How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile for a Salon to Get More Leads

Did you know there were 218,362 hair & beauty salon businesses in the US in 2020? This number might have gone down because of the declining growth of the industry affected by the pandemic.

Still, there are enough to make it the most competitive industry out there. So, how do you think your clients can find your salon in this stiff competition? By following the local SEO for hair salon tips.

Brightlocal survey found that 78% of respondents used the internet more than once a week to find local business information. This makes it clear that the world is going through a digital shift and building visibility on the internet, especially on Google has become paramount.

Since your salon mostly deals with local clients and attracts as many customers as possible, optimizing your Google Business Profile should be your #1 priority.

But before we get into how you can optimize the GBP of your salon business, let’s understand what it is and why do you need one?

What is Google Business Profile & Why You Need One?

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is a free service from Google for businesses to list their information. Doing so helps businesses boost their local SEO and rank in the Google local pack, which generally gets placed at the top before organic search results.

Here’s an example of the same,

Whenever someone searches for say, “best hair salons near me”, their intent here is to find and visit the nearby hair salons to get the desired services. Google will present them with 3 local business listings that are nearby to their search location along with a map for navigation.

The rankings of these 3 listings depend on various local SEO factors. However, they are determined by relevance, proximity, and prominence along with the information fetched from the optimized Google Business Profile, thus, making it an important aspect for:

• High customer engagement
• Improving local rankings
• Getting more leads/conversions

Now the question is how can you optimize your GBP? Well, here’s a detailed guide for the same:

Google Business Profile Optimization Guide to Generate More Leads for Salon Business

1. Set Up Your Salon Business Profile

The first and foremost step to optimization is to create or claim your GBP listing. Setting up your salon business profile lets you control all the information and optimize it for ranking in Google local pack to get more leads. But how can you set up the profile for your salon?

The first option is to take help from SEO experts to do it for you or you can do it yourself at the risk of losing ranks and your precious clients.

Still, here’s a step-by-step process:

• Visit the Google Business Profile page and click on the Manage Now to add your salon business. Follow the on-screen instructions to create your salon profile.

• Or you can visit Google Maps and search for your business address. You’ll find an option to Add your business or right-click anywhere on the map and find the same option.

• Click on that and follow the on-screen instructions to create your business profile.
• To claim your existing business profile you can either search your business name on Google Maps or GBP page and select the correct business.
• Then click on Claim this Business>Manage Now and follow the on-screen instructions.

2. Select the Right Categories & Attributes

Assigning the right primary category along with attributes like additional categories and keywords will help your profile appear in relevant local searches. Let’s see how you can do so,

Primary Category

• Be specific when assigning a primary category to your business.
• For instance, if you only offer hair service, then select “hair salon” or “hairdresser” as a primary category.

Additional Categories

• Apart from the primary category, you can assign 9 additional categories to your hair and beauty salon business.
• Here are some for your reference,
  • Hair removal service
  • Mobile hairdresser
  • Make-up artist
  • Home Hairdresser
  • Bridal makeup

Keywords

• Optimize your profile with keywords naturally without being forceful.
• A few example keywords include,
  • Hair cut
  • Hair Stylist
  • Barbershop
  • Beautician
  • Makeup artist

3. Fill in Contact Information Meticulously

Fill in your salon contact information such as Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP), and business hours. Meticulously filled contact information enables your leads to reach out to you at the right place at the right time.

Here’s how you can optimize it to not make it a stumbling block for lead generation:

• Business Name: Your salon name should match the name on your logo or signage. Adding extra words will be flagged as spam.

• Address: It may not seem a big difference if you write ‘Street’ on your website and ‘st.” on your GBP, but Google may find it inconsistent. So, make sure your address is consistent on all digital channels and business listing platforms.
• Phone Number: The same goes for your contact number; it should be consistent across the web.
• Business Hours: Your GBP profile needs accurately listed open and close hours so that when users plan to visit your salon, it doesn’t disappoint them.

4. Leverage the Full Suite of GBP Tools

Simply listing your business on GBP is not going to be enough for your lead generation game, especially when there’s high competition. It requires several other ways of optimization and following a local SEO checklist as well. GBP also offers a full suite of tools that you can leverage to generate more leads.

