engines. Today’s SEO requirements also involve improve UX through user-friendly websites. If you create and manage a website with a clean design, web visitors will be compelled to stay longer, page views will be increased, and bounce rates will be decreased. Cleaning companies should keep their readers happy by creating and publishing service pages and blog articles that provide highly relevant content. Don’t just create just for the sake of creating. The information you provide should help visitors solve their cleaning-related problems without needing a long, interrogative phone call. When done correctly, local SEO makes website visitors happy, and this translates to getting into the good books of search engines.
What do Cleaning Companies Need to Start Local SEO?
Today, Google determines where to place websites on the SERPs by measuring their prominence, relevance, and proximity. The first criterion refers to what consumers are saying about a brand’s products and services. The second one refers to how relevant your products or services are to certain search queries. The third term refers to how close your business is to the searcher. Below is a non-exhaustive list of things you will need to start local SEO for cleaning companies:
- Keyword Research
In order to start optimizing your cleaning website or launch a robust SEO campaign, business owners need to make sure that they are using keyword phrases that potential customers are searching. Therefore, avoid using industry jargon such as Mi-Tor Orbital Scrubbers, WD 351, etc. Consumers often use simple phrases like, “best cleaning services near me” or “affordable cleaning companies in <insert location>.” If you don’t know what keywords to use or how to research them, consider working with a reliable local SEO agency to help you locate the right keywords and phrases that potential customers are searching for. This way you attract more targeted traffic and sales.
- Attractive Landing Page
It is important to create landing pages that target the locations you primarily serve. If your cleaning company operates in more than one location, ensure that customers searching in neighboring areas can easily find you. Let’s say that your company name is Happy Floor Cleaning. You will then want to set up a landing page for each neighborhood keyword, e.g., one for “Floor Cleaning Upper East Side,” another one for “Floor Cleaning Greenwich Village,” and so on. This approach makes it clear to Google who your cleaning company is relevant to.
- Reviews and Testimonials
Google does check the online reputation of cleaning businesses before they determine their rankings. The search engine is constantly fine-tuning their algorithms to show their users quality results. The more 5-star reviews you earn, the better chances you have. Now, earning great reviews is the first step. For local SEO purposes, you should get your target keywords into these reviews. While this might sound unnatural at first (because no one writes their own reviews), it helps. When it comes to asking a happy and satisfied customer for their review or feedback, request that they mention the cleaning services you have provided and the location you are based in. Let’s say that they have published a review on Google, you can follow up by replying, “Thanks <insert customer’s name>! We are glad that your window cleaning went well today. It was great to visit you in North Dakota last month.” This way, Google will see that your website is trusted and local to people in that area. From ranking well on Search Engines Results Pages to increasing conversion rates, there are many advantages that local SEO has to offer to cleaning companies. In other words, it is the great equalizer that your cleaning business needs. Because your competitors are most likely using SEO, you shouldn’t delay optimizing your website.
