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Your clients are companies, property managers, shops and medical practices. They look for a provider once, then sign a contract that often lasts several years. So searches are few, and each one counts. On Google, the first page is shared between quote platforms, directories and the branches of national groups. I'm telling you as it is. Your strength is being local, with a manager who comes out to visit the premises. I make sure your Google Business Profile and your website show it.
15 years in SEO
4 books on SEO and GEO
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Eurofins
Cegid
EBP
CNP Assurances
Ingram MicroThe map, as seen by an office manager
A business manager in Angoulême is looking for a company to clean her offices. On her map, Google shows her three profiles: the branch of a national group, a home cleaning service and a company with no description. Your business already cleans offices on her street, and your profile is in fourth place. Get it into the top three.
Fig. 1. A search for offices in Angoulême, three profiles, none of them about offices. (Your staff were on her street every evening. Your profile said “all types of services”.)
What this means for you. I set up your profile with your real activity, your services for businesses and photos of your teams, so Google knows who to show you to.
SEO for a cleaning company is the work that makes it visible on Google when a business in its area looks for a cleaning provider. It relies on a Google Business Profile set up for business clients, a website page per type of premises and per service, and a service area written out town by town. It is judged by visit and quote requests from businesses, not by calls from private individuals.
The problem
On “office cleaning quote”, the top results are matchmaking platforms. They pass the request to several companies at once, which end up competing on price. You pay for the contact and you have no control over what the client has read.
When the website talks about “cleaning” without saying who for, Google also shows you to people looking for a home cleaner. You answer requests you don't take on, and the building manager doesn't find you.
Offices, residential buildings, window cleaning, post-construction, medical premises: everything is on a single page, in a list. Yet each type of client has its own constraints and its own words. A list answers none of their searches.
An audit, for real
The site below doesn't exist, but its flaws do: they're the five I spot most often. Hover over a number.
Cleanliness, our passion
For private and business clients, we work everywhere for all your cleaning needs.
Free quoteFig. 2. Fictional site, reconstructed. Any resemblance to yours would be a good reason to call me.
What your customers type
Here are six plausible searches for a cleaning company working with businesses. They are examples. The real list depends on your area and comes out of the audit.
What works
The category, description, services and photos must talk about offices, buildings and business premises. I remove anything suggesting home cleaning if you don't do it. The profile is what answers searches that include a town.
Offices, residential buildings, shops, medical premises, industrial sites: each type has its page, with its constraints, your methods and a sample schedule. The manager must recognise themselves from the title.
Window cleaning, post-works restoration or floor cleaning have their own searches. These services sell on their own, then lead to regular contracts. Each deserves a page with your lead times and your equipment.
A map as an image tells Google nothing. I write out the towns your teams already cover, grouped by round. I don't create a page for a town where you have no clients and no team.
Before signing, a business wants to know who supervises the staff, how you replace someone who is absent and how they can report a problem. I put these answers up front, with reviews from business clients and your up-to-date certificates.
What costs dearly
Visitors must understand it in one line. Until it is written at the top of the home page, you will get requests from private individuals and lose those from businesses.
These images can be found at your competitors' too. Photos of your teams, your vehicles and premises you look after show that the company exists.
A busy manager gives up before the end. Three questions are enough for a first contact: the type of premises, the town, a phone number. The rest is covered during the visit.
This list no longer fools Google and gets in the way of reading. A real page per round, with examples of sites you look after, is more useful.
The method
Four steps. I start from the contracts you want to sign, not from the full list of what you can do.
One-minute test
Five frank questions to find out whether support makes sense in your situation. Sometimes the answer is no, and I'll tell you.
What it brings in
A ranking doesn't pay a salary. What counts is what it brings: enquiries, customers, revenue. Move your page up and see what it could bring in.
Example assumptions, open to challenge: 250 searches a month for business premises cleaning in your town, 4% of visitors make an enquiry, one enquiry in three is signed (this varies a lot from one trade to another), €9,000 per client. Click-through rates by position are orders of magnitude, and they have been shifting since Google started showing AI answers above the results. Redo the calculation with your figures
Possible revenue€0
Close to home
In Charente, a cleaning company looks after very different places: offices and buildings in Angoulême, cellars and négoce premises around Cognac, workshops in business parks. A manager looking for a provider types the type of premises and the name of their town. So your pages and your Google Business Profile must name the places your teams already cover. I know the département, and we can meet there.
