Beauty Salon Marketing

If you’re a UK reader and have a website for your salon, you probably know how important Google is in the UK. Figures from December 2007 suggest that Google’s market share has reached 90% in the UK.

So it is especially important that the search engine giant recognises that your website is targetting a UK audience, so that it will appear higher in the listings for UK searchers. The “UK Search Engine Marketing” website has an excellent article on Search Engine Ranking Factors for Google UK. Of the 9 suggestions, some are quite technical (you could pass them to your web designer, if you have one). But there are 5 that even a beginner can put into action -

(Quoted from the original article on UK Search Engine Marketing)

2. Domain Ending - Having your domain end in .co.uk is a strong signal to search engines and people where your focus is. Using a .com, .net, or other domain ending is not the end of the world but if you have a choice go with a UK specific one.

4. Address And Phone On Site - Having a UK addresses and phone number on the contact page or footer of every page is a pretty clear signal to both humans and search engines.

5. UK specific Content And On Page Optimisation - This will happen naturally with UK spellings, keyword usage, and content on the region as you write. If you are focusing on a broader topic just try to include a post once in a while that mentions your area. So if you are talking about gaming make a post about how expensive the PS3 is in your home town of Nottingham.

7. Links From UK Focused Sites Or Content - Links from sites Google believes are UK specific due to any of the above factors are going to be a huge factor. Directories that are listing United Kingdom businesses, local trade organizations, commerce organizations, any links from other .co.uk sites or sites that are clearly in that area will help. Links in content Google will deem UK specific and link anchor text can help too. For example a link called “London Plumber” instead of just “Plumber” would be nice to get.

9. Listing In Google Local - Listing your business on Google’s local listings for the UK is a recommended move. Not a huge impact yet but that could change.

For salon websites, we would recommend putting your address and phone number on EVERY page, because your target market is extremely localised (compared to websites that might be targetting the whole of the UK). You should also frequently mention, in the text, the local areas that your clients come from. Put yourself in the mind of a potential customer - what words might they use to search for services like yours? Would they search for the street name, the suburb, the town or city… even the region?

Do some research. Whenever you get a new client coming to your salon from your website, ask them how they found you. If it was from a search, ask them what they searched for - then make sure those words are used frequently on your site.

Note - “Search Engine Optimisation” (or SEO for short) is a huge field. We’ll be writing more about this, and how it can be applied to salon and spa websites, in future articles. It can also be a very technical subject, so please let us know, in the comments below, whether this article was too “techie”, not technical enough… or just about right?