Cleaning Services Company Adds Sparkle To Their Local SEO And PPC Campaigns

How Edge45® achieved the following for Smart Cleaning:
Organic New Users YOY Increase 12 Months to Jan 2022
Organic Traffic Increase 12 Months to Jan 2022
Increase In Page 1 Keywords
Increase in Monthly Paid Search Leads
Increase in Paid Search Conversion Rate
Reduction in Paid Search Cost Per Lead

Countering COVID’s Blow To The Cleaning Sector

With a wide-ranging client base, Smart Cleaning UK’s growth since their 2015 inception has been nothing short of remarkable. The York-based cleaning services company offers both domestic and commercial cleaning solutions across a broad spectrum of sectors, covering everything from dental practices through to pubs, bars, and restaurants.

Smart Cleaning’s long-term vision to expand beyond York into Yorkshire and beyond was disrupted thanks to the unannounced arrival of Covid-19. Commercial cleaning contracts – Smart Cleaning’s bread and butter – were pulled almost overnight, leading to a dearth of commercial work:

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Watching the competition bolt out the door

“We’d forecasted another strong year of growth for 2020 and we were looking forward to rolling out the expansion plans we had made, but they went out the window overnight once everyone realised the severity of the pandemic approaching the UK. We had to change everything at that moment.”

Benjamin Hirst, Managing Director, Smart Cleaning

The commercial cleaning exodus resulted in a greater reliance on the domestic arms of the business, which traditionally was far smaller than their commercial endeavours. Smart Cleaning’s savvy owners quickly realised that switching priorities from commercial to domestic cleaning services gave them their best chance of not only surviving, but thriving, during the pandemic.

They also recognised, unlike many of their competitors, that pushing forward with their marketing efforts at a time when everyone around them was suspending theirs would serve them well long-term. Smart Cleaning knew that fresh commercial opportunities would be few and far between during such an uncertain time, but they had the foresight, and courage, to pursue all avenues that could potentially lead to new business being brought in.

Expanding Reach To Mop Up New Business

Despite the domestic side of things playing second fiddle to their commercial contracts prior to the pandemic, Smart Cleaning still had a strong foothold in search for a number of decent domestic keywords. The problem was that these search terms were very narrow in terms of locale.

Keywords such as ‘carpet cleaning York’ and ‘York oven cleaners’ were ranking highly, but any push to expand the domestic arm of the business meant taking market share in the wider Yorkshire region. Targeting new areas such as Leeds, Hull, Harrogate and beyond became the focus.

Smart Cleaning discussed their goals with their web developer and a plan was put in place to create multiple websites, each targeting a specific domestic cleaning service. Once built, they would then try and rank each site in all the locations the company wanted to move into.

The thinking behind the multi-site strategy was that a dedicated website for each domestic service would be favoured by search engines over a single site where the message may be diluted by the commercial arm of the business, thus resulting in higher rankings across the board.

Enter Edge45®

As SEO for cleaning companies is a thing, Edge45® had previously worked with Smart Cleaning on a short-term carpet cleaning SEO project several years earlier and they were keen to partner with us again for the expansion of their local SEO campaigns.

So, after signing off on the multiple website strategy with their developer, the company re-enlisted Edge45® for cleaning SEO services and PPC Services. The task was to replicate the previous successes we’d had with their main site across the new websites, targeting a wider range of geographical locations.

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“I’ve worked with Edge45® historically to grow my business and so I knew they were able to deliver results relatively quickly. I therefore decided to take a leap of faith into the unknown and I don’t regret it for a second. We’re now delivering approx. 600 quality leads each month across both paid and organic channels over a period of only 8 months.”

Benjamin Hirst, Managing Director, Smart Cleaning

Scrubbing Up The Solution

Although we agreed that a local search marketing campaign to promote domestic services was a sound idea, we were compelled to challenge the manner in which their web developer had suggested it be executed. The multi-site approach posed three significant problems:

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Scrubbing Up The Solution

Building websites for every service covered by Smart Cleaning was going to run into tens of thousands of pounds.

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Our answer? Ditch the multi-site strategy and instead concentrate on a single ‘super’ site. This would help keep costs down and have the additional benefit of leveraging the ‘authority’ of their existing site.

Edge45® is built on honesty and transparency, so we were compelled to inform Smart Cleaning that, despite our skills, transforming their local SEO standing would take time – something the company were short of as they battled against the effect the Corona virus was having on their business.

A two-pronged attack was called for, pairing an ongoing and sustainable SEO-focused location strategy for the medium to longer term with a short term PPC-focused location strategy that would capitalise on increased market share in new areas immediately.

Reverting back to the single site model would aid this short-term PPC blast, as costs from a consultancy and ad spend point of view would naturally be lower as a result.

A Clean Sweep…
increase in leads generated per month (Oct 20 Vs Mar 22)
increase in conversion rate from PPC (Oct 20 Vs Mar 22)
cost per lead reduction (Oct 20 Vs Mar 22)
YOY increase (1st Jan 2021 to 31st Dec 2021) in new users
£££
increase in page 1 keywords including 'carpet cleaning leeds'
£££
increase in organic leads since YOY increase (1st Jan 2021 to 31st Dec 2021) in new users
£££

“Edge45® keep me on my toes daily, we’ve gone from having a team of furloughed staff to constantly training new staff, including an area manager to handle the additional workload from the increased areas we now serve. After the recent success post lockdown we’re also looking to scale even further next year and are in the final preparation with Edge45® for our national 2022 strategy. 

I can’t thank Edge45® enough for their hard work and dedication to my business at such a difficult time.  They’ve slaved away writing 100’s of pages of content for our website. They’re not afraid to get their hands dirty and always willing to go above and beyond.”

 

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