Only the toughest business owners dare brave the hallowed stands of the cosmetic counter. Why? Because they know just how dangerously competitive the beauty industry is.
Loreal made 38.26 billion € in 2022.
Companies and offerings saturate the US market (with Asia-Pacific not far behind).
Online sales are growing rapidly as offline declines.
It’s not just beauty-specific retailers selling to consumers, both online and offline. Other types of businesses—everything from home furnishing companies to clothing brands—are after a piece of the palette.
Just opened a beauty salon? Congrats! But there are hundreds of others.
Sell a “truly revolutionary” face cream? Brilliant. So do hundreds of other companies.
How can you compete and get new customers? How will your audience find you in this crowded cosmetics aisle of competition?
You need an effective SEO strategy to get your business to rank higher on search engine result pages, increase brand visibility and drive traffic to your site. You can have the best offer on the market, but you’ll be outcompeted if you don’t have an SEO-friendly website.
Below, we bring you six SEO tips for the beauty industry to help you win SERPs and, perhaps more importantly, nab those customers.
1. Start With a Technical SEO Audit
You can do everything right, but if your website doesn’t work correctly, you may as well be shampooing your hair with mud.
A technical SEO audit is critical for identifying and fixing issues affecting your website’s performance.
Technical SEO refers to the functions of your website that affect its search engine visibility:
- Content
- Website speed
- Mobile responsiveness
- Site structure
- URL structure
- Links
… And more! The technical issues you might face include everything from broken internal links and duplicate content to invalid URLs.
2. Target the Right Keywords
Argue with us if you want, but getting your SEO keyword strategy right is critical—and a common SEO misstep. You need to dedicate the time to thorough keyword research and determine the keywords your target customers use when searching for products and services.
How do you pick out the beauty business keywords you should be using? Identifying them depends on various factors. For example:
- What type of business do you run: e-commerce, brick-and-mortar, or a combination?
- What products and services are you providing?
- Is your business local, nationwide, or global?
Thankfully, cleverer people than us have created keyword research tools to aid you in this process. A few we like—and are among the most popular—include Google Keyword Planner, the free tools offered by SEMrush and Ahrefs, and Moz’s Keyword Explorer.
These tools help you find the right keywords, sure, but you can also use them to analyze the keywords your competitors are using.
3. Content Wields the Mascara Wand
You have your keywords. Now you need to work them into your content. And by content, we mean blog posts and website copy.
All the pages on your website—old and new—need relevant, helpful, quality content. This means they must be optimized for your chosen keywords while providing value to your customers.
Visitors should be able to find information about your services or products easily; they also might turn to you for advice in your area of expertise.
Your task now is to improve your current page and product content and create high-quality new content. Technically, aim for a word of 500 to 700 words for a service page and 200 to 300 words for product descriptions.
If you don’t already have one, start a blog. Blog articles increase your website’s authority, boosting its ranking on search engine result pages. Commit to consistently posting relevant and informative content: you’ll attract more traffic to your site and engage with your audience.
4. But the Eyelash Curler Is On-Page SEO
Now that you’ve improved your content, it’s time to perform another core SEO strategy for the beauty industry—on-page optimization.
On-page SEO means optimizing the content on your web pages for specific keywords. This is crucial for increasing your website’s ranking and driving organic traffic. Proper keyword insertion and distribution within your content make it more readable and engaging.
Here’s how to do it:
- Insert and distribute keywords within the content and headlines
- Create clever and catchy meta titles and descriptions using the target keywords
- Insert internal links (where it makes sense)
- Create alt tags for images (remember to insert your keywords)
This is just a sampling of the optimization strategies you can implement.
(Let us know at MK-WAY) if you want a more in-depth guide on this topic—we’ll put one together!
5. Build a Strong Backlink Profile
You’ve fixed the technical issues, found a whole bunch of relevant keywords, and optimized all your pages. The next step is to boost them with high-quality backlinks—that is, links from other websites to yours.
Acquiring high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites is arguably the most effective way to increase your website’s authority. In fact, over 55% of experts in a recent SERPSTAT survey said backlinks increase rankings by 8 to 10 points.
There are various ways of building your backlink profile, but the most common are:
- SEO outreach: Requesting backlinks from other websites in your industry.
- Guest blogging: Creating high-quality blog posts (with the links) and contacting other website owners to request publication.
- Buying backlinks from an SEO agency: Purchasing non-spammy backlinks created on websites with high domain authority.
6. Localize Your SEO
If you, for example, own a beauty salon and provide business locally, you need to focus on local SEO. In other words, you must optimize your website for local search queries. This ensures your business appears in relevant local search results.
You can achieve this by creating and optimizing your Google Business Profile. GBP is a free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence on Google, including Search and Maps.
Providing accurate and complete information about your business is vital. At a minimum, this includes your business name, address, phone number, website URL, and business hours.
You can also share photos and videos related to your business, respond to customer reviews, and post updates to your profile to keep it fresh and engaging.
Are you looking for more advice on Google Business Profile for local SEO? GBP is an MK Way specialty. Get started by checking out our Ultimate Google Business Profile Guide for 2023.
Save Your Skin: Work With the Pros
SEO can be complex and time-consuming, especially for new businesses. While learning and implementing SEO strategies yourself is possible, hiring a professional SEO company will get you better results faster.
That’s where MK Way, Toronto’s #1 digital marketing agency, can help. Our SEO team has the knowledge and experience to create and implement an effective SEO strategy. We give your beauty business a chance to grow and help you win new customers.
MK Way ensures hits every step in your SEO strategy, from thorough keyword research and technical SEO audits to web content optimization and acquiring high-quality backlinks.
If you’re ready to win the SERPs and wow your customers, schedule a free consultation with an MK Way SEO expert.
