An Ultimate Local SEO Practice Guide for Salon Owners

Running a salon business is more challenging than it seems. A salon business owner has to ensure that his business meets the requirements of its clients. Apart from meeting the requirements, business owners also have to make sure that everybody in the town knows about the business and the services that they offer via effective salon marketing strategies. Otherwise, if they fail to make smart business decisions, their competition will take advantage and establish them as a successful brand in the town. 

As a salon owner, you have to make sure that you have made a smart decision regarding your salon’s marketing and advertisement. Otherwise, your competition will attract all your clients. Email marketing, promotional discounts, and paid campaigns on different platforms such as Facebook, Google, and Linkedin are effective ways to attract customers to your business.  However, if you want your business always to shine, local search engine optimization plays an important role as it will give your business perfect exposure all year round!

As per Ahrefs’ research, proper SEO of a website can help a business owner attract 1000 times more traffic than organic social media. Moreover, companies that invest in SEO can expect an ROI of 200%. So, for long-term success, it is essential for you to invest in the Local SEO of your salon business. 

However, you might think about how you can promote your hair or beauty salon via SEO in the local market for continuous success. Here, we are going to aid you in ensuring your business success by giving a complete guide on local SEO for hair salons. So you can implement all the essential steps and stand out from your competition. 

Why local SEO for salons is important? 

SEO for beauty or hair salons is not just about branding your business on Google. It also helps you gain your potential client’s trust and loyalty. Whenever someone wants to have a nice haircut in the area, they simply open Google to find the option. As per Google’s research, in recent years, local searches have grown to 150%. 

So, Proper SEO of your business website helps you attain an upper position in the Google SERP results, helping you attract more new clients to your business. However, if you have not invested in your salon’s local SEO, you might not appear in the search results, increasing the chance of losing potential clients. This potential loss of clients underscores the critical need for local SEO in the beauty salon industry. 

Connect with local clients 

Local SEO for hair salons helps you connect more personally with local clients. Whenever a potential client searches on Google for the best hair salon in town, your salon can be the one they find, creating a personal connection that is invaluable in the beauty industry. 

Thus, it helps you to reach the target audience searching for beauty and hair salon services in your area, enabling you to boost your business financially.  

Gain more trust 

Proper SEO of your business helps you consistently appear at the top of local search results. This consistency helps you to gain your client’s trust. Your clients tend to believe that your business is trusted by Google in terms of reviews and services. So, your clients develop trust in your business and avail your services. 

Standing out from the competition 

Having an online presence in the town and properly implementing local SEO techniques can help you stay ahead of your competition. Local SEO helps you stay at the top of SERP results. 

Thus, it enables you to attract more clients than your competition, who have not implemented proper digital growth techniques. This advantage helps you get more clients on local searches and maps, enabling you to become the top leader in the beauty industry. 

The complete guide for local SEO practices 

To attract local clients for the continuous growth of your hair salon, you have to make sure that you have implemented the best SEO strategies. These strategies enable you to establish your business as a trusted brand. Here is the complete guide about local SEO practices that you can adopt to grow your business with minimum investment. 

Website optimization 

The start of your business local SEO journey began with the optimization of your website. You have to make sure that your website is optimized with relevant keywords, has a user-friendly interface and has minimum loading time. So, whenever your potential client makes a query on Google for the best hair salon near me The search results show your website at the top. The following are the factors that you need to consider for the proper optimization of your hair salon website. 

1. Keywords 

You must ensure that your hair salon website has the golden keywords that will bring clients to your business. For this, you have to do proper research on keywords that can help you to rank in the local market. 

For example, you run a hair salon in the town, and you want your client to reach you by simply asking a query. You have to ensure that you sprinkle keywords like best hair salon near me, best hair salon for ladies in the town, Best men’s hair salon in town, etc. 

2. Meta makeover 

After optimizing your content with relevant keywords, you must ensure that each page of your website has a proper meta title and meta description. Whenever a client makes a query on Google for the relevant keyword, meta title, and meta description are seen in the SERP results. 

These little snippets give the first introduction of your business to a potential client. So, you have to make sure that your website meta title and meta description are more enticing, like “Embrace new styles with the best hair salon in town” and “Experience the best hair salon in town, offering expert cuts, vibrant coloring, and personalized styling”. However, you also ensure that your website meta title and meta description must range between 50-60 characters and 150-160 characters, respectively. 

3. Local landing pages 

You also have to make sure that your salon website has relevant pages for the services you offer. So, if a client makes a special query like the best fade hairdresser in the town, SERP results show a specific landing page that gives information about the top fade cut and the styling relevant to the top fade done by you. Having a specific landing page for each service makes clients feel right at home. 

