Local SEO for a Cleaning Business (We Stopped Blogging and Still Rank)

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Jen and I wrote blog posts for Oak Bay Clean in our first year. We stopped, and we still rank number one in our city.

We only ever blogged for one reason, which was to get Google to notice us. Our ideal client is not going to sit down and read an article about cleaning. She wants to know we are trustworthy and she works that out from our reviews, so once the reviews were good enough and frequent enough, the blog had nothing left to do.

Matt, an SEO agency owner, came on our channel and explained why cleaning companies should blog. My answer to him: "We don't blog. We just don't have to. It's also 'cause we get a lot of reviews."

The reviews arrive on their own now, through NiceJob, which fires the request the moment we charge the card. That is the machine that replaced the blog. The whole setup is in how to get cleaning business reviews.

Local SEO for a cleaning business is a short list of unglamorous jobs. Almost nobody finishes the list, which is why the top spots in most cities are sitting there waiting.

The short answer

• Name the company for Google. Geography plus keywords equals your domain name. Hamilton Cleaning Services is boring and it wins.
• Google Business Profile is the whole game. The map pack takes the calls and costs nothing.
• Reviews are the ranking factor you can control. They are why we have never needed a blog.
• Be on Yelp. Do not pay Yelp. Those are two different decisions and most owners get them backwards.
• Check what the lead platforms have done to your Google listing. Thumbtack put a button on ours that we never agreed to.

Name the company so Google can find it

Geography plus keywords equals your domain name. Cleaning company names are never interesting. It is always Hamilton Cleaning Services, and that is the point.

Jen puts it more precisely: use clean, cleaning or maids, plus your city if you are in a small city, or an upper-middle-class neighbourhood if you are in a big one. Spell it properly. No Maids with a zed. No Klean with a K.

Your site title is your company name. Your tagline is cleaning services plus your city, because that becomes your H1.

Merry Maids of Hamilton uses the word Hamilton twenty-eight times on their page. Matt counted. The third result used it six times. He also said "near me" on a page does nothing for you, because Google works out the near part from the searcher, not from your copy.

Google Business Profile is the whole game

Three businesses sit in the map pack. They get the calls and they pay nothing for them. Above the map are the ads and the national franchises, and a lot of people scroll past both.

Two things to know before you start.

Google is hostile to new cleaning businesses. It is almost like Google sees "cleaning business" and just shuts it down. Expect to be rejected and expect to do video verification, especially in the United States. We registered Oak Bay Clean in 2021 and Google was not as harsh then.

Second, the address problem. Google wants an address and you probably do not want your home on the internet. In all that time, two people have turned up at ours. A man dropping off a resume, and an older woman who wanted to look us in the eye before she trusted us with her house. Neither was frightening. We still moved to a virtual office with a dedicated address of our own rather than a shared one, and we will keep it forever.

The full setup is in Google Business Profile for a cleaning business.

Reviews are why we do not need a blog

Reviews decide the map pack. They are also the reason a cleaning company can rank without producing content, because a steady flow of fresh, replied-to reviews is a signal that a blog post cannot fake.

Angelica from NiceJob, who owns a cleaning company outside Toronto with her husband, gave us a specific trick on camera: when you reply to a review, name the town you service and the service you provided. Not "thank you so much." She also said, plainly, "if you're not replying to reviews you're missing out on a whole lot of SEO."

We reply to every review by hand. You can spot a company using ChatGPT for its replies immediately, and it reads as a robot, which is the opposite of what a person choosing who to let into their home is looking for.

What Yelp is for

Yelp is where owners waste the most money and skip the most free value, in the same week.

My position, said on camera: "We use Yelp to get Google to notice us. We are not focused on getting reviews on Yelp." We provide the option to leave one. We do not chase it. In Canada, Yelp is a restaurant site, and one of our community members, Crystal, said exactly that to me. She is right.

