2026 ● Hopkins Exterior Cleaning Co ● Thirsk, North Yorkshire
A 52-page local SEO build for a one-van exterior cleaner working out of Thirsk.
Jim runs Hopkins Exterior Cleaning Co single-handedly out of one van, covering Thirsk and the towns across the Vale of Mowbray.
Jim runs Hopkins Exterior Cleaning Co single-handedly out of one van, covering Thirsk and the towns across the Vale of Mowbray. The brand identity was already in place when we came on board, designed elsewhere, and looking sharp. What was missing was the website to put it to work. The existing online presence was a single Facebook page, which left Hopkins invisible to the long, specific searches a homeowner or property manager actually types, the phrases like 'driveway cleaning Thirsk' or 'gutter cleaning Northallerton'. That was the search market we needed to take.
Client
Hopkins Exterior Cleaning Co
Industry
Exterior cleaning, domestic & commercial
Duration
2 weeks
Pages live
Service pages
Service × town pages
Directory listings
The work had to be
the proof.
Every photo on the site is a real Hopkins job, shot by Jim on the day in the actual Yorkshire weather. No stock library, no other company's before-and-afters. A block-paved drive in Thirsk, green and tired, lifted back to the colour it was laid in.
Before After Block paving driveway, Thirsk — drag to compare
Most one-van cleaners have a Facebook page. Hopkins launched with a search-engine footprint.
Jim came on board with a sharp brand and zero web presence beyond social. The job was to turn that identity into a site that actually wins the long, specific searches a homeowner types, and to have the whole off-site presence live on the same day.
The moat is the matrix.
The high-intent local searches are not single words. They are 'driveway cleaning Northallerton', 'roof cleaning Harrogate', 'patio cleaning Ripon'. Thirsk is owned by the main service pages; from there a service-by-town matrix extends the reach into five more towns, each combo a real page with localised copy and its own schema. Most competitors stop at a generic 'areas we cover' list.
| Service / Town | Thirsk | Northallerton | Ripon | York | Harrogate | Knaresborough |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Driveways | Home Driveways in Thirsk, home market | Driveways in Northallerton, dedicated page | Driveways in Ripon, not targeted | Driveways in York, dedicated page | Driveways in Harrogate, dedicated page | Driveways in Knaresborough, dedicated page |
| Patios | Home Patios in Thirsk, home market | Patios in Northallerton, not targeted | Patios in Ripon, dedicated page | Patios in York, dedicated page | Patios in Harrogate, dedicated page | Patios in Knaresborough, dedicated page |
| Roofs | Home Roofs in Thirsk, home market | Roofs in Northallerton, dedicated page | Roofs in Ripon, not targeted | Roofs in York, dedicated page | Roofs in Harrogate, dedicated page | Roofs in Knaresborough, dedicated page |
| Render | Home Render in Thirsk, home market | Render in Northallerton, not targeted | Render in Ripon, not targeted | Render in York, dedicated page | Render in Harrogate, dedicated page | Render in Knaresborough, not targeted |
One van.
Ten town hubs.
Thirsk, Northallerton, Ripon, York, Harrogate, Knaresborough and more, each with its own hub page, its own LocalBusiness schema scoped to the local postcode prefix, its own FAQ block, and internal links into the relevant service pages. Adding a town is one entry in a data file; the page, the schema, the sitemap entry and the navigation all build themselves.
The whole operation: one van, the full Vale of Mowbray
Green to clean,
in one pass.
Years of surface algae lift away to reveal the natural colour and contrast of the stone. The same shot, before and after, so there is nothing to hide behind.
Before After Patio slabs, Thirsk — drag to compare
The portfolio is the website.
Real driveways, paths, patios, roofs and rooflines from around Thirsk and the Vale of Mowbray, feeding the gallery and the service pages so the proof and the SEO are the same asset.
Five customers.
Five names.
Every review on the site is a verified Facebook recommendation from a named local customer with a date. The same reviews are marked up as Review schema and tied to the LocalBusiness entity, so they pull through into Google's results, not just the page.
Jim has just completed a full deep clean of our property prior to us listing it on the market. He is knowledgeable, hard working, turns up bang on time, and the drive is back to looking like the day it was laid. The patio looks magnificent and ready for a great summer.
Jim has just finished cleaning our guttering and block paving at the front and back of our house. He has done a first rate job, left everywhere clean and tidy, and even cleaned our downstairs windows where they were splashed by the cleaning process.
Jim has just been to clear our gutters, clean and treat the gutters and fascia, and do the same on the conservatory. Super impressed from first contact right through to the end result. Happy, friendly and a thorough job done.
Great professional job getting the beer garden cleaned today by Hopkins Exterior Cleaning Co. Always great service and highly recommend.
Top service, top outcome, top bloke. Jim was a true pleasure to work with from the initial conversation right through to the end. We are absolutely delighted with the work and now have a drive and patio we can be proud of.
One job. Two seconds.
A review.
Reviews are the highest-leverage thing a local business can collect, and most get it wrong by asking after the job is forgotten. We designed printable review cards Jim hands over at the end of each job, with a QR code straight to the Google review form. The ask happens while the drive is still wet and the customer is still delighted.
A6 review cards, QR to the Google review form
Six places list Hopkins.
