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How to do Keyword Research for Cleaning Companies in 7 Easy Steps

how to do keyword research for Cleaning companies

An essential part of a cleaning business marketing plan is going to be the content you create and running a paid advertising strategy. In order to make this content and paid ad targeting successful, you’ll need to do proper keyword research. When you properly do keyword research it will help make your content relevant, increase traffic through SEO, and will make sure you target your Google Ads at the right people. In this post, you’ll learn how to do keyword research for cleaning companies.


1. Determine what cleaning services you offer

The first thing you want to consider before beginning keyword research for cleaning companies is determining the cleaning services you offer. Even if a keyword gets a lot of traffic, if it isn’t relevant to what you offer, there is no point in optimizing for it on your website.

Also if you are running paid ads on Google, you shouldn’t target keywords that aren’t relevant to your website. If you do, likely this will waste money by targeting the wrong people, and it can lower your ad relevancy score. This means you will pay more for your ads or they won’t be shown at all.

With this in mind, put together a list of your services and industries you serve. This list can give you a great foundation and starting place for content marketing and target for Google ads.

For example, if you offer, house cleaning, commercial cleaning, floor care, and office cleaning, these would be great pages to build on your website. Also with those keywords as a base, you can build a list of similar terms to target that is also highly relevant. For example, you could target home cleaning, commercial cleaning services, floor cleaning services, and office cleaning services.

Keywords related to the cleaning services you offer and industries you serve will build the basis of your more advanced keyword research strategies for a cleaning business.

2. Determine where your cleaning company does business

Another batch of quality keywords is going to come from the areas your cleaning company does business in. For example, if you do business in New York City, you’ll likely want to use keywords containing New York City. This could include terms like commercial cleaning services in New York City, or janitorial services in New York City.

Another search term that people also often use is “near me”, such as “house cleaning near me.” Once you have done the keyword research for your service area the way to capitalize on it is through location pages and blog posts.

You want to create location pages for every key area you want to generate business from. In addition to that, you want to link to your service and industry pages from your location pages. When you do this it can help to associate those industries and services with the locations you have location pages for.

It can send signals to the search engines that you do business in those areas and it can even help your site show up for search terms using those city names and those services or industries.

3. Figure out what your ideal customers are looking for

In general, your service pages, industry pages, and location pages will hit on many of the major keywords you want to rank for and target. However, there are many other relevant keywords that would be beneficial to rank for.

Often these keywords are not as obvious as things like commercial cleaning services, but rather focus on wants, needs, questions, and problems your ideal customers have. With this in mind, you want to spend some time brainstorming ideas that would fall into these categories.

For example, you might create a blog post around the topic of a cleaning product buying guide. It could be something like “10 cleaning products you need to have in your home.” Again this topic would be value-based, and would likely be of something of interest in those people who are interested in cleaning their homes.

At the same time, you could also show readers how hiring a cleaning service could be more cost-effective and save them time vs trying to buy all the equipment, cleaning supplies, and do the cleaning themselves. You want your content to help solve a problem, get a better result, or answer a common question, while also “selling” people on why they should hire your cleaning service.

4. Use Google Search

Now that you have some ideas of what kind of cleaning content to create, you want to make sure that it is congruent with what people are actually searching for. One way to do this is by comparing your content ideas with what people actually search for on Google.

A common mistake people make when using content marketing is that they make content, but it isn’t congruent with what people use as search terms. This is a big mistake because most search engines will not discover these pages and posts and you’ll miss out on the benefits of SEO.

How you use Google search to optimize your blog posts and content is simple. Take whatever idea you think you want your post or page to be about and enter that as a search term. For example, in the photo below, we used the idea of “cleaning products you need to have in your home”.

how to use google search for keyword research for cleaning companies

Once you enter that search term, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and see related searches. These are actual search terms people are using related to your post idea.

So in this case you might create a post or resource such as a “Top 10 basic cleaning supplies you need for your home”. This post is the same general idea as your original idea, but now it also uses keywords people are actively using. If the post is written well, it should generate a good amount of traffic through SEO and more than you would with the original title. Follow this process on any page or post you create for the best results.

