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Top Reasons You Aren’t Getting Traffic To Your Cleaning Business Website

Getting traffic to your website

So you just launched your new cleaning website and are ready for the flood of new leads, but a few months have gone by and nothing seems to be happening. What gives? Why isn’t there a steady stream of phone calls and new cleaning leads coming in from your website?

Unfortunately, content marketing and ranking on Google take time. You might be using all of the right marketing strategies you should be, but even those don’t happen overnight. The good news is that with a few tweaks you can optimize your website and content to start getting traffic to your website faster. In this post, you’ll learn the top reasons you aren’t getting traffic to your cleaning business website and how to fix them.

Expectations on reaching the first page on Google

The first thing to understand is that there are many factors that influence how long it can take to reach page one of Google and for getting traffic to your website.

If any of these factors is not being done or are done poorly it can prevent your cleaning company website from ranking on page one of Google. At the very least it can slow the rate of how quickly your site will improve in Google rankings.

The good news is that you have control over many of these factors, which will help you improve how fast you get traffic to your site from new content. The bad news is that there are several factors that you won’t have control over, which can make ranking your content quickly more difficult.

In general, we have found that it can take a few months to reach the first few pages of the Google search results depending on how competitive a market is. This doesn’t mean you can’t rank faster, but having proper expectations on how fast content marketing works is important to your cleaning company marketing strategy.

You have a new website

One major reason your content might not be ranking quickly on Google is if you have a new website. Often we see cleaning companies that have set up their website just a few months ago or are wanting to set one up for the first time and quickly get traffic.

Obviously, you have to start somewhere with your digital marketing plan, but also understand that Google and search engines view new websites differently than those that have been around a while. Usually, Google will put new websites into what is called a “sandbox” which means that they prevent these new sites from getting traffic through search.

The good news is that this sandbox is only temporary and usually lasts between 1-6 months. As a cleaning business owner just getting into digital marketing, that may sound like an eternity. However, in the grand scheme of things, a few months delay in results on an asset that can grow your cleaning business forever, is a small price to pay.

Because of this delay, it is one reason we suggest marketing your cleaning business as a means to scale your business, not just to get your first few customers. Unless you are implementing your cleaning business marketing plan yourself, you may want to hold off on investing in marketing until you have a few steady customers to pay for it.

Your website doesn’t have a professional design

Another mistake that could be preventing your cleaning business website from maximizing traffic is the overall design. We often run into cleaning company websites that are thrown together quickly without regard to design or functionality.

The worst offender of this is when we find sites that look pretty but are not functional or designed to generate traffic and leads. Unfortunately, a lot of cleaning business owners end up setting up websites and paying for designers to create sites that just look flashy.

The sites look nice or have lots of animations and content swooping in, to look impressive to potential customers, but in reality, it just frustrates site visitors. An example is having those rotating slider images at the top of your page. It might “look cool” but the reality is that it annoys your visitors, slows down your website, and does nothing to help increase conversions. Instead, use a static image that highlights the benefits of your services.

Highlighting the benefits and using customer reviews and testimonials on your home page will build trust with your company and help improve conversion rates.

Your website isn’t mobile-friendly

Having a mobile-friendly website is another key factor that can impact getting traffic to your cleaning business website. As the world goes more and more mobile your website needs to become mobile-friendly.

Having a site that is mobile-friendly means that when people come to your website on a mobile device it functions without errors, and it is easy for visitors to use on their phone. Sometimes people only design a website that is functional on a desktop version of the site. Some common issues include the text being too small to read, and clickable elements being too close to each other.

Google and other search engines continue to prioritize websites that are mobile-friendly first in the search results. Often they only base search ranking on the mobile version of a site. This means that if your site is perfect in desktop mode, but works poorly in mobile, you will have a hard time ranking at all with your website.

Make sure to have your web developer create a website that is mobile-friendly to maximize your organic traffic potential. If you aren’t sure if your website is mobile-friendly or not, you can use the mobile-friendly test provided by Google.

Your service area is very competitive

Yet another factor to consider when determining how effective your content will be at driving traffic to your website is the competitiveness of your service area. If you live in a major city it will usually be more difficult to rank for various keywords because more people are trying to rank for the same thing.

For example, if you lived in New York City, there would likely be more competition than a town of a few thousand people. Now if you live in a big metropolitan area, it doesn’t mean you can’t get traffic to your website, but it likely will mean you won’t rank new content quickly.

If you aren’t sure what the competition is like in your area, simply do a search on Google for terms you want to rank for. Scope out the competition and look at the quality of content they have on their website.

If the top-ranking pages only have a few hundred words, or if the site is poorly designed there is a better chance that your content could rank well quicker. However, if the site is well written, the content, and the content is over 1000 words, you may have a harder time ranking organically, at least in the short run.

Understanding your competition will be helpful for you to determine how quickly you are likely to rank on organic search.

Having quality content has more benefits than just trying rank on page one in Google

Are you making content for the sole purpose of ranking on page one of Google? Here’s the thing, there are many benefits to creating quality content on your website then ranking on page one of Google.