That was launch week.
On launch week the business went live on Google, Bing, Yell, Yelp, Facebook and LinkedIn, every listing built with consistent name, address and phone, the same description and the same service list. The Google Business Profile was verified end to end. Site and listings reinforce each other in local search instead of pulling in different directions.
Google Business Profile, populated and verified
The site is not the finish line. The site is the platform.
Every service is one data entry. Every town is one data entry. Every combo page builds itself from the cross-product, with the schema, the internal links and the sitemap already in place. Hopkins can grow the patch without a redesign.
How the build came together, in detail.
The brief, in one paragraph
A one-van exterior cleaning business in Thirsk, with a strong brand already designed and zero web presence beyond a Facebook page. Jim needed a site that looked the part, ranked locally for the specific service-and-town phrases his customers actually search, and came with the off-site work (Google Business Profile, directory listings, review collection) done at the same time. The budget was small. The window was two weeks.
What we did, and what we didn’t
The brand identity, the wordmark, the colour palette, the typography, were all in place before we came on board. That part was not our work. What we did was translate the identity into a 52-page website that actually competes locally, plus the off-site machinery that the site alone cannot deliver.
The full scope:
- 52-page Astro build, hand-coded, no theme, no page-builder, tuned for sub-second mobile load
- 19 service pages, grouped into ground works, building cleaning and specialist cleaning, each with its own keyword target and Service schema
- 10 town hub pages, each one a real piece of localised content with its own LocalBusiness schema, postcodes, areas served, landmarks and FAQs
- 14 service-by-town combo pages, the high-intent matrix that captures phrases like ‘driveway cleaning Northallerton’ and ‘roof cleaning Harrogate’
- Full structured data on every page: LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList, Review, ImageObject, all generated through a single schema library so there are no inconsistencies
- Single source of truth for business facts: name, address, phone, hours, all in one TypeScript file, propagated to every page automatically
- Sitemap-index plus per-collection sitemaps, submitted to Google Search Console at launch
- Google Business Profile, fully populated, fully verified: services, areas, hours, photos
- Six directory listings: Google, Bing, Yell, Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn, all with consistent NAP and the same description and service list
- Business email set up and connected to the domain so enquiries route cleanly
- Printable review cards, A6, QR code direct to the Google review form, designed for Jim to hand over at the end of each job
The combo matrix, and why it is the moat
The single biggest decision on this build was the service-by-town matrix. Most small business sites have a ‘services’ page and a ‘service areas’ page and stop there. That leaves the high-intent long-tail searches sitting unclaimed.
A search like ‘driveway cleaning Northallerton’ is worth far more than ‘driveways’ or ‘Northallerton’ on their own. It tells Google the visitor knows exactly what they want and where they want it. The page that ranks for that phrase gets the click, and the click converts, because the visitor has already qualified themselves.
Thirsk is the home market, served by the main service pages, so a separate ‘Thirsk’ combo would only duplicate them; those were folded back into the service pages. From there the matrix gives Hopkins a dedicated page for every meaningful service and town combination across Northallerton, Ripon, York, Harrogate and Knaresborough, each one a real piece of content with the town’s postcode prefix in the schema, the town’s landmarks in the body copy, and the relevant service’s structured data attached. Competitors with a single ‘services’ page and a generic map cannot beat this. The technical structure is the moat.
Why two weeks is the right speed for this kind of build
Two weeks looks fast. It is not rushed. It is fast because the architecture does the slow work.
Every service is one data entry. Every town is one data entry. Every combo page builds itself from the cross-product. The schema generation happens once in a library and applies everywhere. The NAP lives in one file. By the time a service is added, the navigation, the sitemap, the internal links, the structured data and the related-pages module have all updated themselves.
That data-driven approach is what makes the site cheap to maintain too. Adding a new service or a new town when Hopkins expands the patch is a single-line change, not a redesign.
The off-site work, in launch week
A website without the off-site presence is half a job. Hopkins went live with all six directory listings already live, the Google Business Profile already verified, the business email already routing, and the review cards already printed. Inside one launch week, the entire local presence was in place, not waiting on a phase two that never quite happens.
This matters most for the first 90 days, when Google is figuring out who Hopkins is and how to rank the business locally. Consistent NAP across six independent directories, plus a fully populated and verified GBP, plus the site’s own schema, all pointing at the same business, is what makes the local algorithm trust the entity. Inconsistency at this stage is what stalls a new business in the rankings for months.
What’s next
The platform is built to grow. Phase two is the ongoing local SEO work:
- Reviews. The cards are out in the van. As reviews come in on Google and Facebook, they reinforce the trust signals in the search results.
- Content. Each service page is the foundation of a content cluster. Seasonal pieces (spring driveway cleans, autumn gutter clears, post-storm roof checks) attach into the matrix without disturbing the structure.
- New towns. As Hopkins picks up regular work further out, each new town becomes one data-file entry and a full hub page builds itself with the schema, the FAQ block and the local internal links already in place.
The site is not the finish line. The site is the platform.
No upfront cost. Your website is included in a simple monthly plan, and you own it.
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Tell me what kind of site you need. I come back within a working day with a clear price, scope, and next step, straight from me, the person who’ll be doing the work.