Local search is how people find a business near them: "hair salon near me", "nail salon in Austin", "best balayage in Brooklyn". The results come from search engines and map apps pulling together what they know about each business from its listing, its website and the rest of the web. Your job is to make that picture clear and consistent.
Google describes local ranking in terms of relevance, distance and prominence in its tips to improve your local ranking. Everything below is about the two you can influence.
1. Be consistent about name, address and phone
Search engines compare what different places say about you. When your salon's name, address and phone number are identical everywhere, they can be confident it is all the same business. When one listing has an old suite number and another has a former phone number, that confidence drops, and so does the chance that a client finds the right details.
Make a list of everywhere your salon appears, and check each one:
- your Google Business Profile, covered in our Google Business Profile checklist for salons
- Apple Business Connect, which feeds Apple Maps
- Bing Places for Business
- Yelp for Business
- your booking app profile, Facebook and Instagram
- your own website, in the footer of every page and on the contact page
Write the address the same way every time, including suite numbers.
2. Put your details on your website as text
Your address, phone number and opening hours should be on your website as real text, not only inside an image or an embedded map. Text can be read by search engines and assistants, and a phone number written as text can be tapped to call.
3. Add structured data
Structured data is a small block of code, invisible to visitors, that describes your business in a standard vocabulary: name, address, phone, hours, price range and a link to your Google listing. Google explains what it reads in its guide to local business structured data.
The vocabulary comes from schema.org, which has specific types for a hair salon and a beauty salon. The specific type is better than a generic one.
You should never have to write this by hand. A good website platform generates it from the details you have already entered, and keeps it in step when you change your hours. Every salon website on Gloss Front does this. The rule that matters most is that the markup must match what the page shows. Markup that claims hours or prices the page does not show gives search engines a reason to trust the rest of it less.
4. Give each location its own page
If you have more than one salon, each location needs its own page with its own address, phone number, hours, map, team and booking link, and its own Google Business Profile. One page listing three addresses makes it harder for search engines to connect any of them to a place.
5. Say where you are, naturally
Describe where you are in the words people use: the neighborhood, a nearby landmark, the part of town. "Two minutes from the Park Slope library" is more useful to a new client than a paragraph of town names, and search engines understand it too. Do not stuff a list of suburbs into the footer.
6. Earn prominence
Prominence is how well known your salon is. Reviews are a big part of it, and so are mentions and links from local websites: a local news story, a wedding supplier list, a neighborhood blog, a charity event you supported. These come from doing things in your community, not from buying links, which search engines treat as spam. We cover reviews in getting more reviews for your salon the right way.
Check the basics in one go
Our free website check looks at the local signals on your site: whether your address and phone number can be read by machines, whether you publish opening hours, whether there is a map, whether you link to your Google listing, and whether your structured data is in place.
Local search is not a trick. It rewards salons that are clear, consistent and active, which is exactly what clients reward too.