How We Turned Our Local Chicago Service Business Into a Lead Generating Machine.
How We Turned Our Local Chicago Service Business Into a Lead Generating Machine.
House Keep Up’s Marketing Journey
Since March 2024, House Keep Up started taking organic visibility seriously. Before that, we were pouring money into ads and while they brought in leads, the cost was eating us alive. We needed something more reliable and less expensive.
So we shifted our energy to showing up in search results naturally. We tried different pages, wrote about the areas we serve, and created content we thought people might actually find helpful. With each experiment, we learned what worked and what didn’t.
Today, Google brings us steady leads without the constant ad spend. It’s made the business more stable and given us room to grow without bleeding money every month.
Services
SEO & Local Growth
Paid Ads
Location
Chicago
Chicago Cleaning Company
Join the creative & innovate shaping tomorrow's experiences
client reviews
5.0
client reviews
5.0
client reviews
5.0
What wasn’t working and what we did instead
The Problem
- Invisible on Google despite having a great service
- Losing customers to competitors who ranked higher online
- Paying $50-100+ per lead from third-party platforms
- Too much dependency on paid ads and word of mouth
- Wasting time chasing cold leads instead of serving clients
- Feast or famine cycle with unpredictable revenue
The Solution
- Dominating Google's top 5 results with our superior service
- Stealing customers from competitors as we now rank above them
- Getting free organic leads that cost us $0 each
- Zero dependency on paid ads - 100% sustainable organic growth
- Warm leads calling us ready to book, freeing time to serve clients
- Consistent, predictable flow of customers every single month
Visibility Share
Screenshot Taken from Semrush on Aug 23, 2025
House Keep Up’s visibility exploded from 0.49% to 8.75% of Chicago cleaning keywords, securing a top 5 position on Google.
Keyword Rankings
Keywords jumped from results 30-50 to no 1!
- When we started working on this project, House Keep Up was not ranking anywhere in the top 20.
- Now, over 40+ High Volume Keywords are in the Top 10 and 5 keywords in top 3.
- 20+ keywords are in between 5 to 8 showing strong potential for growth in the coming months, so we’re just getting started.
Google Search Console
Our Organic Website Clicks Doubled From Google
We help local businesses dominate their markets through marketing that actually works.
See how the traffic on the homepage has increased 6 times
We help local businesses dominate their markets through marketing that actually works.
The New York Times Found and Linked to Our Blog
The New York Times independently discovered our blog and chose to reference it with a genuine mention and backlink - earned through genuinely useful, high-quality content created for real readers, not mass-produced AI slop.
Organic Leads Comparision
Very steep increase in GMB interactions since April this year indicating stronger and wider visibility in Chicago
Diversified lead sources, 5x growth in Organic calls leading all conversion types
Investing in online visibility now is critical - AI systems pull their answers from top 5 Google results, so ranking high today means being the answer AI gives tomorrow.
Screenshot from Google Analytics
We started getting clicks from Yahoo, Bing, DuckduckGo, and even CHATGPT
Investing in online visibility now is critical - AI systems pull their answers from top 5 Google results, so ranking high today means being the answer AI gives tomorrow.
Screenshots from GMB Rank Tracker Tool
Top 3 for 90% of high volume keywords on google maps
We were able to increase the number of interactions on GMB by 400%.
High volume competitive keywords
After months of consistent execution, our local SEO efforts finally paid off.
Don’t take our word for it – Google “housekeeping services” or “house cleaners Chicago” and see where House Keep Up ranks.
No shortcuts. Just consistency, proper implementation, and results.
Testimonial from the owner
How We Optimized House Keep Up and Grew Their Rankings
All of this work was handled by me – covering the website, SEO, and content together. Tasks were picked up one at a time and done properly, which is why some things took longer than they would with a full team. But with me owning everything from the technical side to content, there was less room for errors that usually come with bigger teams and multiple people involved. Everything you see below was built that way.
