David Andrew Smith - EzineArticles.com Expert Author

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22 years teaching Science and Biology to 13 - 18 year olds in various parts of England and abroad. Now has been 5 years in the cleaning industry running a successful contract cleaning company.

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Calculating Cleaning Times For Commercial Cleaning Companies
[Business:Small-Business] The biggest problem that new entrants into contract cleaning have is how much too quote for doing a particular clean. As a new company it is unlikely that you will be tendering for very large contracts involving multiple cleaners working over several hours using a vast array of mechanical equipment. Consequently you problems are somewhat eased!

10 Points to Consider When Quoting an Office Cleaning, Part One
[Business:Small-Business] The question I am asked the most by individuals setting up a new cleaning company is; 'How do we go about producing a quote?' The first and most obvious step is to make an appointment to view the clean. On arrival and in discussion with the client you must determine what they require. Some clients are vague and will require prompting and others possibly have a schedule already for you.

Organic Search Or Sponsored Links?
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO] As a company we are under constant bombardment from marketing companies who want to get us first on Google! They claim to have investigated our websites and tell us that we are not appearing in the organic search for some town or city in the UK. A little questioning and it is apparent that they are not even aware of our domain names let alone the actual performance of our sites. However they continue their sales patter regardless of what you say.

How Clean is the Restaurant?
[Food-and-Drink:Restaurant-Reviews] Most of us eat out at some time or another. When we go into a restaurant apart from the menu we are attracted by the decor and general ambience of the place. We sit and eat our food and very few of us give a thought to the area where our food is being prepared. We automatically assume that is a fit and proper place with the food being prepared by fit and proper people. 95% of the time this is absolutely the case. How do we discover those odd 5% of restaurants so that they can be avoided?

Link Relevance and Google
[Computers-and-Technology] The article looks briefly at the idea of link relevance and how to go about achieving quality backlinks for your own website.

Health and Safety Advice for Contract Cleaners - Second Part
[Business] In Part 1 of this article we looked at how your employees could be brought to a level of good understanding of the hazards and how to overcome them. Part 2 looks at other aspects of your role as an employer in meeting the necessary requirements connected with your 'duty of care.'

Health and Safety Advice For Contract Cleaners Part 1
[Business:Security] Health and Safety is a vital key in running a Cleaning Company successfully. The Cleaning Industry is a high-risk area for work related ill health and injury, and regulations are put in place for exactly that reason. As an employer you are responsible for ensuring the Health and Safety of everyone who may be affected by your work.

Health and Safety Regulations and Contract Cleaning Companies
[Business:Small-Business] The discussion around Health and Safety regulations within the Cleaning Industry appears to be a very grey area indeed. Many Cleaning Companies and Employers of Cleaners receive new regulations negatively, seeing these as another way that governments control us, limit freedom and make more money out of businesses. A common attitude is that Health and Safety regulations are simply bureaucratic procedures and more paperwork for the already over-stressed employer. Other Cleaning Companies see new regulations as something that they simply haven't got the time, money or expertise to implement within their companies. Things that they know they really should be doing concerning Health and Safety get pushed to the back of the pile, as there always seems to be more pressing matters to deal with, such as actually making money for the business!

Cleaning Companies and Health and Safety Issues
[Business:Small-Business] Cleaning companies basically fall into three categories. Large national or multinational companies; small to medium sized companies who operate within well defined regions; and small cleaning companies operating within one single town and often run by husband and wife teams. The very large companies employ many hundreds if not thousands of staff. The SME's may employ around 10 – 60 people and the very small ones are often reluctant to get involved with employing people at all and if they do their number can be counted on one hand. The majority of the employees regardless of the size of the company are of foreign origin with English being a second language, and generally will be on low pay.

Cleaning Company - Positioning Yourself In The Market Place
[Business:Small-Business] Having formed your Commercial Cleaning Services Company one of the most difficult aspects of running it that you will encounter immediately is in getting your quotes correct. Correct from the point of view of the cleaning company in covering all its costs in doing the clean and making a reasonable profit, whilst pitching it at a level which is still attractive to the potential customer.