4. Mobile responsiveness 

The majority of Google searches are done using a mobile phone. So, you can’t fully optimize your website without making it mobile-responsive. If your beauty salon website is not responsive to mobile phones, you are able to lose the majority of potential clients. 

According to Statista’s research, in the last quarter of 2023, mobile devices generated around 58.67 % of the global market traffic. So, for a good client experience, you have to make sure that your salon website is mobile-responsive and loads quickly. 

Google My Business (GMB)

Another Local SEO practice that can help you grow your business by attracting a target audience to your salon is Google My Business. Your business listing on GMB appears as a digital shopfront from where your client gets essential information about the services that your salon offers, opening and closing hours, pictures of your salon ambiance, etc. 

Thus, your potential client simply opens your digital shopfront and gets essential information about your salon. Moreover, your client can post a review of the services. These reviews help you to attract new customers and strengthen your position in the competitive beauty industry. 

Local citations and directories 

You can also list your business in the local directories for a specific niche in the town. Listing in the local directories increases the chances of your business growing in the local market. So, you have to make sure to find all the directories related to hair salons in your town. 

In all the local directories, you have to keep your business name, address, and phone number consistent. Locals appreciate the attention to detail. Thus, it helps you reach a specific target audience and helps you become the market leader in the town. 

Content marketing 

To resonate with the local audience, you can use content marketing. You can use any pictures or video content to resonate with the demands of your audience.  Whether it’s your business website or social media page, you can share pictures of your salon and share your client’s testimony about your business. 

You can also share stories about local events and tell your audience what is going on in the town. So, clients develop a connection with your salon and give preference to your business whenever they need a haircut. 

On-page optimization 

For the proper SEO of your business website, you have to make sure that your website is fully on-page optimized. From clear URL to internal linking, your website should have a composed structure. Thus, it helps your salon website rank high on SERP results. Here are the following factors that you need to optimize for the better ranking of your website. 

1. URL TLC 

The first factor that you need to consider is the URL of each page. URL is considered to be the address of an online page. Each landing page and blog that you post on your website has a different URL that clearly and concisely indicates the title of the page with relevant keywords. If your website doesn’t have a clear and concise URL, Google is not able to find the page whenever a query is made against a relevant keyword. So, instead of using a messy URL like 

“https://www.hairsalonexample.com/services/haircuts” 

2. Internal linking            

You also have to ensure that all the pages of your salon website are composed and smartly internally linked. This way, whenever Google crawlers come to crawl the page, they consider all the pages to be part of the website. 

If pages are not internally linked, Google considers them orphans. Proper page linking helps boost your website’s ranking in the SERP results. 

3. Schema markup 

Schema markup plays an important role in defining the ranking of your website. The schema is intentionally introduced to guide Google about your business. You can guide search engine about your business niche, what services you offer and what location you operate by adding schema markup. 

If your nail salon website has schema markup, it helps Google boost its ranking. Otherwise, your web pages will be ranked lower. 

Off-page Odyssey 

Off-page optimization is also important for improving the rank of your website pages. It helps you strengthen your website’s authority by having backlinks from other websites. Google considers a website authentic when it is backed by various other high-authority domain websites. 

You can boost the strength of your website by adding answers to different forums like Quora or Reddit, where you can link your service pages with the relevant questions. Moreover, you can partner with local blogging sites or influencers to post content about your website. Thus, all these backlinking or off-page strategies help you boost your business and improve your website ranking on SERP results. 

Monitoring and tracking 

Local SEO for a salon business is a long-term and continuous process. You have to monitor each page’s progress, including where your visitors are coming from and what pages you need to revamp for improvement. Here are the following ways you can track your business’s progress. 

1. Ranking report 

You have to analyze the ranking report that can be generated by different SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, etc. Track the progress of your ranking keywords. You have to fix one week or one month time, after which you can track the progress. During this time, if the ranking of the keywords improves, your SEO strategy will be okay. Otherwise, you might have to tweak your SEO strategy. 

2. Traffic tracker 

Apart from monitoring the position of keywords, you also have to track which pages your website is getting traffic from. You can use Google Analytics to track the traffic of each page. 

This tool provides detailed traffic information, such as what times your salon website receives the most traffic or which days your website pages are visited more. 

Final thoughts!

As a salon owner, excelling in local SEO is essential for success in the competitive industry and for becoming the market leader. You can boost your online presence to improve your ranking and attract new clients to your salon. 

From Google My Business to mobile responsiveness, all local SEO practices enable you to grow your business and stand out from the competition.