This trade has an unusual problem. You provide a service that genuinely matters, including a real fire risk with dryer vents, and almost nobody thinks about it until something goes visibly wrong.
That is frustrating. It is also, if you look at it correctly, a considerable advantage. The people who do search are highly motivated, there are not many of them competing for your attention, and most of your competitors have done nothing at all to be findable. This is a market that can be owned by whoever bothers.
In short: homeowners search for the symptom, not the service. Write a page for each symptom. Then solve the trust problem this industry has created for itself, with clear pricing and honest advice. Then build the referral and commercial relationships that produce repeat work, which is where the money in this trade actually is.
Write for the symptom, not the service
Nobody wakes up wanting their ducts cleaned. Something happened first.
The dryer takes two or three cycles to dry a load. This is the most common entry point of all, and the homeowner usually thinks the appliance is failing. A page explaining that a blocked vent produces exactly this symptom, and that it is cheaper to clear than to replace a dryer, converts extremely well.
A burning smell when the dryer runs. Frightening, urgent, and searched immediately. This page should be calm, explain the risk honestly without exaggerating, and tell them what to do right now.
The outside vent flap does not open. People notice this from the garden and go looking.
Dust returns immediately after cleaning the house. The entry point for whole home duct cleaning.
A musty smell when the heating comes on for the first time in autumn. Seasonal and predictable, which means you should have the page ready in August.
Allergy or asthma symptoms that are worse indoors. Be careful and honest here. Do not make health claims you cannot support. Explain what duct cleaning does and does not do, and let the reader decide.
Each of these is a page. Each should describe the symptom in the words the homeowner would use, explain what causes it, say what you do about it, and give a clear price or price range.
The trust problem, and how to be the exception
I am going to be direct about something the industry does not enjoy discussing.
This trade has a reputation problem, and it was earned. Very low advertised prices, followed by an inspection that discovers extensive additional work. Photographs of ducts that belong to somebody else. Pressure to buy services that were not needed. Enough homeowners have experienced this, or read about it, that many now approach the whole category with suspicion.
That suspicion is your opportunity, because it is easy to be visibly different.
Publish real prices. Not a headline figure that becomes something else on the day. Say what a standard dryer vent clean costs, what a whole home duct clean costs for a typical property, and what circumstances would change it. A homeowner who has read about the discount trick will choose the company that stated a real price.
Say when it is not needed. Put it in writing that ducts do not need cleaning on a fixed schedule for every home, and describe the situations where it genuinely does help: after building work, after a rodent problem, when there is visible mould, when a dryer vent is restricted. A company that tells people when they do not need something is the company people call when they do.
Show your own evidence. Before and after photographs from your actual jobs, with the customer's permission. Video of a camera inspection. This is the single most persuasive thing you can publish, and it is free to collect.
Reviews that answer the real question
Ask every customer on the day.
And encourage them to mention the two things the next reader is worried about: that the price was what you said it would be, and that you were clean and careful in the house. Those two sentences do more selling than anything on your website.
Recency matters here as it does everywhere, and this is a trade where a customer may not need you again for years, so the flow of new reviews depends entirely on you asking every single time.
Reply to all of them. In a trade with a trust problem, a calm reply to a critical review is read very carefully by the next person.
Where the profitable work actually is
Most small operators in this trade chase homeowners exclusively, and homeowners are the hardest, least repeatable customers available.
Four better sources.
Appliance repair companies. Their technicians see blocked vents constantly, diagnose them, and have no interest in doing the work. A simple relationship where they hand out your card, and you hand out theirs, produces steady, pre-qualified jobs where the customer has already been told they need you. This is the best referral source in the trade and it costs nothing but a conversation.
HVAC companies. Same logic. They are inside heating systems all day.
Property managers and letting agents. Repeat work across many properties, scheduled, invoiced, no haggling. One relationship can be worth more than fifty homeowners. Build a page aimed specifically at them, addressing what they care about: reliability, tenant access, documentation, invoicing.
Commercial kitchens. Extraction cleaning is a different service with different requirements, often driven by insurance and inspection obligations, which means it recurs on a schedule whether anybody feels like it or not.
The profile and the local words
Complete your Google Business Profile fully. Primary category Air Duct Cleaning Service, with secondary categories that match what you do. List services individually: dryer vent cleaning, air duct cleaning, duct inspection, extraction cleaning, vent repair.
Add photographs of real work, including the before and after images mentioned above. This is one of the few trades where the evidence is genuinely dramatic, and it is wasted if it stays on your phone.
Set your service areas correctly, and name your town and surrounding areas in the writing on your website. If you also cover a wider radius for commercial jobs, say so separately.
The walkthrough is the thirty minute profile fix.
The seasonal pattern to plan around
Two peaks in most regions. Autumn, when the heating comes on for the first time and people notice smells and dust. And spring, when allergy symptoms and general cleaning bring the subject up.
Because published pages take weeks to settle, write the autumn material in summer and the spring material in winter. Being ready in September is worth much more than working hard in October.
Where to start
Complete the profile this week. Write one symptom page a week after that, starting with the dryer taking two cycles, because that is the most common entry point of all. Photograph every job. Ask every customer for a review. And have the conversation with two appliance repair companies in your town, which will probably produce results faster than everything else on this list.
To see what a homeowner in your area finds today, our free visibility check reports in plain language on which searches you appear for and what is missing.
This is a small market with quiet competition. That is exactly the kind that one determined company can take.