Want to know how? Let’s find out:

• Posting: GBP allows you to create and share announcements, offers, events, and updates to help you directly communicate with them, improve their experience, and offer timely information.
• Product/Service Listing: Product/service-based businesses can list all the services on GBP. Salon owners can list all the services with their description and prices so that users can see if your business offers what they need.
• Q&A Session: Q&A session can help clear doubts of your users immediately. You can reply to their reviews to turn prospects into qualified leads for your salon. Also, enable chat/message functionality for customers to directly ask questions to you.
• Ads: Through Google Ads Smart Campaigns, you can create PPC ads quickly and easily and pay only when someone clicks your ad. Doing so will help you attract more leads and customers to your GBP listing.
• Website: List your salon website so that users can visit your elegantly designed website and for various purposes.

5. Upload Your Salon Photos and Manage Reviews

High-quality and relevant images of your salon are a must-have for your business profile. They impact users’ opinions about your salon, help in ranking at the top of the local pack, and get more engagement on your profile.

Here are a few types of photos Google recommends adding to your GBP:

• Logo: Photos of your salon’s logo help users recognize your business.

• Cover Photos: Set a cover photo that represents your business.
• Business Photos: Add helpful salon business photos that include your clients or services you offer to build trust among your searchers.

Google reviews are another important aspect that provides useful information to turn prospects into leads. Here’s how you can manage reviews for your salon business:

• Ask customers for reviews: Create and share a link for customers to leave a review about their experience with your salon. Positive customer reviews help build trust for your leads to try your salon.
• Reply to all reviews: Replying to reviews shows that you value your customers’ inputs. Also, you must reply and handle negative reviews too.

6. Enable Chat and Appointment Booking Feature

As mentioned earlier, enabling the option for prospects to message you directly before they reach out to you would be worthwhile. Also, due to the Pandemic, consumers first wanted to check if the service or product was available before they visited.

If the product or service was available, getting an option to book an appointment with your salon would make your prospect visit the place at the scheduled time. There are several booking partners you can integrate with your GBP to enable appointment booking functionality.

Allowing users such functionalities can elevate their experience and turn them into qualified leads and ultimately paying customers of your hair and beauty salon business.

7. Track Calls and Traffic to Your Salon Website for Leads

While there’s no official way to track calls from your Google Business Profile, what you can do is purchase a series of tracking numbers and tie them with your business numbers. Then list one of the numbers on your GBP profile and make it a primary number.

Doing so will help you track calls coming from the GBP be it visited from a smartphone, Google Map listing, or dialing the number after seeing it on the Desktop. But wait, won’t it affect your NAP consistency?

Well, Google allows you to add up to 3 numbers, one primary and two additional numbers. So add your real business number as an additional number to keep your NAP consistency intact.

Another feature of GBP is to list your salon website URL. By adding UTM parameters such as sources, medium, and campaign to this URL, you can easily track the traffic coming from your salon GBP to the listed website. For instance, you can add UTM source as, “GBP”, medium as, “localpack”, and campaign as, “localseo”.

E.g. mysalon.com/?utm_source=GBP&utm_medium=localpack&utm_campaign=locaolSEO

Of course, you can change these parameters as per your own suitability. Tracking such important local KPIs will help you get insights into where your GBP profile and website need improvement. Based on such insights, you can tailor your GBP optimization further to attract more leads.

Wrapping Up

The only goal GBP optimization has to fulfill is to get more leads for your salon business. For doing so, it needs to be updated with accurate information and optimized to rank on top of the local pack. Following the above-mentioned steps can help you with your salon’s Google business profile optimization and get more leads too.

While doing it yourself can prove to be overwhelming, thus, taking help from local SEO experts such as Ronkot would be a wise decision. We have a wide team of local SEO experts to help you get more leads through your salon GBP optimization. Get in touch with us to consult our experts for your salon business profile optimization.

Still, have doubts? Let’s see if we can answer some of them here.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do I get my salon to the top of Google?

Ranking at the top of Google depends on several factors such as GBP optimization level, relevancy, proximity, and prominence. Contact our experts to know how you can rank at the top.

2. What are the ways you can optimize and use your business profile on Google?

A business profile can be optimized by entering complete data, describing accurate categories, business hours, maintaining NAP consistency, adding images, managing reviews, and others.

3. How do I get my salon on Google Maps?

Visit Google Maps and search for your business address to find an option to Add your business. Or right-click anywhere on the map and select the Add your business option to list your salon business on Google Maps.

4. How do I increase my Google business engagement?

Optimize your business profile completely and accurately. Increase reviews and reply to all the reviews to see an increase in your engagement.

5. How can I get leads on Google My Business?

Follow the step listed in this article to increase the lead count from Google for your Business.

6. Can Salons With Multiple Locations Have More Than One Google My Business Listing?

You don’t need to create multiple profiles of your same business for different locations However, if your salon has multiple location branches, it’s best advised to add multiple listings of the business via Business Profile Manager.