If you have a website for your house cleaning business then it's likely your website

designer asked you what keywords you want to use so people will find your site

when doing an Internet search. Many house cleaning companies make the mistake of using

keyword phrases like "residential cleaning company" or "house cleaning services". If you do a search for one of these phrases, you'll find millions of search results. If you want your prospective clients to find your website, then you need to show up on the top 1 or 2 pages. What is the chance they'll find you on the top 1 or 2 pages using these keyword phrases? It's not very likely -- they're simply too general and there are millions of pages competing for these keyword phrases.

For a prospective customer to find your website through an Internet search,

you need to focus on specific keyword phrases that they might actually search

for to find your business. Then you need to build pages around these keyword

phrases.

Have you ever heard the phrase "content is king"? This is

true when it comes to being found on the Internet. In fact, "keyword rich"

content is even more important. What does this mean? Keyword rich content means

that you've created web pages around a specific search phrase that your target

market is using to find websites like yours. The more specific the topic, the

more likely you'll find yourself in the top 1 or 2 pages when someone searches

for that keyword phrase.

Let's try an example. A person searching for residential cleaning services in their area might use the following phrase:

house cleaning services Reno, Nevada

This person is looking for house cleaning services in a specific location. So you

might think about focusing your home page around a similar phrase, and

incorporating your city and state into the phrase.

If you offer other house cleaning services such as carpet cleaning or window

washing, it would be helpful to build individual pages around these keyword

phrases. That way, when the search engines visit your website, they'll know

exactly what each page is about and will understand where to list each page when

someone searches for that keyword phrase.

When creating your "About Us" page, you should include your full name in the

keyword phrase because people might be searching for you by name.

Now that you have an idea of what types of keyword phrases to use for your

website, there are many additional things you need to do to "optimize" your site

so the pages are "search engine-friendly".

Every web page has the following elements in the code that

helps search engines determine what your site is about. Each of these elements

should include some variation of your keyword phrase for that particular

page.

Title - This is the title of the page. When you do an

Internet search, the title is the underlined text in the first line of results.

The title will also appear in the top blue bar in your browser window.

The Title Tag will look something like this in the code of your website (I've

substituted "[]" symbols for "<>" symbols, or the following code won't

show up on the page):

[TITLE]Smith's Excellent House Cleaning Services, Reno,

Nevada[/TITLE]

Description - This is a brief description of what your web

page is about. When you do an Internet search, the description is underneath the

title, so you want this to be compelling enough to get people to click through

to your site.

The Description Tag will look something like this in the code of your

website:

[DESCRIPTION]Smith's Excellent House Cleaning Services provides

home and office cleaning services throughout the Reno Nevada

area.[/DESCRIPTION]

Keywords - These are the keyword phrases you think people

are searching for to find this particular page. If this is your carpet cleaning

page, then you'll want to use "carpet cleaning" in your keyword phrase list.

The Keywords Tag will look something like this in the code of your

website:

[KEYWORDS]house cleaning services, Reno, Nevada[/KEYWORDS]

You should also optimize each web page by using some of the following

elements:

Headlines on the page - Add your keyword phrase in the

headline and then use an H1 or H2 Tag in the code. For example, if the headline

of the page is "Carpet Cleaning", then it will look something like this in the

code:

[H1]Carpet Cleaning[/H1]

Body Text - Use some variation of your keyword phrase

throughout the text, but be careful not to overuse the phrase or the search

engines will penalize you. It should be safe to focus on the keyword phrase in

the first paragraph and then again in the last paragraph.

Anchor Text - Include anchor text in the body text of a web

page. For example, on the home page you could include a link to your carpet

cleaning services page. Hyperlink the phrase "carpet cleaning services", rather

than saying something like "Click here to visit our carpet cleaning services

page".

Use bold, italics and bulleted lists - Some search engines

give more weight to these, so use your keyword phrase in bulleted lists, bold

and italics.

Remember that people will be reading your pages, so while it's important to

optimize your pages for the search engines, your content must still read well.

And as mentioned earlier, do not stuff your pages with keyword phrases - this

can be detrimental to your site.

If you want people to find your house cleaning company's website, then remember

that you won't be able to compete for the most highly competitive search

phrases. It is better to compete for less obvious phrases, and include your city

and state. If you can get high rankings for some of the lesser searched, but

more specific phrases, then you may be able to send more traffic to your

website.

Once you've created your list of keyword phrases, you can build pages around

each of the phrases, using the techniques listed above. This type of search

engine-friendly content is one of the most effective optimization practices.

Once each page is optimized, you're ready to launch your website.

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Copyright © TheJanitorialStore.com. All Rights Reserved.
Jean Hanson helps owners of residential cleaning companies build a more profitable and successful cleaning business through her online community at MyHouseCleaningBiz.com. Read inspirational cleaning success stories at http://www.cleaning-success.com, and sign up for House Cleaning Profit Tips at http://www.MyHouseCleaningBiz.com.