If you’re running Google Ads for your cleaning business—or thinking about starting—you’ll want to see exactly what’s working today.
In this week’s breakdown, I’m walking you through a real campaign we’re managing for a house cleaning business near Grand Rapids, Michigan. With a monthly ad budget of $935, we delivered 83 targeted clicks and converted 22 of them into leads. That’s a 22% conversion rate—well above average for this industry.
Here’s how we structured the campaign, the strategy behind it, and what you can apply to your own Google Ads to get better results.
The first thing we focus on is targeting the right kind of search terms. A common mistake cleaning business owners make is thinking all clicks are equal. They’re not.
We go after high-quality, high-intent searches—things like:
“House cleaners near me”
“Cleaning company Grand Rapids”
“Residential maid service”
These are the kinds of searches made by people actively looking to hire a cleaning company. We avoid low-intent searches like:
“Cleaning jobs near me”
“How do I clean a bathtub”
While those may still include the word “cleaning,” they won’t convert. That’s how you waste budget.
Keywords matter—but how you match them matters even more. Here’s a quick breakdown of the three main match types in Google Ads:
Exact Match: Your ad shows only when people search that exact term or a close variation. This gives you the most control and ensures tight relevance.
Phrase Match: Slightly broader. Your ad shows when the user’s query includes your keyword phrase in the right order, even with other words before or after.
Broad Match: Avoid this when starting out. It gives Google too much freedom and often results in irrelevant traffic—people looking for cleaning jobs, supplies, or even competitors.
In this campaign, we primarily used exact and phrase match keywords. That helped us keep ad spend efficient and focus only on clicks that had a real chance of converting.
A high conversion rate is a key indicator that your ads are showing to the right people. In this case, we achieved a 22% conversion rate—19 tracked conversions from 83 clicks, with some additional leads not yet synced in the tracker.
What counts as a conversion? A mix of phone calls and contact form submissions. Each form collected essential information like name, email, phone number, and service details.
If your campaign is seeing a conversion rate below 10%, it’s usually a sign that your keywords are too broad or you’re not attracting the right type of traffic.
We made sure to include all the variations of house cleaning-related terms:
House cleaning services near me
Maid service
Residential cleaning
Housekeeping
It’s important not to rely on just one or two keywords. A diverse keyword list—focused on relevant, high-intent terms—helps expand your reach without diluting quality.
Here’s where a lot of campaigns go wrong: they skip the negative keywords.
As your campaign runs, Google will show your ads for a wide range of searches, not all of which are relevant. If you don’t filter those out, your budget goes to waste.
In this campaign, we reviewed the Search Terms Report regularly. This report shows the exact phrases people typed into Google before clicking on the ad.
Examples of irrelevant searches we excluded:
Competitor names (e.g., “Paradise Cleaning”, “Adrian’s House Cleaning”)
Job seekers
DIY cleaning guides
We added these to a negative keyword list—which prevents our ad from showing on those terms in the future. All clients we work with get access to our master negative list of over 6,000 terms, so they’re not starting from scratch.
You can’t optimise what you can’t measure.
We track both phone calls and form submissions using tools like:
HighLevel CRM
CallRail
WhatConverts
Proper tracking lets us measure which keywords convert best, what times of day bring the most leads, and where to double down or pull back. If you’re not tracking conversions, you’re flying blind.
Once your campaign is live, don’t set it and forget it.
Here’s what we look at each week:
Which keywords are converting?
What is the cost per lead for each one?
Are any keywords underperforming?
Are there new negative keywords to add?
Even small changes, like removing one low-performing keyword or increasing the budget on a high-performing one, can significantly improve your return on ad spend.
In this campaign, we saw one keyword delivering leads at $22 each, while another was closer to $38. As the campaign matures and collects more data, we’ll shift budget accordingly.
We prioritise searches that combine a service and a location. These deliver the highest conversion rates in nearly every campaign we run. Examples:
“Cleaning service Grand Rapids”
“Residential cleaning near me”
“Maid service 49503”
Once you know which of these are converting well, you can optimise your ads and landing pages to mirror those phrases and improve quality score.
If you’re running Google Ads right now and not getting leads, it’s likely due to one of the following:
You’re targeting the wrong keywords
You’re not using exact or phrase match types
You haven’t set up conversion tracking
You’re not reviewing the Search Terms Report and adding negatives
You’re not actively optimising your campaign each week
When you get all of this right, you can expect much higher lead quality, a lower cost per lead, and more predictable growth from your ad spend.
If you need any help with Google Ads, I might be able to help you. We run ad campaigns for 50+ cleaning companies all around the world. Learn more at www.project83.com/google-ads
