A Step-by-Step SEO Audit Framework for Cleaning Company Websites

This diagnostic is built for cleaning business owners and office managers who want to understand why their site isn't ranking — before committing to an agency or spending more on ads.

You don't need technical expertise to complete most of this. You need a browser, a Google account, and about two to four hours. Some steps involve free tools like Google Search Console and PageSpeed Insights. Others are manual checks you can do by looking directly at your site and your Google Business Profile.

This audit is not a one-time fix. Think of it as a baseline. Run it now to identify your biggest gaps, then re-run it in three to four months after changes have been made to measure progress.

This audit is especially useful if:

• Your site has been live for more than six months but isn't appearing in local search results
• Competitors with smaller or newer companies are ranking above you
• You've recently moved, rebranded, or changed your service area
• A web developer rebuilt your site and traffic dropped afterward
• You're unsure whether your current SEO provider is actually making progress

If you're starting a brand new site with no prior SEO history, a checklist may be more useful than an audit — the audit assumes there's an existing site to evaluate.

Technical issues are the foundation. If Google can't crawl and index your pages correctly, nothing else you do will matter much. Start here before touching content or links.

Page Speed and Mobile Performance

Run your homepage and your main service page through Google PageSpeed Insights (pagespeed.web.dev). Look at the mobile score specifically — not desktop. A score below 50 indicates problems that are likely hurting your rankings. Common culprits for cleaning company sites include oversized image files (before-and-after photo galleries are frequent offenders), unoptimized themes, and too many third-party scripts from booking plugins.

Crawl Errors and Indexation

Open Google Search Console. Under Coverage or Pages, look for any URLs marked as errors or excluded. Pay attention to:

• Pages marked "Crawled — currently not indexed" — Google visited but chose not to include them
• 404 errors on pages that should exist
• Redirect chains (A redirects to B which redirects to C) that slow crawl and dilute signals

HTTPS and Basic Security

Your site should serve entirely over HTTPS. Check the address bar for a padlock icon. If any pages load over HTTP, browsers flag them as insecure — this visibly erodes trust with potential customers and is a minor negative signal for Google.

Mobile Usability

In Search Console, check the Mobile Usability report for flagged issues. The most common for cleaning sites are text too small to read and clickable elements too close together — both common on sites built from older templates.

Fix critical technical issues before moving to content. There's no point optimizing service pages that Google won't crawl.

Once you've confirmed Google can access your site, evaluate what it finds when it gets there.

Do You Have Individual Pages for Each Service?

A single "Services" page listing house cleaning, office cleaning, move-out cleaning, and carpet cleaning in bullet points is not enough. Each service you want to rank for should have its own dedicated page with a unique title, a description of at least 300-400 words, and a clear call to action.

Check your site's navigation. If all services live on one page, that's a gap to address.

Title Tags and Meta Descriptions

For each service page, open the page source (right-click → View Page Source) and search for <title>. Ask:

• Does the title include the service name and your city? (e.g., "House Cleaning Service in Austin, TX")
• Is it under 60 characters?
• Is it unique — no two pages with the same title?

Duplicate title tags are a common issue on cleaning company sites built from templates. Each page needs a distinct, descriptive title.

Heading Structure

Each page should have one H1 tag that includes the primary keyword for that page. Subheadings (H2, H3) should support the topic. If your homepage H1 says "Welcome to Sparkle Clean" with no service or city mentioned, that's a missed opportunity.

Thin Content

Any service page under 200 words is likely too thin to rank competitively. In our experience working with local service businesses, pages with more thorough descriptions — what the service includes, who it's for, how to book — consistently outperform sparse pages, especially in moderately competitive local markets.

Note which pages need expansion before moving to the next layer.

This is the most commonly missing piece for cleaning companies that serve multiple cities or suburbs.

If you want to rank in Naperville, Evanston, and Oak Park — not just Chicago — you need dedicated pages for each location. A single homepage with your city listed once cannot rank in six different cities simultaneously. Google needs a page that signals relevance to each specific location.