The urban area is home to head offices, public bodies, shops and buildings run by property managers. One page per type of premises, naming Angoulême and the neighbouring towns, answers these managers' searches.
Négociant houses, their offices, their reception areas and the companies that supply them welcome visitors and take care of their image. If you already look after this type of place, describe it on a separate page, without naming your clients if they don't want you to.
An industrial site requires suitable equipment, schedules aligned with production and compliance with its safety rules. An “industrial premises” page detailing how you work sets you apart from an office cleaning provider.
Beyond Google
Managers now describe their needs to an AI such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Mistral, with every detail. For example: “I manage three residential buildings in Angoulême, I want to change provider for the common areas, who can I consult?”. The AI explains what to compare, then sometimes suggests a few companies.
It takes these names from wherever it can read them: your website, your Google Business Profile, business directories, reviews. A company that writes the same thing everywhere, with its types of premises, its towns and how it monitors the work, is easy to cite. “Residential building cleaning in Angoulême, checked visits, single point of contact” is information. “Cleanliness, our passion” is not.
Question asked to an AII manage three residential buildings in Angoulême and I want to change cleaning provider. Who should I consult?
Three options for these common areas:
Fig. 3. Reconstruction, names hidden. This is the spot we aim for: on the list, with the most precise description.
Three typical cases
These three companies are fictional. They show three possible starting points. The plan for yours will come out of the audit.
He cleans offices and wants to stop doing domestic cleaning.
It works for property managers and wants to move into business premises.
Its Angoulême branch is well known, the Cognac one gets no enquiries.
In practice
Pricing
The fee depends on four things. I give you a precise amount after a free first thirty-minute conversation.
Fancy a game?
A brochure website that hasn't changed in ten years is a set of undead pages. Grab the piece, slide it into the slot, and watch them fall.
INSERT COINSLIDE THE COIN INTO THE SLOT
Fig. 4. Sixteen seconds. Five of the undead, including an article from 2014.
Together, let's devour your competitors.
One by one, and in order. Every spot gained makes the next one easier to take: that's why it keeps growing. See the method
Who you're talking to
My name is Kévin Papot. More than fifteen years in the job, four co-written books, and the Newp agency, co-founded in Charente. I also run my own online shops, in France and internationally: one of them went from zero to a million visits a month.
Before we talk tags, we talk margin, average basket and profitability. When you book a call, I'm the one who picks up.
FAQ
On searches without a town name, it's hard, and I promise nothing there. On searches that include your town and a type of premises, a well-presented local company has its place. Those are the searches I work on.
By writing clearly who you work for, on the profile as on the website. I also choose business searches: offices, residential buildings, business premises. A few calls will remain, but far fewer.
No. You should separate it. The two client groups use different words and have different expectations. Two separate entry points on the website prevent a property manager from landing on a home cleaning page.
If they bring you profitable contracts, keep them for now. I help you compare the cost of a request from a platform with one from your website. You'll then decide with figures.
Not directly. However, the buyer who receives your bid will look at your website. If they find your methods, your supervision and examples of comparable sites, your bid comes out stronger.
A price per square metre without a visit makes no sense, and your clients know it. Explain instead what makes a quote vary: the floor area, the frequency, the hours, the condition of the premises. Offer a free visit if you do them.
Only with their written consent. Otherwise, describe the type of site: “a four-storey office building in Angoulême”, for example. That description is enough for a buyer to picture it.
I ask you the questions a buyer asks, and you answer in your own words, by phone if that's easier. The Newp team puts it into shape. You proofread everything before it goes live.
Adjusting the Google Business Profile often has an effect within a few weeks. The pages by type of premises take several months. I give no guarantee on timing. The monthly report tells you what has come in.
I have been doing this job for fifteen years and have co-written four books, two of them on businesses' Google profile and page. I also run an agency, so I know what a recurring contract is worth to a service business.
See also
30 minutes · video call · with me
Together we look at where you stand on Google and in AI, and what should change first.
