SEO Strategy for Hair Salon & Hair Stylists
In an industry where a single new client can be worth $1,750+ annually, ranking at the top of Google for “hair salon, balayage, highlights, cuts, and color” will positively impact your bottom line.
This comprehensive guide will help you understand how to structure your site, outrank your competition, and implement the most important tactics for salon success. We share real-life examples to help you visualize how these SEO strategies can be executed for your salon.
Learn more about our agency’s full suite of services for hair salons.
Low Competition, High Opportunity
Our data shows that SEO competition for hair salons is low. Compared to other client verticals where we provide marketing support, it’s not particularly competitive. We evaluate this based on Google’s cost per click and the overall keyword difficulty.
Balayage is typically a service costing $300 or more per appointment and requires maintenance visits every 3-4 months, generating reliable, recurring revenue for your salon. Yet the keyword difficulty is in the low teens in Columbus, a Top 20 market in the U.S, which is low.
When an industry has a low keyword difficulty, you can expect positive changes relatively quickly.
My Background in Hair Salon SEO
My wife is a hairstylist. She lived in New York City for over a decade and had a robust clientele of more than 500 devoted clients. When we decided to get married, she moved back to our hometown of Columbus, Ohio, where I run my marketing agency. She started her salon, First & Park Beauty right after moving back.
Moving markets meant that my wife had to start her business from scratch. For many stylists, they would work elsewhere to build up a clientele before opening up their own salon or renting a chair.
By following specific SEO tactics, we were able to achieve:
- First-page rankings for all primary keywords within 3 months
- Fully booked schedule requiring a waiting list
- Expansion to renting chairs to other stylists within 12 months
Similar tactics have yielded positive results for other hair salon clients. After reading through this guide, you’ll have actionable SEO items to implement for your salon.
Note: When you complement PPC (pay-per-click) with SEO, you can achieve quicker results, and great synergy between the two services.
Proper Structure & Hierarchy
I like to use a ladder analogy when thinking about the hierarchy of your hair salon website. “Hair Salon” is the descriptor term at the top of the ladder, and all of the services (balayage, highlights, gloss, cuts, etc) are the steps leading up the ladder. We prioritize the most profitable at the top of the ladder and then work our way down.
When structuring your hair salon website, creating dedicated service pages is essential. This helps you get found on Google and provides prospective clients more insight into each service, including before-and-after photos, pricing information, and client testimonials. Without these individual service pages, your ladder is missing its rungs—and clients can’t climb to your salon.
Below is a visual for you to see the ladder analogy in action for a single-location hair salon.
Applying This Structure with Local Keywords
Once you have the hierarchy identified, you can pick keywords to target. You can use a free AI tool like Claude or ChatGPT to ask for five localized keywords for each service, + the homepage.
We recommend signing up for keyword tracking software like SEMRush to monitor your rankings against competitors. Add your keyword list before implementing changes to establish an initial benchmark and track your progress over time.
Importance of Local SEO
Hair salons are hyperlocal businesses, and your SEO strategy must reflect this. Many potential clients search at the suburb or city level.
Example Suburb Searches:
- Hair Stylist Near Me
- Hair Stylist in [Suburb]
- Hair Stylist in [Mall]
A broader search would be conducted at the city level, such as “Hair Stylist Columbus” or “Balayage Phoenix, AZ.”
The SEO strategy for your hair salon will depend on the following:
- Where you’re located
- The size and competitiveness of your local market
- Whether you’re a single-location or multi-location salon
When you start creating content and optimizing title tags, descriptions and headings, it’s essential to add localized keywords in the appropriate places.
Example SEO Strategies: Single & Multi-Location
Let’s examine an example of a single and multi-location salons SEO strategy to see how their SEO strategy was deployed.
First & Park Beauty [Single Location]
- Location: First & Park is located in the Short North Arts District in Downtown Columbus
- Homepage Strategy: Optimized for “Luxury, High-End Salon in Columbus’ Short North Arts District” [learn more about proper homepage optimization]. Since “Salon” is the top of the ladder, descriptor term, this means it’s most competitive so we niched down to a neighborhood versus the entire city.
- Service Page Strategy: Service pages target the broader Columbus area – specialty services like Balayage and Gray Blending attract clients willing to travel from other suburbs. [view example service page]
- Overall Structure: Homepage maintains a hyperlocal focus while service pages target city-wide keywords
This SEO approach creates a strategic SEO hierarchy: it captures neighborhood-specific traffic through the homepage while extending the reach for specialty services across the entire city.
Tracking Success
This strategy is paying dividends, as First & Park Beauty maintains strong visibility for their homepage in the Short North and for many service pages in Columbus.
The keyword rankings highlighted in red below are for the homepage and various service pages. You will also see the “KD%,” which is keyword difficulty. The green score for most keywords means there is low competition, which I alluded to earlier.
Penzone Salons [Multi-Location]
- Multiple Locations: Penzone has 6 locations throughout the Columbus area
- Location Page Strategy: Each location page is specifically optimized for its respective suburb [view example location page]
- Homepage Strategy: Optimized for broader “Columbus” searches, which is appropriate for a multi-location business serving the entire market
- Service Page Gap: Unlike First & Park, Penzone doesn’t have individual pages for each service, missing an opportunity to optimize these for Columbus-wide searches and gain additional exposure
By having strong location pages, Penzone captures high-intent, hyperlocal traffic. Below, they rank #1 for “Dublin Hair Salon.” This is the case for each of their suburbs.
Optimizing Your Salon’s Service Page
Hopefully you now understand how to properly structure your site and incorporate local keywords. Let’s walk through how to create content that Google and your prospective clients will love.