How to Check What You Currently Have

In Google, search: site:yourwebsite.com naperville (replace with your target city). If nothing comes back, you have no indexed content for that location. Repeat for each city you want to serve.

What Makes a Service Area Page Work

Weak service area pages are a common problem — they often consist of a single paragraph with the city name swapped in. Google has become better at identifying thin, templated location pages and may not rank them well.

A service area page that earns rankings typically includes:

• The primary service and city in the H1 and title tag
• A genuine description of your service in that area (not identical copy from another location page)
• A mention of specific neighborhoods, landmarks, or context that signals real local relevance
• A clear call to action with a local phone number or booking link
• Customer reviews or testimonials from clients in that area, if available

The Duplicate Content Trap

If you have service area pages that are word-for-word identical except for the city name, they may be flagged as duplicate content. Each page should have meaningfully different content. This doesn't mean you need to write 1,000 unique words per city — but it does mean generic boilerplate alone is unlikely to rank.

List every city you currently serve and check whether you have a functional, unique page for each. That gap list becomes your content roadmap.

For cleaning companies, local pack rankings (the map results that appear above organic listings) often drive more calls than organic rankings. Your Google Business Profile and citation consistency directly affect whether you appear there.

Google Business Profile Completeness Check

Open your GBP dashboard and work through this list:

• Primary category: Should be "House Cleaning Service" or "Commercial Cleaning Service" — whichever matches your main business. Adding a second relevant category is acceptable.
• Services listed: Each individual service (deep cleaning, move-out cleaning, recurring house cleaning) should be added under the Services tab with a description.
• Photos: Industry benchmarks suggest profiles with 10+ photos receive meaningfully more profile views than those with one or two. Include before-and-after shots, your team, and your vehicle or equipment if applicable.
• Business description: The 750-character description should include your primary service, city, and what makes your approach worth calling.
• Q&A section: Check whether any questions have been asked — and whether they've been answered. You can proactively add and answer common questions yourself.
• Review recency: When was your last review received? Profiles with no recent reviews lose ground to competitors with active review velocity.

Citation Consistency

Search your business name in Google and check how your Name, Address, and Phone number appears across the top directory listings: Yelp, Angi, Thumbtack, HomeAdvisor, Facebook, and the major data aggregators. Any variation — abbreviated street names, old phone numbers, slightly different business names — creates inconsistency that can dilute local ranking signals.

Document every variation you find. Correcting them is tedious but straightforward, and it's one of the cleaner fixes available at this stage of an audit.

After working through all four layers, you'll have a list of issues. Not all of them carry equal weight. Use this priority framework to sequence your fixes.

High Priority — Fix First

• Pages returning 404 errors or not indexed in Search Console
• Mobile PageSpeed score below 50
• No HTTPS / mixed content warnings
• Duplicate title tags across service pages
• Missing or unclaimed Google Business Profile
• NAP inconsistencies across major directories

Medium Priority — Fix Within 30-60 Days

• Thin service pages (under 300 words with no clear structure)
• Missing service area pages for cities you actively serve
• GBP primary category incorrect or missing
• No services listed in GBP dashboard
• Fewer than five photos on GBP
• No reviews in the past 90 days

Lower Priority — Address After the Above

• Schema markup (LocalBusiness structured data)
• Internal linking between service pages and location pages
• Backlink profile review
• Blog content gaps

The high-priority fixes tend to have the fastest impact because they remove active barriers to indexing and ranking. Medium-priority fixes build relevance and trust over time. Lower-priority items matter, but they contribute less when the fundamentals above are missing.

If you complete this audit and find that most issues sit in the high-priority column — or if you've identified the problems but don't have the time or technical capacity to fix them — that's the signal that working with someone who specializes in local SEO for service businesses makes financial sense. You can hire a specialist to optimize your cleaning company site rather than working through each fix independently.