5. Check out your competition

Another way of how to do keyword research for cleaning companies is to look at what keywords your competitors are using. Likely you know the biggest competitor and top 3-5 cleaning companies in your area.

The first thing you should do is visit the biggest competitor’s website and your other top competition’s sites and look at what type of content they have on their site. Now you don’t want to make your cleaning company website a clone of theirs, but rather look at their sites for inspiration.

For example, if they have blog posts related to Airbnb cleaning services and that is something you offer, you might consider making a page and blog posts related to that.

When people are deciding on a company to work with one of the first places they look is their company website. If you offer services that don’t have a dedicated page or content related to that service people will think you lack expertise.

If your competition does have pages for those services potential customers are likely going to find their websites easier and do business with them instead.

6. Use Google Trends

Wish you could tap into what’s trending in the cleaning world? Well, with Google Trends you can do just that. Google Trends is a keyword research tool that shows you what search terms are trending and what kind of search volume they get.

There are a lot of benefits to using Google Trends as a means of doing keyword research for a cleaning company. One benefit is that you can see monthly data on how search terms are performing. In the photo below you’ll see the search traffic for the keyword “cleaning services” in the state of New York over the past 12 months.

Using Google Trends as a method of how to do keyword research for cleaning companies

With data like you see above, you can plan out what pages you should create and potential keywords to run Google Ads for. Another great feature on Google Trends is that it gives you related keyword suggestions that are rising in popularity.

These suggestions could give you insights on new services you might want to offer, or pages and content you should create to capitalize on the growing interest. For example, in the search above, some other suggestions were “house cleaning services near me”, “home cleaning services near me”, and “apartment cleaning services”.

With this info, you could decide to make an apartment cleaning services page and know to focus on Google My Business to improve your chances of showing up for local searches like “cleaning services near me”.

7. Use Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is another helpful tool to use when doing keyword research for cleaning companies. Similar to Google Trends, Google Keyword can give you insight into what keywords you can use to create content and to target with Google Ads.

As mentioned above, using your top competitor’s websites for inspiration can be a great place to start. With Google Keyword Planner you can type in keywords or a website to begin your keyword research.

As you can see in the image below, we chose a popular cleaning company and used their website as a basis for our search. Google Keyword Planner then lists many keyword ideas you could use to create content or to target with Google Ads.

how to use Google keyword planner to do keyword research for a cleaning business

For example, you can see that “a clean house” gets approximately 9900 searches a month in the USA. Likely someone interested in “a clean house” would also be interested in potentially hiring a cleaning service.

If you were to write a blog post using “a clean house” as the keyword you optimize for, it could generate a lot of free targeted traffic to your website. For example, you might write a blog post on something like, “10 steps to a clean house without spending a fortune”.

This title and topic hit on a keyword people are frequently using and can help address a problem your ideal customers have. When you combine those two aspects it can greatly improve the chances search engines will rank your content well.

Conclusion

Proper keyword research can mean the difference between the success and failure of your content marketing, SEO, and Google Ads strategy. Without keyword research your content may be irrelevant to your ideal customers, it may get no organic traffic, and your Google Ads may generate little to no results.

Thankfully there are many strategies of how to do keyword research for cleaning companies to point you in the right direction. First, look internally at what your company offers and where you do business. These two factors can give you a nice foundation to work from for your keyword research.

Next, look to your customers and what their needs, problems, and questions are. These can lead you to find keywords that are relevant for content, and to what keywords to target that can lead to high-converting Google Ads.

Also, don’t forget about your competition. Your competitor’s websites and content can be a great resource for keyword ideas and services you might want to offer. Finally, once this initial research is done, confirm your keyword ideas with keyword tools like Google Search, Google Trends, and Google Keyword Planner, to confirm you are targeting the right keywords and to find new keywords.

Use these keyword research strategies to help your cleaning business generate more traffic, leads, and sales from your website, content, and Google Ads.

P.S. If you are struggling to get quality leads for your cleaning business, Click Here to Learn How to Get More Clients for your business with these Top 10 Lead Sources For Cleaning Business Owners.