Cleaning Business Internet Marketing - Dominate Local Search

Anyone going into the cleaning business seriously these days should have a good understanding of what it takes to bring targeted local traffic to their website. This article sets out some cleaning business Internet marketing tips. If implemented correctly these methods can help to bring you website visitors who are searching for a cleaning service in your area.

Firstly, you need to have a good understanding of how your customers will search for services locally and the keywords that they will enter into search engines. Usually they will combine key words related to cleaning with keywords related to their location. For example a client living in Sacramento may structure their search by entering 'House cleaner in Sacramento' or 'Sacramento cleaning services'.

Your job is to target some of these keyword phrases so that your website can rank highly on the first page of the search engine results. There are a variety of ways to do this and they can be divided into 'onsite' and 'offsite' methods.

Onsite Methods

Ask your website designer about optimizing your site for the search engines. You should have the keywords that you are targeting positioned strategically throughout your website in the Meta tags, in headings and in the body text of your sites home page and other website pages. With the content on your site you should aim for a ratio of 1% to 3% keyword placement on a page. Try to keep it natural and mix in a variety of keywords otherwise search engines will pick up on any 'keyword over stuffing'.

Try to regularly add content to your site. Aim to have a lot of content focusing not only on cleaning but also on your city or local area.

Offsite Methods

The first approach here is to focus on getting many quality inbound links from relevant websites. Try to get links from websites related to cleaning (and even other small service businesses in your local area) and your local area in general. Local directory style sites are great if your area has websites that list local businesses.

For any incoming links you should try to have good keywords as the links anchor text. Instead of having other sites link to you using your websites URL it is better if the links text is something like 'Cleaning Company in Sacramento' (which then links through to your site anyway).

Try doing a search on some keyword terms that you think customers would enter. See what comes up and then look at the results on the first few pages and find out if you can get any links or exposure on those pages.

Try to set up a network of web pages that all link into your main cleaning business website. Using web 2.0 sites like Squidoo.com, article directories like Ezinearticles.com and free blogging platforms such as Blogger.com you can easily set up a network of pages related to cleaning and your local area. If you are prepared to write or buy some articles then having these sites all pointing in to your home page can really give you a boost up Google's search rankings.

Many service business operators also report amazing results from posting free advertisements on classified sites like Craigslist.com for their city.

You only have to spend a little time learning about search engine optimization and local search and you can really rule the search engines. A lot of small businesses don't put any focus on this at all so it can be surprisingly easy to rank highly for 'cleaning' related searches in your area. The reward could be a ton of free targeted traffic to your cleaning business website for very little effort.