We are looking for an experienced WordPress developer/designer to build a new website for Best Wilmington Cleaners, a residential and commercial cleaning company serving Wilmington, North Carolina and surrounding communities.

This is a new local brand operated by an existing cleaning company. We will provide the logo, branding guidelines, service information, much of the written content and initial blog content.

We want a modern, professional website with a clean Wilmington/coastal feel, simple navigation and a substantially simpler layout than our current website.

The website will be hosted on our existing Bluehost account.

This project includes the initial website build, an SEO-ready architecture, practical WordPress security, backup/recovery configuration and Housecall Pro online-booking integration/testing.

Project Goals

The finished website should:

- Look professional, modern and trustworthy.

- Have a subtle Wilmington/coastal feel without looking overly themed.

- Be simple and easy to navigate.

- Work extremely well on mobile devices.

- Load quickly and avoid unnecessary plugins/bloat.

- Make it easy for customers to call, request information or book cleaning.

- Support both residential and commercial cleaning.

- Establish a strong foundation for local SEO.

- Be easy for our team to maintain.

- Allow additional services and service areas to be added later.

- Be secure and recoverable if the site experiences a problem.

Website Structure

Home Page

Professional overview of Best Wilmington Cleaners including:

- Residential and commercial services

- Wilmington/service-area positioning

- Trust elements

- Calls to action

- Phone/contact information

- Online booking

About Page

Company background, local positioning and why customers should choose Best Wilmington Cleaners.

Approximately 8 Service Pages

We expect approximately eight primary service pages representing a combination of residential and commercial services.

Potential services include:

- Recurring house cleaning

- Deep cleaning

- Move-in/move-out cleaning

- Airbnb/vacation rental cleaning

- Office cleaning

- Commercial cleaning

- Church/religious facility cleaning

- Other professional/commercial cleaning services

We will finalize the exact services with the selected developer.

Each important service should have its own properly structured page rather than placing every service on one page.

Service Area Pages

Create a reasonable number of individual pages for important Wilmington-area communities/service areas.

The site architecture should allow us to add additional locations later.

We want quality rather than quantity.

Do not mass-produce near-duplicate city/service-area pages by simply changing the location name. Each indexable service-area page should contain meaningful, useful and reasonably unique local content.

We prefer fewer high-quality location pages over dozens of thin pages.

Blog

Create a main blog page and configure WordPress so our team can easily publish future articles.

We will provide several initial blog posts for the developer to format and publish.

The developer is not responsible for ongoing blog writing.

Contact / Booking

Provide clear contact and booking calls to action throughout the website.

We expect to use Housecall Pro online booking.

The developer should integrate the official HCP booking functionality/link/widget where practical and test the complete booking experience before launch.

Content & Branding

We will provide:

- Logo

- Branding guidelines

- Service information

- Business/contact information

- Much of the website copy

- Existing content that can be adapted where appropriate

- Initial blog articles

Content from our existing cleaning website may be reused or adapted where appropriate, but the Wilmington website should not simply duplicate the existing website.

Best Wilmington Cleaners should have its own local identity, navigation and SEO structure.

SEO-Ready Website Requirements

This project requires an SEO-ready website and local SEO best practices during development.

It does not include an ongoing SEO campaign, monthly SEO management, backlink campaigns, citation building or ongoing content creation.

Page & Keyword Structure

Before completing the site structure:

- Organize the primary services around logical customer search intent.

- Avoid creating multiple pages that unnecessarily compete for the same search intent.

- Give important services their own dedicated pages.

- Use clean, descriptive URLs.

- Structure the site so additional services and locations can be added later without reorganizing the entire website.

We are not requesting an extensive agency-level keyword research project, but we expect sensible local SEO page targeting.

On-Page SEO

Configure:

- Unique page titles

- Meta descriptions

- One clear primary H1 per page where appropriate

- Logical H2/H3 hierarchy

- Descriptive URLs

- Relevant internal linking

- Appropriate image filenames

- Appropriate image alt text

- Optimized images

- Calls to action on important service/location pages

Avoid keyword stuffing.

Local SEO

The website should clearly establish:

Best Wilmington Cleaners → Cleaning Services → Wilmington, NC and appropriate surrounding service areas.

Business name, phone number, website and service-area information should be structured consistently for future/current Google Business Profile use.

Do not create or display a fake physical Wilmington address for SEO purposes.

Internal Linking

Build a logical internal-linking structure connecting:

Home → Services → Relevant Service Areas

and:

Blog Articles → Relevant Service/Location Pages

The site should not depend solely on the main navigation for search engines or visitors to discover important pages.

Technical SEO

Configure and verify:

- XML sitemap

- Robots.txt

- Search-engine indexability

- Canonical URLs where appropriate

- Clean permalink structure

- HTTPS

- Appropriate redirects where required

- 404 behavior

- No accidental noindex settings at launch

- No duplicate development/staging site indexed by Google

- Basic LocalBusiness/Service structured data where appropriate

Do not use spammy or misleading structured data.

Performance / Mobile

The site should:

- Be mobile responsive.

- Avoid unnecessary page-builder/plugin bloat.

- Optimize images.

- Use caching/performance features where appropriate.

- Follow reasonable Core Web Vitals/page-speed practices.

- Be tested on desktop and mobile before launch.

Google Measurement

Configure or assist us with connecting:

- Google Search Console

- Google Analytics 4

Submit/verify the XML sitemap in Search Console.

Where practical within the existing tools, configure measurement of important website conversions such as booking/contact actions.

