Claim and fully verify your Google Business Profile before doing anything else. Unverified profiles are pushed down or hidden entirely in the map pack. Google will post a verification postcard to your salon address or offer a video call option to verify faster.

Check that nobody else has already claimed your listing without your knowledge. Landlords, previous owners, or even a well-meaning staff member sometimes do this by accident. If you see ‘Claimed by someone else’, request ownership transfer through the same screen.

Set your business name to exactly what is on your signage and nowhere else. Do not stuff keywords into the name field, for example ‘Laura’s Hair Salon Galway Balayage’. Google can suspend your listing for this and it looks spammy to anyone who sees it.

Choose ‘Hair Salon’ as your primary category and add relevant secondary categories. Useful secondary options include Beauty Salon, Nail Salon, or Barber Shop depending on your services. The primary category is the single biggest lever in how Google decides which searches to show you for.

Make sure your phone number, address, and salon name are identical across your website, GBP, Facebook page, and any listings on Golden Pages or Yelp. Even small differences, like ’23 Main St’ on one and ’23 Main Street’ on another, send a confusing signal to Google and can drag down your local rankings.

Set your opening hours accurately, including your late Thursday if you do evenings, and add special hours for bank holidays. Showing as ‘closed’ on Google when you are actually open will cost you bookings, and a customer who turns up to a locked door will not come back or leave you a kind review.

Write a 150 to 250 word description that names your town, your flagship services, and who your salon is for. Something like ‘We’re a busy hair and beauty salon in Killarney, specialising in balayage, keratin treatments, and bridal packages’ does far more than a vague blurb about ‘a welcoming atmosphere’. Include the services people are actually searching for.

Mention any qualifications or product lines your clients actually care about. If you are a Kerastase stockist, a L’Oreal Professionnel salon, or a Wella-trained colourist, say so. These are trust signals for both Google and the person reading the listing who is deciding between you and the salon next door.

Upload at least 20 real photos of your work, your team, and your salon interior before anything else. Before-and-after colour shots, a balayage in good natural light, a blowdry that shows volume, a clean shot of your styling stations, your reception area. Stock photos or blurry images hurt you. Google’s own data shows profiles with photos get significantly more direction requests and calls.

Add a short video tour of the salon, ideally 30 to 60 seconds shot in portrait on your phone. Walk through the door, pan across the chairs, show the colour bar. Profiles with video stand out in the map pack and signal to Google that you are an active, real business.

Keep adding fresh photos at least twice a month. Google rewards profiles that show signs of life. A new colour transformation from this week, a finished nail set, a bridal trial. It takes two minutes and it tells Google your business is active.

Get your Google Review shortlink from the profile dashboard and send it to every happy client the same day as their appointment. Go to your GBP home, click Share profile, then Copy link. A WhatsApp message with ‘So glad you loved it, would mean the world if you left us a quick review’ converts far better than asking in person when they are rushing out the door.

Reply to every review, the good ones and the bad ones, within 48 hours. For glowing reviews, thank them by name and mention the service. For complaints, stay calm, apologise for their experience, and offer to sort it offline. A professional reply to a bad review often impresses potential new clients more than the complaint itself puts them off.

Aim to get reviews that name specific services, not just ‘great salon’. A review that says ‘best balayage in Cork, fixed my brassiness in one session’ is worth five times more to your local SEO than a five-star with no text. When you ask for a review, say something like ‘mention the treatment if you can, it really helps other people find us’.

Make sure your homepage title tag includes your primary service and your town or county. Something like ‘Hair Salon in Limerick | Colour, Balayage and Bridal | Your Salon Name’ tells Google exactly where you are and what you do. This is usually set in your website platform under SEO settings, not the visible page heading.

Create individual service pages for your highest-value treatments, not one long menu page. A dedicated page titled ‘Balayage in Waterford’ or ‘Keratin Treatments Waterford’ gives Google something specific to match against those searches. Lump everything on one page and you rank well for nothing.

Embed a Google Map on your contact page and display your full address in plain text, not just inside an image. Google reads text, not images. Your address in the footer should be typed out in full, matching your GBP exactly, so that both Google and the person squinting at their phone on the street can find you easily.

Post to your Google Business Profile at least once a week using the Posts feature. Share a treatment offer, a seasonal look, a new team member, or a reminder about booking ahead of a bank holiday weekend. Use Add update from your GBP dashboard. Most salons ignore this entirely, which means doing it at all puts you ahead of the majority of your local competition.