Big Bother Scenario Gets Ever Closer
[News-and-Society:Politics] At the moment in the UK we have an ongoing debate about recycling. In particular the recycling of our household rubbish. We are reaching that point where Local Government Authorities are to be fined for not meeting their recycling targets. The councils are not getting the blame for this but the householders. The householders are being told that they are not recycling according to Council instructions. The debate going on is how to encourage a greater awareness amongst us to recycle. This debate is moving towards forcing people to recycle

Content, Links, Relevance and Page Rank
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Site-Promotion] SEO experts are constantly telling us about the importance of good quality content and good quality back links from web sites with relevant content. They also tell us that reciprocal links and page rank are of decreasing importance. They then instruct us as to how to go about getting good links by personally contacting other web sites and proposing a reciprocal link! Confusing! As is much of the advice given to prospective site designers.

Link Relevance
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO] We are constantly being told by SEO experts and the Search Engines that the importance of a link is determined by its page rank and relevance to our own web sites. Consequently when developing a linking strategy we should only be concerned with relevant links. That is other web sites which have some connection to our own. For example I run a web site devoted to providing a variety of cleaning services to commercial clients throughout the UK, so a relevant site would be a cleaning machine supplier or a cleaning chemicals supplier. Not other cleaning companies for the obvious reason they are our direct competitors

Switching To Day-time Cleaning
[Business:Small-Business] All the talk in the cleaning press at the moment and over the past few months has been about the move to cleaning offices during normal working hours. Machine manufacturers are coming up with quiet vacuum cleaners, scrubber driers and buffing machines all of which supposedly allow you to carry out the cleaning without disturbing the occupants of the premises.

How Governments Seek To Get Back Control
[News-and-Society:Politics] So the UK Government has had its way on banning smoking in all enclosed public places and places of work. This ban was carried through on the grounds of ensuring a safe working environment for all employees across the country. This ban applies everywhere except of course the House of Commons itself. One would presume that this is because it is not open to the public and nobody works there! This is just another example of the hypocrisy of our government; ‘Don’t do as I do, do as I say’. ‘You do not know what is good for you but We do’. You cannot have a wage increase or it must be restricted because it is not good for the economy; however we will vote ourselves a very large increase because we are a special case’, and so it goes on.

Improving Conversion Rates
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Web-Development] You have optimised your website and attracted a large number of inbound links by one means or another. The results of this are that your site now appears on the first page of the top three search engines, Google, MSN and Yahoo, for your chosen keywords or phrases. You have cracked it! Now you are getting hundreds of visitors a day to your website. Unfortunately very few are staying to browse your site and even fewer are purchasing your products or enquiring after the services you offer.

Builder's Dust - Removing It
[Home-Improvement] Have you ever had renovations or alterations done to your property? Then you are fully aware of the amount of fine dust that is generated and manages to get absolutely everywhere even in places far removed from the actual working area. You then spend hours, days and possibly weeks attempting to remove this dust. Is there a much faster route to dust removal?

Obtaining Good Content
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Site-Promotion] Every piece of advice at the moment about improving search engine position especially Google suggests that web sites should be updated regularly with good quality content. The phrase ‘Content is King’ is seen in most articles on the subject now. So what is good content and how do you go about getting it

So You Want Your Site To Be Number 1
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Web-Development] You have products or services you want to sell? You want to use the internet as your main publicity vehicle? So you want a website? You want to sit atop the rankings for the search engines? You want loads of visitors to your site? You want a high conversion rate from visitors to paying customers? We are all in that situation and it is possible to achieve all of these wants by following a few simple rules.

Five Simple Rules For Commercial Cleaners To Follow
[Business:Small-Business] You are a young contract cleaning company or just starting out and want to expand? So many cleaning firms are run as a ‘one man band’ and do not want to employ cleaners so they are incapable of expansion. If you are reading this then you are not among that number and want to enlarge and expand your cleaning business. There are a few simple rules you must follow if you want to be successful in this and retain your contracts.

