Cleaning
Local SEO for cleaning services.
A one off clean and a fortnightly contract can arrive from the same advert at the same cost per lead. One is worth a few hundred dollars and one is worth thousands.
- $180 to $280
- typical price of a house clean
- $60 to $95
- cost per lead considered highly profitable on a recurring-eligible lead
- $100 to $300
- typical customer acquisition cost
- 3:1
- the lifetime value to acquisition cost ratio to aim for
Two customers, one advert, wildly different value
The same week
end of lease clean, need it Friday
The lead price is identical. The lead is not.
This is the calculation that separates cleaning companies that grow from ones that stay busy.
| One off clean | $180 to $280 | once |
|---|---|---|
| Fortnightly customer, first year | $4,700+ | at $180 a clean |
| Published new-customer lifetime value | $2,820 | up from $1,460 |
| Cost to acquire either | $100 to $300 | |
| Target lifetime value to acquisition ratio | 3:1 or better |
If your marketing treats both leads the same, you are giving away the margin on one of them.
The published guidance on this is written as an ad bidding problem: bid more on recurring keywords. That is correct and it is the smaller half. The larger half is which searches you rank for organically, because a position on end of lease cleaning brings you one-off work forever, and a position on regular house cleaning builds a book of business. Those are different pages, different content and different outcomes, and most cleaning websites have written neither deliberately.
US and general market figures for 2026. The $180 to $280 range and the lifetime value case are published figures; the fortnightly annual number is arithmetic from the low end of that range at 26 cleans.
Four searches, and only two of them build a business
Sorted by what the customer is worth over time rather than by search volume, which is the opposite of how most cleaning sites are built.
| Search type | What they type | Where their head is at | Priority |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regular domestic | weekly cleaner, fortnightly house cleaning, regular home cleaner | Wants an ongoing arrangement. Choosing carefully. | Highest |
| Commercial and strata | office cleaning, commercial cleaners, strata cleaning contract | Contract work, longest retention, largest value. | Highest |
| One off deep clean | deep clean, spring clean, after builders clean | Single job. Can convert to recurring if you ask. | Medium |
| End of lease | bond clean, end of lease clean, vacate clean | Highest volume, lowest lifetime value. They are leaving. | Low, high volume |
What we would build for a cleaning company
Separate pages for recurring and one off
Most cleaning sites have one services page covering everything, which ranks weakly for the searches that matter and well for none. The regular cleaning page and the bond cleaning page are addressed to different people with different anxieties.
Published pricing, with the variables
Bedrooms, bathrooms, frequency, whether it is a first clean. This is the highest volume question in the trade and refusing to answer it sends people to the competitor who will. It also filters out the enquiries you do not want.
The trust page nobody builds
You are giving a stranger keys to your house. Police checks, insurance, whether the same cleaner comes each time, what happens if something breaks. Address this directly and you have answered the objection that loses most quotes.
A commercial section that is not an afterthought
Office and strata contracts are the longest retention work in the trade and are usually covered in one line at the bottom of a domestic page. Different buyer, different search, different page.
Reviews that mention frequency
A review saying they have cleaned for us every fortnight for two years does more than any number of five-star ratings, because it evidences the exact thing a recurring customer is deciding about.
A one off to recurring conversion path
Every bond clean and deep clean is a chance to offer a schedule. That is a process job rather than a marketing one, and it changes the value of every low-value lead you already buy.
Six things almost every cleaning website gets wrong
- 01
One page for every service
Regular, deep, bond, commercial and carpet all on one page. It ranks for nothing specific and reads as a list to a customer with one need.
- 02
No prices anywhere
The most searched question in this trade. A range with the variables explained is not a quote and it costs you nothing to publish.
- 03
Nothing about who enters the house
Whether the same person comes each time is one of the two questions every recurring customer asks. Most sites do not mention it.
- 04
Stock photos of a woman with a spray bottle
Recognisable, generic, and used by every competitor. A photograph of your actual team in branded uniform does more.
- 05
Bond cleaning as the hero
It is the highest volume search, so it becomes the homepage, and the site ends up optimised for customers who are leaving the area.
- 06
No cancellation or guarantee policy stated
For a recurring arrangement this matters more than price, and stating it plainly removes the last hesitation.
What cleaning companies ask us
Bond cleaning brings us the most enquiries. Why would we not focus on it?
Keep it, it pays this month's wages. Just understand that those customers are leaving the area and will not return, so a business built entirely on it has to win the same volume of new customers every month forever. Recurring work is what makes next year easier than this one, and as a business with no shopfront, the suburbs you win it in are decided by how your listing is set up.
Should we publish our prices?
A range with the variables that move it: bedrooms, bathrooms, frequency, first clean versus ongoing. It is the most searched question in the trade, and answering it removes quotes you were never going to win.
What is a cleaning customer actually worth?
One off work is a few hundred dollars. One published case put new-customer lifetime value at $2,820, up from $1,460 after focusing on recurring clients. At a $100 to $300 acquisition cost, those are completely different businesses, which is why counting enquiries by source matters more here than in most trades.
How do we compete with the cheap operators?
Not on price, and usually on the things they cannot offer: insurance, police-checked staff, the same cleaner each visit, and a guarantee. Those are also the things a recurring customer is actually choosing on, so ask for reviews in a way that gets them mentioned.
Is commercial cleaning worth chasing?
It is the longest retention work available in this trade, and on most cleaning websites it is one line at the bottom of a domestic page. Different buyer, different search, and it deserves its own page, laid out for that buyer.
Local SEO for nearby trades
What a customer is worth, and which searches actually convert, change by trade. These are the closest neighbours to this one.
Find out which half of your market you are actually ranking for.
The free audit separates your recurring searches from your one off ones and shows where you stand in each, across the area you serve.