Yelp still earns its place, because Yelp is a large, trusted, well-indexed site that links to yours. That is the job it does. Jen got on the front page of Yelp in two days.

And the money part, which I have to say out loud because it cost me three times.

"Yelp got me I think three times with their, we'll give you $300 if you spend $300. And I kept getting suckered by it. We didn't make any money off of it." Vic

Be on Yelp. Do not buy Yelp ads. Those are two different decisions. One is free and useful, one took my money three times. Jen says the same thing about the free ad credit they offer when you sign up.

One caveat I always give, because it is true: one member of our community is crushing it on Yelp. When any of us says a channel did not work, test it in your own city before you believe us.

The Yelp maintenance loop nobody runs

If you set your Yelp page and forget about it for two years, you are missing a golden opportunity. The vast majority of companies on Yelp do not do the keyword thing.

• Add one new photo a week, with a keyword-rich caption.
• Use happy, smiling faces. Pexels and Unsplash are free if you do not have your own.
• Combine a before and after into a single image before uploading. If you post them separately, Yelp can lead with the dirty one.
• Rewrite your description for every directory. Copying and pasting the same text everywhere is duplicate content and Google does not like duplicate content.

On rewriting: you can use ChatGPT to vary it, and then you have to make it sound like a person. It is so obvious when copy is written by a computer, and your busy moms read it and think exactly that. Do not turn clients away with a tech tool.

Yelp earned us our first booking and our first recurring client, who then hired us for her office as well as her home. Our first booking was a realtor who called us off Yelp. She told us we were the first company that picked up, and she did not care about the price.

The Thumbtack problem, and why you should go and look right now

In May 2024 I sat down on camera with Cecilia, who runs Rosie Cleans in New Jersey, because Thumbtack had done something to her Google listing that she never agreed to.

Thumbtack had added a "Book Online" button to her Google Business Profile. She never put it there.

"This was an automatic opt-in on their part. They didn't even give you the option for you to opt in." Cecilia, Rosie Cleans

What the button did, in order:

1. A customer finds Cecilia on Google and clicks Book Online, believing they are booking with Rosie Cleans.
2. They land on Thumbtack.
3. If they book, they are flagged as a Thumbtack direct lead, and Cecilia is charged for a customer who had already found her.
4. Her own booking link was gone. On one of her listings the booking button was removed entirely, so new customers saw no way to book at all.
5. The listing led with commercial cleaning, which is not her main service.

Opting out ran through a link buried in a Thumbtack email, which led to a Google Form. They told her it would take a day. A week later it was still there, and the phone rep did not know much about it and escalated the ticket.

I could not reproduce it on my own listing, because I am in Canada and it had not arrived here. I do not know whether Thumbtack still does this, and I am not going to tell you it is fixed or that it is not.

What I will tell you is to go and look at your own Google Business Profile today, click your own booking button as if you were a customer, and see where it takes you. If you do not have Thumbtack, you have another one. Check it.

The list that takes a weekend

Jen runs the SEO side of Oak Bay Clean and this is her sequence, in order. Her warning first: "SEO is the long game. This does not happen immediately. It will take months. I don't know why it takes months. It just does."

On your own site:

1. Company name as the site title. Tagline is cleaning services plus your city.
2. Install Yoast. The free version is fine. Premium handles redirects, so a changed page address does not become a broken link.
3. A different focus key phrase for every page. Making all the pages the same confuses Google.
4. Find phrases with the Ahrefs free keyword generator. Set your country, and take the phrases rated easy or medium.
5. Write the SEO title with an exact-match phrase in it. Keep the meta description short and human, with the phrase near the front.
6. Work keywords and internal links into your FAQ, which on an image-heavy cleaning site is the only place with enough words to matter.
7. Alt text on every large image. For screen readers first, for Google second.