Having Natural Stone Installed in Your Property - The Pitfalls
[Home-Improvement:Stone-Brick] This last year has seen a large increase in the number of people having natural stone, marble, granite, limestone, sandstone or slate fitted into their homes either as work surfaces or as flooring. No man made product can rival the beauty of well presented natural stone with its myriad of colours and patterns which are unique to your individual stone.

Commercial Cleaning Companies - Increasing Your Customer Base The Easy Way
[Business:Small-Business] As a cleaning company you are presumably always on the look out for increasing your business? This is what we are constantly striving for and I was under the impression that other cleaning companies were doing likewise. However not so long ago I made attempts to contact a number of cleaning companies in different parts of the country. 108 phone calls were made and only 9 were answered.

Improving Search Engine Rankings - Patience is The Key
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO] I have written before about the benefit of articles and how they provide one way links back to your website and therefore improve the importance of your website and thus its ranking in the search engine results. The articles you write have the chance of spreading slowly around the web and ending up within ezines or on other websites or blogs. All of which provide links back to your website. So once you have over thirty articles out there the links can grow exponentially. Just consider what can happen if you have one hundred articles published? Two hundred articles?

Smoking - Health Fanatics As The New Religion
[News-and-Society] Should I be smoking? Probably not. Is smoking doing me any damage? Most certainly it is. It does not require a genius or endless sets of research papers to know that inhaling smoke which contains countless chemicals at high temperature into very delicate lungs, is of no benefit whatsoever and is going to be positively harmful. On top of all that it is becoming increasingly expensive. So why do it?

Managing Staff By Talking To Them
[Business:Workplace-Communication] As a cleaning company we place a very high value on our staff, they can make or break your business. They are our greatest asset and also our greatest liability. Consequently maintaining an excellent working environment and keeping staff well motivated is one of our primary goals. The same applies to most businesses although it is especially important in the cleaning industry because of the potentially high turn over of staff that is somewhat traditional in this field.

Obtaining Links For Your Website
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Site-Promotion] One of the most difficult tasks, having developed your website is to promote it on the search engines and achieve first page rankings. This is after all where we, as web site owners want to be, especially if you are selling products or promoting your services. Anything after the third page is generally useless for attracting visitors and potential customers. So how can you achieve this first page ranking on the major search engines?

Designers and Architects - Are Aesthetics More Important Than Practicalities
[Business] As a cleaning company we get called in to carry out builders cleans on new builds and refurbishments. Time and time again what we see is that the designer has had something built, laid or put in place solely on the grounds that it looks good with no regard as to how it will stand up to use or the practicalities of trying to keep it clean and looking good. They produce their design, see it through to the finish and then walk away. Only later does it become apparent that it is completely impractical from a cleaning point of view but they do not seem to learn from their mistakes because the same ones keep being repeated.

Big Government is Bad Government
[News-and-Society:Politics] As we move into the 21st century Western democracies are more and more becoming involved in the trivia of people’s lives. All governments, no matter what their political leaning seem to be under the impression that they know what is best for each and every one of us. Instead of involving themselves in the great issues of the day they are increasingly legislating on details about how we conduct our lives on a daily basis. Instructing us on what generally we cannot do. Western societies are as a result becoming more and more restrictive. Vocal and active minorities have more and more influence over the legislators.

Cleaning Schools and Hospitals - A Simple Overview
[News-and-Society:Politics] In principle the cleaning arrangements for schools and hospitals should be relatively straightforward. They know what they require, the cleaning company can then tender using those requirements as a basis for the quotation. If the contractor cannot sustain the correct level of cleaning then another is brought in. This is the situation in the commercial world. You are provided with a brief and using that the cleaning company prepares its quotation. It then either gains the contract or does not. If it then underperforms notice is given and another company is engaged.

Contract Cleaners - Travel To Expand
[Business:Strategic-Planning] The vast majority of Contract Cleaning Companies are small ‘one-man band’ outfits that provide basic cleaning to a limited number of clients within a relatively restricted area. This is fine unless you want to make real money and continue growing and expanding. If you restrict yourself to a small locality and operate alone then you have a limited number of potential customers. If you want to be out the front of the competition and challenging the big players in the cleaning business then you must be prepared to widen your horizons.

