How to Get Your Salon or Spa on Page #1 of Google
Updated: Dec 20, 2022
Google is today what Yellow Pages was 20 – 40 years ago. It is the default go-to-place to find answers about anything and everything. There are more than 3.5 BILLION searches on Google every single day. You want to know the age of Brad Pitt? Google. You want to know if it’s safe to put a fork in the microwave? Google. You want to find an Italian restaurant to go to when you visit New York? Google. And of course, you want to find the best hair salon in Chicago? You guessed it...Google.
So how you do make sure that you show up on page 1 of a search?
Firstly, here are some important reasons why you NEED to:
A study of over 5 million search results showed that the first suggestion from Google gets 32% of clicks. The second listing gets 18% of clicks. That’s already over 50%! By the time you get to the 7 th Google suggestion, it is only getting 3% of clicks, and any results outside of the 1 st page only get 0.78% of clicks. That’s what leads to this great joke:
Where is the best place to hide a dead body? Page 2 of Google search results 😂
So the simple question is: how does Google decide which website to rank in what spot?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is very complicated at its core. Google doesn’t reveal exactly how it decides. All anyone knows is that it is a complex algorithm that takes into consideration over 200 factors. Yes – 200!!
Essentially the process is:
1. Google’s spiders crawl the web by visiting web pages.
2. Then, they add optimized pages to their index and catalogue them.
3. When people search, Google tries to show the best result that matches the search terms.
So the first step is that you need to have a website in order to have good visibility in search results. We often hear salons say, I just made a website, how come I am not showing up on the 1 st page of Google searches? It takes time. And just having a website isn’t the only factor. But we can tell you that NOT having a website will almost certainly lead to you not being anywhere close to page 1. If you don’t yet have a website for your salon or spa, feel free to check out our simple and affordable website solutions
Large companies spend $1,000 - $2,000 per month on SEO because it’s an ongoing process. You can’t just optimize your SEO once and expect that you will show up 1 st in all searches from now until the end of time . We understand these budgets aren’t possible for small businesses like hair salons and spas, so we’re going to do our best to highlight the most important things you can do to help boost your Google Ranking.
Here are some basics to start:
Claim your Google My Business page. Not sure how? Check out this great resource:
Optimize your GMB page. Not sure how? We have another great article that offers great tips: https://www.salonsos.ca/post/how-to-optimize-your-google-my-business-listing-part-2-extra-features
So how do I get my salon or spa on page #1 of Google Searches?
There are actually 2 ways to go about this: paid and/or organic. Google allows you to pay for Ads which essentially guarantee you one of the top spots. We’ve written a useful Salon Guide to Google Ads which will help you with this approach.
Organic is the longer, more natural approach that is free. It’s the listings that Google proposes without paid Ads. We know that Google wants to provide the best options for someone’s search, so how do they go about determining that?
If a potential client is looking for a salon or spa in your area, why are you not showing up? The problem is that Google will not find and propose your salon unless you give the Google spider crawlers a good reason to. At the same time, you’re most likely not the only salon in your town or city. Why should Google show your salon instead of your competitors? So you also need your salon or spa to perform better than the others, right?
To achieve this, you first need to be clear on what people are searching for when it comes to salons and and spas. What do you want to be known for? Only when you know this will you be able to optimize the content on your salon’s website to match those searches.
Basically there are 3 main categories that are analyzed within the Google search engine algorithm: technical considerations, elements that are within your website, and elements that are on the internet but outside of your website. Let’s take a closer look at these:
1. Google Technical Considerations :
a. Site and Page Speed: how fast your website loads is important because consumers
today want speed and convenience. You can check your website’s speed by using
Google’s free PageSpeed Insights.
b. Mobile optimized: since more than 50% of internet searches happen from a mobile
phone, Google checks the quality and speed of your mobile website to ensure a good
consumer experience on your website.
c. Secure website (HTTPS): this security feature of your domain name helps provide
credibility to your website. You can check if you have HTTPS before the
www.salonname.com in your website address to see if your website is secured. If not,
you should check with your website and domain name provider.
d. Domain age: because credibility and trustworthiness are important to Google, it’s no
surprise that 60% of sites in top 10 search rankings have existed for 3 years or more. It’s
important that your website can continue to attract visitors over time. Be patient! SEO
is a long-term game.
2. Google On-Page Considerations (things that are within your website):
a. Keywords: Keywords are essentially the words that potential clients are typing into
Google when they do a search. Are they typing ‘Best hair salon Chicago’? ‘Blonde
Balayage in Toronto’? You want to figure out the keywords that you want to be
associated with, and then include then consistently throughout your website. We’ve
put together an article to help you find the best keywords for salons and spas (link to
How to Get Your Salon to the Top of Google article).
The best place to include keywords
on your website is in blogs because you have space for lots of content and it also helps
people spend more time on your website. Keywords have to appear organically and
sound natural on your site, otherwise Google will recognize that you are not being