House Cleaning Website old vs. new – which is best? The old way was building a free website and the new is a paid website. For a house cleaning website which is best to market your cleaning business?
“Every house cleaner needs a house cleaning website.” Says Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru. Then she gives tips on WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org and plugins. Websites are a house cleaning FAQ. “If I’m going to grow my cleaning company I’m not going to do it on shared real estate. And it will be a paid website where I can optimize the SEO. (Search Engine Optimization.)
Today’s Ask a House Cleaner Sponsors are Savvy Cleaner Training (House cleaner training.) My Cleaning Connection (where you can find resources to grow your cleaning business.) Savvy Perks (membership perks that offer savings on Search engine, hosting and domain name (URL) packages.
Listen: House Cleaning Website (WordPress.org and Plugins)
Watch: House Cleaning Website (WordPress.org and Plugins)
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer.
Question: House Cleaning Website (WordPress.org and Plugins)
“Hi, Angela. I started a house cleaning business and before I read your book I put a website up and it’s not in my name, it’s in a business name. But because I’m just one person in the business at this moment, what should I do now? Should I take the website down? I don’t know what to do. I would appreciate any help you can give me. Thank you.”
House Cleaning Website Alert – You’ve Moved
All right. This is a question about House Cleaning websites, old vs new. Let’s pretend, for example, that you’re hosting a great big party at your new house. And all your friends have your old home address. And so, what you have to do is get a message out to your friends that your party is at your new home address.
Do you send them to the old address? And then just put a sign on the door and say, “Hey, this is my new address.” Will you make them go all the way over there and then all the way over here?
The reason I suggest this is because this is a lot like having an old website and now you’re going to redirect everybody to a new website.
New House Cleaning Website Announcement
Let’s just give everybody the new website address from the beginning,
So, what this is, is we’re talking about the URL.
The URL is the little space bar that you type in, it’s the address of your website, it’s where your website lives. And it is one of the most important marketing tools in your toolbox.
The search engine optimization for your business is based on what is inside that link.
Free Website vs. Paid Website?
One option many small business owners choose is making a free website.
There are a lot of services out there that allow you to set up a website free of charge. There are a lot of glitches and a lot of catches with having a free website, one of them is advertising from third-party vendors. They get to advertise on your website in exchange for you having free hosting.
Hosting is $5-$10 per month. This means that you spend your time building your free website and you drive traffic there. Once they arrive at your site, they get distracted by advertisements from someone else and leave your site to buy from them.
Borrowed or Rented Real-Estate for Your House Cleaning Website
Your free website is like a house built on someone else’s land. They can sell the land at any time and take down your house (website.)
So, you’re sharing the land with other people and you have to follow their rules (which means limited access to plugins.)
Plugins add functionality to any website. But if you’re using a free service you have to pay for upgrades to make the plugins work.
So, you’re going to pay either way. We all know that nothing is really free.
In the end, you either have your own website in your control on your own property. Or you have a limited site shared with others and advertisers, stored on the borrowed real estate.
Get Your Own House Cleaning Website
You’re a real business, go get your own website and pay for the domain so you have control over the URL. It will cost you $10-$12 per year.
And then you have to host the site and that will cost $3 to $7 per month.
Go with WordPress.org – which is now the standard in the industry and by far the simplest program to use. If you do, you will gain access to thousands of free plugins and free themes.
There is a way to redirect your old website to your new website, it’s like forwarding your mail. You can Google how to do it. The term is a “301 redirect.”
And the only reason you would want to do that is if your previous website was super successful and had a lot of traffic and links.
Can You Have More Than One House Cleaning Website?
Yes. If you have different services, have different websites.
For example. My business, Savvy Cleaner, has seven websites that are all for different elements of the business.
Here’s the reason why. It’s a better user experience for people searching for you.
Let’s say the name of your house cleaning business is Crystal Cleaners. And your domain name is https://crystalcleaners.com
The search engines can read that and go,” Oh, this is Crystal Cleaners,” a house cleaning company. And they send people looking for house cleaning your way.
What Happens When You Add Services
Let’s say that two years down the road you decide that you’re going to open a window washing business.
It’s a good idea to have a new URL for your Crystal Cleaners Window Washing Service. It would look like https://CrystalCleanersWindowWashing.com
Which is a LONG domain name all by itself.
Instead of adding it to your house cleaning company which would make it: https://CrystalCleaners.com/CrystalCleanersWindowWashing
That’s too long and it’s confusing to the search engine.
Think Best User Experience for Your House Cleaning Website
When the search engine sees your window washing it’s not sure if you’re a house cleaning company now, or a window washing company.
And they don’t want to look like a fool by sending someone to the wrong site. So, they will just make your site disappear way down in the search results.
Having two separate sites allows the search engine to get it right. Twice.
Send people searching for house cleaning to https://CrystalCleaners.com
Send people searching for window washing to https://CrystalCleanersWindowWashing.com
Link Your House Cleaning Website to The Other
You can always link your two sites together – but they are two separate sites.
The thing to remember is the search engines are in business to make money. They run a lot of ads and they have keywords, they have pay-per-click, there are a whole bunch of things that they sell. All the things they offer create a better user experience.
If they don’t accomplish that – people will leave and go use a different search engine.
Google is the mac daddy of search engines. And they have a specific set of rules. You want to follow the rules to a T, because you want people to find you organically.
Organic search means you’re not paying for the keywords. You’re creating content that is specific to what you do that provides a good user experience.
You Have Control Over Your House Cleaning Website
Speaking of the king of the hill in websites is WordPress.
It’s confusing because there are two WordPresses.
WordPress.com – Free websites (limited functionality)
WordPress.org – Paid (endless functionality.)
Think of WordPress as the engine that drives your website.
Choose WordPress.org. It’s the automatic, fully loaded version with all the bells and whistles that you can use with your paid domain name (URL and Hosted Site.)
WordPress.org Thousands of Free Plugins and Themes
Now Word Press is a fantastic way to get started. It’s easy. There are gobs of free YouTube tutorials. And there are thousands of free plugins to improve your site.
A plug-in is some code that makes stuff happen.
Stuff like calendars, online booking for jobs, ability to accept credit cards. A way for customers to leave ratings and reviews and so much more.
What to Do if You’re New to House Cleaning
If you’re just starting your business right now and you are one person, my suggestion to you is to go and start and get a brand-new cleaning business website.
Register a URL that has your company name built into it.
The URL is yourbusinessname.com, that is your URL, that is the address where you’re going to invite people to your party.
Your website is your online brochure. If you need help building a cleaning website you can hire a designer.
Your house cleaning website has your press kit on it. There’s an about section. It has your six photos on it, and your FAQ page.
Your website will have all the things you need to grow your business.
Your House Cleaning Website is Tax Deductible
If you go with the paid version, which I recommend you do, your business expenses will be tax deductible. Having a house cleaning website is a common small business expense.
And having a paid one gives you all the functions of the plugins and theme and all the content and design control.
Disclosure
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About the Show
Learn how the show came to be, interesting facts about the show host, and other frequently asked questions about the show.
Resources For This Episode
Domain (URL) Registration – https://GoDaddy.com
Webhosting – https://Hostgator.com
WordPress – https://WordPress.org
Photo Editing – https://Canva.com
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