The benefits you get from creating content include organic traffic, but there is so much more beyond that. Some benefits include building trust, credibility, and authority in your industry. For example, let’s say that you wanted to get more cleaning clients in the medical facility niche.

The first thing we would recommend doing, in this case, would be to create an industry page for that service. When a new visitor comes to your site and they see an entire well-written page on a service they are interested in, they will assume you do a lot of business in that niche and specialize in it.

If your website is lacking that content, potential customers will either think you don’t provide those services or at the very least you don’t have much experience in those industries. Most people want to hire experts in their craft, not first-timers. By creating content related to the industries, services, and areas you serve can help boost conversions. This can happen even if you aren’t yet ranking on page one of Google.

The content on your website isn’t very old

The age of content on your website is another ranking factor and can determine if you are getting traffic to your website or not. Similar to the sandbox concept, search engines like Google, don’t rank brand new content for a period of time.

This time frame can vary depending on the competition of the keyword and other relevant content in the marketplace. Getting traffic locally can also come faster than trying to rank content nationally.

Typically we see content taking a few months to start to pull in significant traffic to a website. You can certainly get traffic sooner than that, but often a page won’t reach its full potential until it has been around for a minimum of 6 months. In some cases, the content won’t reach position one on Google for almost two years.

The good news is that by promoting a local cleaning business you can usually start to get new targeted traffic within a few months. Also, the traffic comes in passively, so you spend time making the content once and it continues to bring in returns forever.

Given the time to rank appropriately many posts will bring in dozens of clicks a day to your website. Check out the photo below for a typical timeframe for how content increases traffic to your website over time.

blog post traffic growth

You are using stock photos

Unfortunately, sometimes we find that people have been misled into thinking that stock photos are a good thing to use on a cleaning business website. The reality is that while a stock photo may look more “professional” it makes your company look less professional.

When you are promoting a service business, people are looking for expertise. Nothing screams lack of expertise like stock photos. Certainly, stock photos are better than no photos. A site can still get traffic with stock photos, but whenever possible use real photos on your website.

This also doesn’t mean that you need to hire a professional photographer to capture photos for your website. In most cases, your current smartphone will be able to capture high-quality photos that are good to use on your website.

The biggest factor is usually good lighting that matters rather than using the best high-end camera available. Any cleaning business can set up a website and throw up the same stock photos everyone has access to.

The companies that stand out are the ones that have real photos of cleaning technicians in the field. People want to hire a company they trust. By using real photos it can help you establish that trust faster for your cleaning business.

Search engines also prioritize content with real photos because they know it is unique.

You don’t have backlinks or website authority

Overall website authority can also help your content rank faster and get traffic to your website from new content quicker. There are many ways to build backlinks and authority to a website, but some methods are more effective than others.

Backlinks are when another website links back to your website. Search engines like Google see backlinks as a sign of the quality of a website. One thing to note with this is that no all backlinks are created equal.

There are concepts related to gaining backlinks called black hat SEO techniques and white hat SEO techniques. Black hat SEO techniques have the potential to get results quicker and easier, but also put your website at risk. White hat SEO techniques take longer to implement, but the benefits come without putting your website at risk.

Blackhat SEO uses strategies to get a lot of links quickly, but the links are usually of poor quality. They could help boost your site early on, but over time, Google sees these are low-quality links and could take your ranking away.

A more stable method for quality links is with citations and directory listings. These kinds of links help build authority and aren’t risky for your website. Having more high-quality links pointing to your site can help you rank your content faster on search engines.

You aren’t optimizing off-site SEO

Citation and directory management is one part of your off-site SEO strategy. Another part of your off-site SEO strategy should include Google My Business optimization.

Not only will this give your website an additional high-quality backlink, but it also helps improve local SEO. Most cleaning businesses do business locally, so maximizing your local traffic is extremely important.

Many cleaning businesses have a Google My Business page, but they don’t spend the time optimizing it for maximum results. This includes fully filling out the categories, services, hours, and posting content like photos and updates consistently.

Doing this sends good signals to search engines, that you have a legitimate business. As an added bonus, this can help your site build authority. It can also help you rank better on Google Maps, which will help you attract more local search traffic.

Conclusion

Overall there are many strategies that can help you get traffic to your website faster. However, most strategies take time to see results. Even if you do everything right to optimize your website for increased traffic some factors can slow down your results.

For example, having a poor website design, slow website, or a website that isn’t user friendly can cause your content to rank poorly. Even if your content is well written and optimized for SEO it will usually take a few months to start getting significant search traffic.

Understand that there are benefits to having a solid content marketing strategy in place beyond just increased traffic. This content on your website can also help build trust, credibility, and authority for your company.

Another thing you should focus on in addition to content marketing is your off-site SEO strategy. This means getting quality backlinks through directory management and optimizing a Google My Business page.

These processes don’t guarantee overnight results, but they do work to build long-term targeted traffic to your website. These marketing strategies are strategies every cleaning business should be using to stay competitive.

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.