Phase 1 - April to June 2024: Fixing the Foundation
What we Did
- Removed dozens of blank and near-empty pages that were hurting crawl quality
- Rebuilt the site structure and rewrote thin content across key pages
- Fixed all 404 errors and broken links through a full technical audit
- Conducted keyword research for the Chicago cleaning market
- Optimized meta titles and descriptions in the first month – no stuffing, just clean intent-based tags
- Implemented Local Business Schema
- Set up internal linking across service pages, location pages, and blog posts
What Happened
- Google started indexing the right pages instead of wasting crawl budget on dead ones
- Site went from a technical liability to something crawlable and structured
- Most target keywords moved into the top 20 by the end of the first three months
Phase 2 - July to September 2024: Building Local Presence
What we Did
- Built out NAP citations across key directories with the client’s help
- Optimized the GMB profile – new photos, rewritten business description
- Launched an organic review generation strategy
- Embedded Google Map in the footer and homepage
- Added “Areas We Serve” section and business hours to the homepage
What Happened
- GMB profile started looking like an active, credible business
- Reviews began climbing steadily
- Local relevance signals strengthened – rankings started moving consistently
- By the six month mark, 10+ keywords had broken into the top 10, with the rest sitting comfortably in the top 15
Phase 3 - October to December 2024: Authority and Content Expansion
What we Did
- Started building a backlink pipeline through manual outreach – slow, time-intensive, but done right
- Ran a backlink audit and disavowed spammy, high-toxicity links through Google Search Console
- Created neighborhood-specific pages for Lincoln Park, West Loop, Bucktown, and more
- Worked with client to claim their Apple Maps profile
- Added photos to Yelp and got reviews there since Apple Maps pulls data from Yelp
What Happened
- Toxic backlink cleanup removed signals that were likely holding the site back
- Neighborhood pages started picking up impressions for hyper-local Chicago searches
- Domain authority was quietly building through the outreach pipeline
- At the nine month mark, “housekeeping services chicago” climbed from 8th into the top 5, and high volume keywords like “house cleaning services chicago” moved into the top 8
- Blog traffic started coming in but was volatile – some posts would spike in clicks for a period and then settle down. Still worth it, as one blog post ended up earning a backlink from the New York Times
Phase 4 - January to March 2025: Content Shift and a Major Setback
What we Did
- Created landing pages for high-value, lower-volume services like recurring cleaning, Airbnb cleaning, and appliance cleaning
- Kept these intentionally out of the main nav and footer – standalone landing pages only
- Overhauled the blog strategy – split into two tracks: Chicago-specific local topics and general cleaning/organizing content
- Helped client navigate GMB reinstatement after a suspension in February 2025
What Happened
- By the twelve month mark, keywords like “house cleaners chicago,” “move out cleaning chicago,” and “cleaning services chicago” had all moved into the top 5
- Most tracked keywords were now in the top 10, with only a few still sitting in the top 15
- Landing pages picked up clicks from Google without any manual promotion
- Local blog content started pulling in more relevant, Chicago-based traffic
- GMB suspension in February caused an immediate dip in rankings and leads – a tough stretch after a strong run
Phase 5 - April to May 2025: Recovery and Results
What we Did
- Focused on full GMB reinstatement and profile clean-up
- Continued the organic review strategy that had been running since mid-2024
What Happened
- Rankings bounced back immediately once the GMB went live again
- Review count grew from 70 to 250+ – all organic, no incentivized reviews
- One of the stronger months of the entire run
After May 2025: Ongoing
What have we been doing?
- Continued regular content publishing across both blog tracks
- Running small SEO experiments and monitoring what moves
- Keeping the GMB active and healthy – photos, posts, review responses
- Local rankings remain strong and we keep finding new angles to test
P.S. The client deserves a mention here too. Wes was patient through the whole process and actively involved from day one. Our brainstorming sessions helped me understand the geography, the neighbourhoods, and the nitty gritty of how a cleaning business actually works. That context made a real difference when it came to coming up with content ideas that actually made sense for the market.