SEO Practices We Do Not Want

Do not use:

- Mass-generated doorway/location pages

- Near-duplicate city pages

- Keyword stuffing

- Hidden text

- Spam backlinks

- Purchased backlink packages

- Fake reviews

- Fake addresses

- Automatically generated low-quality content

- Other high-risk/black-hat SEO practices

Bluehost & WordPress Security

Security should be incorporated during the initial build.

The developer should:

- Use current supported versions of WordPress, theme and plugins.

- Use the minimum reasonable number of reputable plugins.

- Remove unused plugins, themes, accounts and development components before handoff.

- Configure HTTPS/SSL throughout the website.

- Configure appropriate Bluehost/WordPress security and malware protections available in our environment.

- Use individual administrator accounts rather than shared credentials.

- Enable MFA/2FA for administrative access wherever supported.

- Apply least-privilege roles for non-administrative users.

- Disable WordPress theme/plugin file editing through the admin dashboard where practical.

- Never hard-code sensitive passwords or business credentials into publicly accessible website code.

- Obtain our approval before introducing a paid plugin/service or recurring cost.

We are looking for practical small-business website security, not an enterprise cybersecurity project.

Backup & Recovery

Configure a reliable website backup and recovery process including:

- Automated WordPress backups.

- Automated database backups.

- Database, uploads, theme/configuration and necessary website files included.

- At least one recoverable backup outside the primary Bluehost hosting environment where practical.

- Basic written restoration instructions.

- Identification of who controls the backup account/storage.

- A controlled recovery/restore test before final handoff demonstrating that the backup works.

Housecall Pro Booking Security

Because customers will access Housecall Pro online booking through the website:

- Prefer the official HCP booking link/widget/embed where practical.

- Do not store HCP owner/admin credentials in WordPress.

- Do not use unnecessarily powerful HCP API credentials.

- Verify every Book Now button/link points to the legitimate HCP booking destination.

- Perform an end-to-end test booking.

- Confirm expected booking/confirmation behavior after implementation.

The public website should not contain credentials providing administrative access to Housecall Pro, HighLevel, AWS, PostgreSQL or our other business systems.

Any integration credential that is necessary should have only the permissions required for that specific function.

Ownership & No Vendor Lock-In

Best Carolina Cleaning LLC/Best Wilmington Cleaners should control the completed website and required accounts/configuration.

The completed website should not depend upon:

- Developer-owned hosting

- Developer-owned production accounts

- Undisclosed proprietary software

- Developer-controlled servers

- Personal plugin licenses required for continued operation without disclosure

- Unknown recurring subscriptions

- Undisclosed custom middleware

If something creates an ongoing cost or dependency, disclose it and receive our approval before implementing it.

Any custom code specifically developed for this project should be transferred to us at handoff.

Final Handoff & Acceptance

Before the final milestone is approved, please provide:

- Completed production website on our Bluehost account.

- Desktop/mobile testing completed.

- Contact functionality tested.

- HCP booking tested end-to-end.

- SSL/HTTPS confirmed.

- Security configuration completed.

- WordPress/theme/plugins current.

- Unused plugins/themes/accounts removed.

- List of WordPress users/admins and their roles.

- Complete plugin/service inventory and purpose.

- List of all paid or recurring services.

- Backup schedule and backup location.

- Basic restoration instructions.

- Successful controlled backup/recovery test.

- Identification of temporary/developer access to remove.

- Basic instructions for our team to edit pages and publish blog posts.

- Confirmation that no undisclosed developer-controlled dependency is required to operate the site.

SEO Launch Checklist

At handoff, provide a short checklist confirming:

- Page titles/meta descriptions completed

- H1/page structure reviewed

- Clean URLs/permalinks

- Internal links checked

- Service and service-area pages indexable

- XML sitemap functioning

- Robots.txt checked

- Canonicals checked

- No accidental noindex settings

- No staging/development site indexed

- Appropriate schema configured

- Images optimized

- Mobile responsiveness checked

- Basic performance checked

- Google Search Console connected/verified

- Sitemap submitted

- GA4 connected/verified

- HCP booking/contact conversion measurement configured where practical

Budget

Fixed Price: $500

We are providing the logo, branding guidelines and much of the content, so this is primarily a WordPress design/build/configuration project, not a branding, copywriting or ongoing SEO engagement.

We understand candidates may have different approaches. If you believe a requirement cannot reasonably be included within the $500 fixed price, identify it and the additional cost in your proposal rather than after the project begins.

Do not introduce paid plugins, subscriptions or recurring expenses without our approval.

When Applying

Please answer the following:

1. Provide 2–4 WordPress websites you personally built, preferably for local service businesses.

2. Describe your experience with Bluehost and WordPress.

3. Have you integrated Housecall Pro online booking before?

4. What WordPress security measures would you implement for this site?

5. How would you configure independent automated backup and recovery?

6. What WordPress theme/builder would you recommend and why?

7. What paid themes/plugins/services, if any, do you expect would be necessary?

8. Briefly describe how you would structure the site for local Wilmington SEO.

9. How would you prevent service-area pages from becoming thin/duplicate content?

10. Are you comfortable setting up/verifying Google Search Console and GA4?

11. Confirm whether you can complete the full scope for the $500 fixed price, or clearly identify any exceptions.

12. Provide your estimated completion time.

13. Confirm that the completed website, custom work and required production accounts/configuration will be under our control.

Please start your proposal with the word “WILMINGTON” so we know you reviewed the complete project description.