Stealth Way a Salon can Improve Google Ranking and Attract More New Clients…

Are you currently using your website to drive new clients into your salon every week?  How many clients are you getting?  Five?  Ten?  Twenty?  Well, if this seems impossible to you, then you should take a look at how a simple change to your Internet strategy can generate more first time clients in 2009.

There is not a cheaper way to advertise your business than the Internet.  Unfortunately, most salon owners have given up when it comes to making this method work.  Don’t fall into the trap!  Potential clients are using the Internet every day to find new salons.  In fact, every year, the Internet is experiencing double-digit growth when it comes to search.  If they’re not finding your salon, I can tell you "The problem is not the Internet".     

There are two very important things that you need to make a web site work.  One is the site itself.  The other is Traffic.  The best looking site in the world is useless if nobody sees it.  Therefore, you could say that traffic is the more important of the two.

Many salon owners created sites over the last five years for their customer’s benefit.  I want you to rethink that strategy and redesign the site based on a "new" customer’s benefit.  This has to do with the content on the site, however, I will cover this on another blog post in the future.

Today, we are going to focus on "Traffic". 

In many cases, getting traffic to your website can be done by someone who is affectionately called an SEO guy.  SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.  It can be a complicated thing that takes into account the "relevancy" of your site to certain keywords.  A keyword is what your potential client puts into the Google search line.  For instance, if a client types in "Hair Salon Reading Ma", that is the keyword.  Well, the bad news is "SEO guys cost money". 

So, how can you do the same thing as a good SEO guy can without spending the money?

Answer: Get your clients to help you. 

Google places a great deal of importance of websites on simple CLIENT REVIEWS.  Google thinks that any salon with more reviews must be more popular.  Therefore, the more popular the salon – the more relevant the salon.  Seems pretty logical doesn’t it?

A client can write a simple review of their experiences in your salon and rate it based on a "star" system.  (By the way, Yahoo has a review system as well).  Now here are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind.

One, don’t be worried about bad reviews.  You are going to get some.  But what you are trying to enhance is "believability" in the eyes of your new clients.  If you get 25 reviews and 24 are positive, do you really think that the potential new client will only give weight to the bad review?  Of course not.

Second, people who search for local businesses read the reviews.  That’s right – they read the reviews.  In fact, reviews carry much more weight with potential new clients because people can relate to each other.  Great reviews beat great website content by a mile! 

Third, your clients will need to have a Google account (or Yahoo account) set up prior to writing the review.  This is usually not a big deal as it is free and it takes only a minute to set up.  But, you need to tell your clients that before they attempt to help you out.  In fact, since many of you already have people’s email addresses, you can send out your requests to clients having Gmail accounts or Yahoo accounts already.

Finally, it would be a good idea for you to type up the directions (to write a review) for the clients so that you make it as easy as possible for them to follow through.  Maybe you can create a little contest based on who writes a review to spur some interest.  Get your clients to rave about you and Google and Yahoo will reward you with higher placements without the expense of hiring an SEO guy.