A client looking for a salon does not see your work. She sees a list. Everything comes down to your place on that list, and what she reads about you there. There are three ways in, and none of them means paying a marketplace.
7.40 pm, at the tram stop
Her day is done. She is waiting for the tram, phone in hand, and she types “hairdresser” because her colour is long overdue and there is a wedding on Saturday. Google answers in under a second: a map, three names, three ratings, three distances. She does not open the fourth. She will never get as far as the fourth.
You may not have been one of those three names. It has nothing to do with your talent, your salon or your welcome: she saw none of that. She saw a list, and you were not on it. This guide is about that list, and how to get onto it without renting your place from a middleman.
What Google looks at, and you can read it for yourself
Google explains it itself, in the help pages for its Business Profile: how it ranks local results. Three things carry weight: relevance, meaning how closely what the client is searching for matches what Google knows about you; distance, measured from wherever she happens to be; and prominence, which it reads in your reviews, in mentions of your salon elsewhere on the web, and in your website.
Distance is not yours to choose. It has one reassuring consequence: your competition is the salon across the road, not the whole city. The other two signals are in your hands. And you work on them with what you already have: your profile, your website, your clients.
Step one: a profile that is properly filled in
Open your Google Business Profile as if you were a client. Are the opening hours right, Mondays and bank holidays included? Are your services listed in the words people use when they ring you, “balayage”, “toner”, “facial”, rather than your in-house names? Are the photos less than a year old? A half-filled profile sends a weak signal, and Google reads it as exactly that.
Allow an hour, once. It is free, it is the starting point for everything else, and it is also what our generator reads to build your website: if the source is thin, the site will be too. When you change an opening time later on, change it in both places, or let your dashboard do it for you.
Step two: a website in your name, not a rented page
A profile makes you visible. A website makes you readable: it is what gives Google something to work with, your services described, your neighbourhood named, your answers to the questions people ask before they book. Without a website, all Google has is your profile and whatever the marketplaces say about you.
This is where the marketplace comes in, and it deserves a straight look. A booking marketplace gives you a page, well ranked, on its own domain. Every client who books on that page strengthens the marketplace’s brand, not yours. And on that same page, your neighbours are listed. Some charge you for every client they “bring” you: at Planity, €1.99 ex. VAT per booking from a new client who came through the marketplace, according to independant.io; at Fresha, 20% commission on every new client who came through its marketplace, according to its pricing page. You pay to be found next to your competitors.
On your own domain, the logic flips. Every client who finds you builds your visibility, yours alone. Fully booked means “next available slot”, not “three other salons available near you”. And the day you change tools, the domain, the pages and their history on Google leave with you.
Step three: recent reviews, with replies
A three-year-old review no longer says anything about your salon today. Freshness matters as much as the rating. The moment to ask is always the same: at checkout, when the client looks in the mirror and it shows. One sentence is enough. A message that evening, with the link, does the rest for those who said yes and then forgot.
Reply. Even in two lines, even to lukewarm reviews, especially to lukewarm reviews: the reply is read by the next clients, and it shows how you treat people when something goes wrong. A salon that answers its reviews looks open. A salon that does not looks absent.
What you will be sold, and what does not work
Buying reviews: it gets spotted, it gets penalised, and your clients are not fooled. Stuffing keywords into your business name: “cheap hairdresser balayage town centre” is not a name, and Google treats it as cheating. Expecting Instagram to do this job: an account looks after an audience that already knows you, it does not catch the person searching right now, three streets away. And paying a marketplace “for visibility”: you are renting a spot on a list where your competitors are one click away.
Be wary, too, of anyone who promises you the top spot in a fortnight. Nobody can deliver it. Local visibility is built over weeks, as Google cross-checks your profile, your website and your reviews.
Where to start, tomorrow morning
Go back over your profile, one hour. Type your salon’s name into ODS Salon, look at the website it produces, and put it online: the first 14 days cost nothing. Then get into the habit of asking every happy client for a review, and of replying. Three steps, in that order. None of them means paying to be listed next to the salon across the road.