Commercial Cleaning Companies - A Strategy For The Future
[Business:Small-Business] A previous article looked at this in general terms with regard to a start up cleaning company. This article will concentrate on a strategy for an established company to follow if it wants to be even more successful and continue expanding into the future. The nature of cleaning is changing and the criteria companies use to choose their cleaners is also changing. Little by little companies are realising that it is more economical and administratively easier to find a cleaning company that can meet all their cleaning requirements.

Strategies For A Successful Cleaning Company
[Home-Based-Business] I am presuming you are just starting out in the cleaning business and you want to develop into a successful cleaning company. You have chosen to enter one of the most competitive markets. So how are you going to succeed? How are you going to obtain constant growth. Many cleaning concerns limit themselves to their few customers and do not want to expand and grow, but you are not one of these.

Office Cleaning - Advice For The Cleaning Company
[Business:Customer-Service] For contract cleaning companies office cleaning is the most competitive market to break into. Some organisations change their cleaners on a regular basis, every year or some even every six months because they cannot find a company that will consistently meet their requirements. What we find is that these companies do not have a clear indication of what is expected from the clean. After some time they complain that standards have fallen.

Polishing Granite
[Home-Improvement] Of all the natural stones that you can choose for flooring granite is by far the hardest material and the most hardwearing. It is also resistant to staining and acid and alkaline chemicals. This is the reason it is the kitchen worktop of choice and the flooring material of choice.

Sealing Natural Stone
[Home-Improvement:Stone-Brick] The sealing of stone is quite different to sealing other floor types. When sealing wooden floors for example a protective coat is added to the outside. When sealing stone the pores in the rock, or the spaces between the crystals that make up the rock are filled with the sealant with no trace of the sealant on the outer surface.

The Power Of Internet Marketing
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:SEO] Since instigating proper SEO techniques I have seen my web site visitors increase by over 1500%. My conversion rates have also gone from a meagre 0.5% to a very healthy 8%. How has this been achieved? By following seven simple guidelines which have not only seen my visitor figures sky rocket but also the web sites position in the major search engines has gradually improved until it sits on page one for all the important search categories and many surprising ones also.

Networking Clubs and Their Relevance to Contract Cleaners
[Business:Networking] If you are a new business just starting out into the world of contract cleaning then your immediate aim is to gather as many new customers as you can and constantly grow the business. The initial stages are hard and it is difficult to gain those first few customers. How gain you gain a foothold in this highly competitive market? Many of the marketing strategies you might employ have been explained in previous articles. One area that was not explored in these articles was networking

The Importance of Content - Adding a Weblog To Your Site
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Web-Development] Continuing my theme of how as a small business you can improve your search engine results. In a previous article I extolled the virtues of article writing and in this one I shall consider the practicalities and usefulness of adding a weblog to your site in order to drive more traffic to your web pages.

Writing Articles - Advice For The Do-It-Yourself Webmaster
[Writing-and-Speaking:Writing-Articles] As an SME it is virtually impossible for us to hire the services of a good SEO company that is going to spend time optimising the site, adding new content and gaining good links for the site, simply because of the cost involved. Other SME’s are I am sure in a similar position. They would all love to have a web site that ranked highly in google and the other search engines and brought in a constant flow of new business. However to hire an SEO company to do all those things above is often beyond the reach of many small companies especially those just starting out.

Do It Yourself Website
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Web-Design] If you are just starting out in your new business and you decide that a website could be a valuable addition to this business how do you go about getting one up and running? You have two basic options really. Do it yourself or employ an individual or company to do it for you. Which option you take depends upon your own confidence in acquiring the skills necessary and the amount of funds you can divert to hiring in a company. If you have sufficient funds then hire in a company as this will enable you to devout all your time to developing your core business. If you don’t then you will have to do it yourself. So how do you go about it?