Off your site:

1. Name, address and phone number identical everywhere. We got our own Facebook page wrong as "Oak Bay Clean Co" and cannot fix it.
2. Google Business Profile, then ask for a Google review on every job.
3. Yelp, filled in completely.
4. Then Bark, Angi, Thumbtack, HomeStars. Fill them out all the way.
5. Social profiles. Instagram, Facebook, Nextdoor, Foursquare. They count as links back to you.
6. Look up a competitor's backlinks in Ahrefs and get listed everywhere they are listed.
7. Four new directory listings a week.
8. Chamber of Commerce, BBB, your industry association. Enter the awards. You are allowed to nominate yourself and it is normal.

"This is picky, tedious, boring. That's why no one does it." Jen

Why we are organic-first

We are all about organic at Cleaning Company Blueprint. Set everything up properly and over time you get better leads, better clients, and you are not renting them.

Almost all of us start with paid leads, and there is no shame in that. Google Local Services Ads run about $25 to $75 or $80 a lead depending on the city. In Houston that is as much as $80, and the clean itself might only be $150. You can see the problem.

The paid version is a bridge. The organic version is the business. Roughly 70% of our traffic at Oak Bay Clean is organic, and Jen wanted it at 100.

Whatever you pay for, do not let it go stale. I have talked to people paying for leads who contact them once and then do nothing. You paid for them. They are yours to keep contacting until they book or they tell you to get lost.

How long it takes

Longer than you want. Two people in our community started four months ago and are on the first page of Google now, and I am not going to promise you that, because I do not have an average to give you.

What I can tell you is what I do when a coaching client has run a cleaning company for a year, is stuck at $10,000 or $20,000 a month, and cannot work out why.

I Google them. Then I say: you are not on Yelp, and you are not doing some basic stuff.

It is almost always the list above. It is boring, and it is sitting there, and your competitors have not done it either.

If someone else has already done it, why can't you?

Frequently asked questions

Do cleaning businesses need to blog for SEO?

Not for long. Oak Bay Clean blogged in its first year to get Google's attention, then stopped, and still ranks number one in its city. Our ideal client was never going to read an article about cleaning, and once the reviews were coming in fast and good they did that job better. The signals that matter for a local cleaning company are a complete Google Business Profile, consistent name, address and phone across the web, links from directories, and a steady flow of reviews you reply to by hand.

Is Yelp worth it for a cleaning business?

Being on Yelp is worth it. Paying Yelp is not, in our experience. We use Yelp to get Google to notice us, not to collect reviews, because a complete Yelp profile is a strong link from a site Google trusts. Vic bought the spend $300 get $300 offer three times and made no money back on any of them. One member of our community is doing well on Yelp, so test it in your own city before taking anyone's word for it.

Why does Google keep rejecting my cleaning business profile?

Google is hostile to new cleaning businesses. It is almost as though it sees the words cleaning business and shuts the listing down, and it is worse in the United States than it was a few years ago. Expect rejection and expect to complete video verification.

Can Thumbtack change my Google Business Profile?

In May 2024, Thumbtack added a Book Online button to cleaning companies' Google Business Profiles without asking. Customers who clicked it were routed to Thumbtack, and if they booked, the owner was charged for the lead. On one listing it removed the owner's own booking button entirely. Opting out ran through a Google Form and took more than a week. We do not know whether it still happens, so check your own listing by clicking your booking button as a customer would.

How long does local SEO take for a cleaning business?

Months. Two people in our community started four months ago and are on the first page now, but we do not have an average and will not invent one. Jen's own summary is that it takes months and she does not know why, it just does.

How much do Google Local Services Ads cost for cleaners?

Roughly $25 to $75 or $80 per lead depending on the city. In Houston it can reach $80 a lead when the clean itself might only be $150. Paid leads are a reasonable bridge at the start, and they are not the business.

Should I use my home address for my cleaning business?

Google wants an address. In five years, two people ever turned up at ours: a man dropping off a resume and an older woman who wanted to meet us before trusting us with her home. We still moved to a virtual office with a dedicated address rather than a shared one, and we will keep it.