First & Park Beauty tripled its organic search visibility after implementing the following structure for its specialty service pages, such as its balayage service page.
- Service Description
- Before/After Photos
- Pricing Information
- FAQ’s About Service
- Client Testimonials
- Local Keywords
- Internal Links to Related Services
- Call-to-Action
Related Blog: Extensive Guide to Optimize Your Service Pages
Optimizing Your Salon’s Location Pages
If your salon has multiple locations, you want to properly optimize these location pages to rank in each specific suburb. This can be done by following the framework below when creating these pages.
- Professional videos and photos of each location
- Map for location reference
- Address, Phone Number, and Hours of Operation
- List of all services offered at the location linking back to the primary service page
- Testimonials pulled from the locations’ Google Business Profile
- Local Keywords
- Call-to-Action
Extensive Guide: Optimizing Your Location Pages
If you want expert help on properly structuring your website, contact The Media Captain
Your site isn’t going to instantly rank on the first page by only creating great content. There is an important metric called authority score, which grades your site on a scale of 1-100, that you must be aware of. Your site needs to have some sort of authority to rank well.
To bolster your authority, you need high-quality, external backlinks pointing to your site. If you just launched a new salon and corresponding website, Google will trust the competitor down the street, which has been around for a decade and has thousands of clients. External backlinks us one of Google’s most important trust indicator.
Fortunately, since hair salons have a low keyword difficulty, you don’t need a high authority score to rank well. You can see that First & Park Beauty only has an authority score of 13. Despite this, they have achieved many of the page one rankings we referenced earlier.
Example of Quality Backlinks for Salon
To better demonstrate external backlinks, the Short North has a website that lists businesses that work in this downtown district. They are linking back to the First & Park site. Katie Goes Platinum lists some of the best grey hair stylists, and First & Park made the list. These are relevant, high quality links tht Google are essential to Google! Focus on having 10 quality sites linking back to your hair salon, it will have positive ramifications for years to come.
Google’s Local Pack
Populating in the local pack is instrumental for a local hair salon. Searches for local places with “near me” have grown 150% [source].
The local pack result are prominent based on its positioning at the top of Google with the bright reviews accompanying each listing. Of course, the local pack is tied to your Google Business Profile.
Strong local pack rankings have been instrumental in attracting more gray blending clients for Rayna. Bookings for this service more than doubled once she was ranking in the local pack.
Related Blog: Google Business Profile Checklist
How to Rank Well in Local Pack
- Get More Reviews
- You should have a sticker on your salon’s front door or window, which will remind people to leave reviews
- Your stylists should carry a card reader like TrustHero at their station. They can ask clients to leave a review, and tapping the card reader will take them right to your Google Business Profile.
- You must ASK for reviews. There’s no better way than going in for the ask.
- Check to see if your point of sale software has a review request program going straight to Google. If not, consider signing-up for a service like Get 5 Stars.
- Other Google Business Profile Optimization Techniques:
- Add photos showcasing your team, salon, and personality. You’d be amazed how many views the images get on your Google Business Profile, which will differentiate your salon. Investing in a photo shoot can spruce up your GBP and your website.
- Each Google Business Profile should link to the respective location page if you have multiple locations instead of the homepage.
Primary and Secondary Category Recommendations
The primary and secondary categories is one of the most important local pack ranking factors. Below are our recommendations. Each salon has a different business model. If you are unsure what to pick, contact one of our experts.
Primary Category Options:
- Hair Salon (ideal for most salons)
- Beauty Salon (if offering more than just hair services)
Secondary Category Options:
- Hair Coloring Service
- Barber Shop (if you offer men’s cuts)
- Blow Dry Bar
- Day Spa (if you offer additional spa services)
- Makeup Artist (if you offer makeup services)
- Hair Care
- Cosmetologist
- Hair Removal Service (if you offer waxing)
- Wig Store (if you sell/service wigs)
- Eyelash Salon (if you offer lash services)
Other Tips to Improve SEO for Hair Salons
Directories & Comment Forums
Directories and forums are a great way to drive quality referral traffic. This is another positive indicator to Google’s search engine.
I recommend searching for “your primary keywords + your local market” (for example: “Columbus Balayage”) to see what appears on Google’s first page. When sites like Reddit, Yelp, and other directories rank highly—as shown in the “Columbus Balayage” results—there’s an opportunity to gain quality referral traffic by being listed or mentioned on these platforms. We’ve also observed that directory listings positively impact your AI SEO performance.
In addition to local directoriest, getting listed on industry directories will add credibility to your site, which Google likes. Popular directories amongst hair stylists are StyleSeat, Vagaro and Katie Goes Platinum.
Stay Active with Social Media
Staying engaged on social media has many benefits. Recently, Google has been incorporating more social content into its search results. The more placements you can get on Google’s first page, the better.
In a search for “NYC Hair Salons,” the first page results include a Reddit thread alongside Instagram and TikTok posts, highlighting the importance of maintaining a presence across these platforms.
Have a Stellar Website
Starting in 2021, Google’s algorithm started to consider page experience as a direct ranking factor, meaning websites with better UX and SEO are more likely to rank higher.
It’s essential to build a great website for your salon. Hair styling is an incredibly visual business, and your site needs to match your salon’s overall vibe and style.
We talked earlier about having the right foundational structure, but don’t forget that your content and design are just as important when it comes to turning website visitors into actual clients walking through your door.
In Closing
There’s no better time than getting started with SEO for your hair salon than now. The competition is relatively low for a recurring, premium service.
If you feel you need help deploying any of these tactics, we have a great team here at The Media Captain that would be happy to provide support while you focus on the day-to–day of your salon.