Cleaning Tips - Their Usefulness To Website Visitors and The Cleaning Company
[Business:Marketing] If you type into the search engines the phrase ‘cleaning tips’ you get a choice of something like 14,800,000 websites to choose from and many of those websites will redirect you to scores of other websites. There are specific sites that are dedicated to giving hints, advice and tips on a variety of topics with seemingly no vested interest. Many of these tips are useful. However many cleaning companies include on their websites a cleaning tips page. I would argue that many of these are useless both to the visitor and to the company.

Marble and Granite - What Produces the Shine?
[Home-Improvement] Many people make the assumption that marble, granite and other finely polished natural stones shine because a ‘polish’ has been added to them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Natural Stone Tiles - The Confusion Surrounding Sealing
[Home-Improvement:Stone-Brick] There would seem based my own experience that there is a lot of confusion amongst the general public and some builders as to what sealing natural stone actually means. This article goes someway to removing the confusion.

Natural Stone Flooring - Care And Maintenance
[Home-Improvement:Flooring] No other floor covering can surpass the beauty of stone flooring whether it is made from marble, granite, limestone, slate or the artificially made terrazzo. They all have a natural beauty that exudes richness. The alternatives; carpets, linoleum, laminates, wood and ceramic tiles are often cheaper and most people know how to care for them and maintain them. However they eventually wear out or otherwise become damaged and have to be replaced. Natural stone flooring should last for several lifetimes if properly cared for and maintained and provides you with that luxury feeling.

Builders Cleans - A Lucrative Market For Commercial Cleaners
[Business] With office cleaning becoming an increasingly competitive market for contract cleaning companies they must diversify or move into a niche market if they wish to continue to grow. One niche market that is not so competitive is that of ‘builders clean’. The number of companies that offer a good, high quality service to the construction industry is relatively small. So for small to medium sized firms it is well worth considering entering this market.

Marketing Options For Cleaning Companies - Part Two
[Business:Branding] This is the second and last part of the series on marketing techniques that cleaning services companies can employ and how successful they are likely to be.

Marketing Options For Cleaning Companies - Part One
[Business:Marketing] This is the first of a two part series in marketing techniques that cleaning services companies can employ and how successful they are likely to be.

Web Design And SEO Experts - A Guide For Small Businesses
[Internet-and-Businesses-Online:Web-Design] This article takes an independant view of designing and developing your own website as oppossed to employing experts to do it for you.

House Cleaning
[Home-and-Family] With the difficulty of recruiting a 'cleaning lady' many households are turning to commercial cleaning companies for assistance. However the domestic customer must be educated in the use of professional cleaners who are not like the traditional cleaning lady in the way they work and the materials they work with.

The Mundane Toilet Brush! - Making the Right Choice
[Home-and-Family] This article gives advice concerning the purchasing of toilet brushes, putting function and efficiency before style and looks.

Contract Cleaners - A Guide for Businesses Part 4
[Business] This is the fourth and final part of a series of articles providing advice to companies who are considering putting their cleaning out for tender by contract cleaning firms.

Contract Cleaners - A Guide for Business Part 1
[Business] This article gives advice to companies about to employ contract cleaners. What questions they should be asking the cleaners and not restricting their choice to price alone.

Contract Cleaners - A Guide for Business Part 2
[Business:Small-Business] The second part of the article that looks at the first two questions and appropriate answers you should be looking for.

Bleach - Our Reliance on It is a Mistaken Belief; Part 3
[Home-and-Family] The third and concluding part of this look at the use and misuse of bleach in our domestic world.

Contract Cleaners - A Guide for Businesses - Part 3
[Business] Part 3 of this continuing series of articles advicing businesses on questions they should be asking their contract cleaners.

Bleach - Our Reliance on It is a Mistaken Belief; Part 2
[Home-and-Family] This is the second part of my look at why we are so attached to bleach as a cleaning agent around the home. In the first part i took a more general view. In this second part i look more closelyat one of the ways we use bleach and its effectiveness. Namely the removal of mould.

Bleach - Our Reliance on It is a Mistaken Belief
[Home-and-Family] Bleach products must be the most commonly found cleaning products in households, and offices complexes are not far behind. Go into most household toilets and you will probably find a bleach product.