The Tactics That Housekeep Used to Generate Over 39,000 Monthly Organic Visitors 

In this case study, I’ll be looking at Housekeep.

In particular, you’ll learn:

• How they used SEO to become London's go-to cleaning service.
• The unique ‘end of’ keyword variation that you can exploit for multiple niches.
• How creating a ‘best of’ post can generate traffic.
• And why hyperlocal searches can generate traffic and leads.

Let’s dive in.

What’s Housekeep?

Housekeep is an award-winning start-up founded in 2014 by Avin Rabheru who is an angel investor.

The aim of the platform is to connect customers who are looking for a cleaner to experienced and vetted cleaning staff. You could call it the Checkatrade of cleaning.

Originally focused in the London area, the platform raised £1 million just three months after launch.  Today, they have a 30 person team and are expanding their services across the UK.

What’s Their Traffic Like?

As always with these case studies, I can only rely on external sources.

And according to Ahrefs, they generate just under 40,000 organic visitors a month.

This provides them with the equivalent traffic level of $106,000 if they were to buy this traffic with PPC.

They have acquired a DR of 53 and a UR of 47 according to Ahrefs, with over 2000 backlinks coming from 467 referring domains.

They also rank for 11,100 keywords.

And they are growing online.

Ahrefs did a recent update that explains some of the growth, as they can now track more traffic.

But regardless, there is clear evidence of growth.

So just how exactly are they doing it?

Well, they have some unique approaches.

Let’s take a look.

A Single Destination Home Page

As Housekeep launched with a focus on the London area, their homepage is entirely based around this.

The result is that they attract a good amount of keywords for searches based in London.

They also rank for the term ‘cleaner near me’.

This has given them a good base for traffic.

Moving forward for them, this could be a pain. They are using local pages to rank in other cities (we’ll cover that shortly), so they will either need to construct another page that ranks for London or keep the homepage as their primary page.

This isn’t an immovable mountain of a task, but in essence their homepage serves as both a  local page for the city of London and a homepage for the platform.

This might harm conversions later on, but time will tell.

However, they are expanding.

Local Focused Keyword Landing Pages

Locally focused landing pages was something that was mentioned in the Backlinko local SEO guide (which I contributed to).

In essence, it’s the practice of creating a landing page for a city you sell within.

As we can see with the above example, Housekeep is now in Manchester.

And having checked, they do rank on the first page for some relevant terms.

This approach is easily expandable to each city they operate within.

And we can see they are expanding their approach to other cities.

They have pre-built their landing pages for each city and this will allow them to rank and even gain a list of clients pre-launch in each new area.

But they actually do something quite unique.

They have created hyperlocal pages.

Hyperlocal Pages

Creating local pages isn’t anything new for large companies.

It’s not uncommon to find SEO agencies based in one part of the nation, creating local pages for another area.

But what’s clear with Housekeep is that when they decided to launch in London, they went granular.

Each small micro area is covered with a cleaner.

This is going after those smaller localised searches.

It’s this attention to localising search that is rare to see.

Of course, the unique nature of London being so large makes this easier.

But from what I can see, the only difference in the landing pages are a few minor tweaks.

Essentially it’s the same page for each micro area.

But the competition will be limited and the domain power of the site will ensure that the page ranks and generates traffic.

But Housekeep’s unique approach doesn't just end there; they understand the problems faced by people who need cleaners.

And that leads us to the unique ‘end of’ search term that you could use.

How the End Can Be a Beginning

What happens after an event?

CLEANING.

If you’ve ever hosted a kids party, you’ll know the pain of cleaning up afterwards.

Burst balloons, dropped cake.

Well, Housekeep has targeted a unique ‘end of’ service that not only do they rank for, but they’re also generating great traffic.

Make no mistake, this angle could evolve into all manner of ‘end of’ or ‘after event’ style searches.

But how might you take this concept and find ways to generate traffic, or indeed create an online business?

Well it’s pretty simple.

You just need to brainstorm what people do after they buy or use a service.

Start with key life events, such as birthdays.

What happens after a birthday party? 

Well after cleaning, there are the thankyou letters for the gifts. Could you create an automated online service for this?

What about the rubbish? Could you take it away for the cleaners and organise the recycling for them?

There is a business idea in itself; an after-event recycling service that collects waste for large events and ensures the green disposal of the waste.

What about the end of school? Could you create an online site that specialises in gifts for teachers?

Or maybe even a blog or an e-book that focuses on this niche?

My advice is to write down all of the life events that happen to people.

From going to school, to learning to drive, going on dates, getting married and even dying.

What happens after these events?

Gifts for passing driving tests gets over 1200 searches each month with next to no competition.

What else could you create a service or product about? Or indeed content for your sites?

There are over 5245 keywords around the subject of ‘what to do after’ in the UK alone.

You are bound to find something for your niche.

But it also trunks out that being the best can also be a niche of its own.

Why Creating Your Own ‘Top’ List Can Generate Links and Traffic

Housekeep has created a list of the top 14 home cleaning bloggers.

And while this isn’t a traffic magnet yet, it is very clever.

This is known in the trade as an ego bait post.

A list that the bloggers themselves feel proud to be featured on. 

Often this will result in social shares. Because after all, who doesn’t like their ego to be stroked?

But the other great aspect is that by creating a list of the top bloggers (or anything in your niche), you can attract your target market.

For example, if people are looking for cleaning blogs, they are looking for advice about cleaning.

And the next step is a ‘do it for you’ service, which Housekeep offers.

So consider creating a list of the top or best bloggers in your space and you’ll find social shares, and probably get some business too.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it.

The cleaning company uses some interesting tactics to grow online.

Housekeep has shown that caring about the granular areas of your location can pay off.

And that focusing on the end of an event can open new doors to services, income and content opportunities.

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Take care

Andrew