How to get more reviews for a hair salon

Open every page of your current site, copy the text into a document, and save every photograph to a folder on your own computer or drive. Do it before you ask anyone to change anything.

If the site goes down, or the person who built it stops replying, the text and the photographs are the expensive part and the only part that moves to any other platform. While the site is still up, you can get them back in an hour. After it goes down, you cannot.

Design, page layout and forms do not travel between platforms. Text and images do. Save those two things and you are never stuck again.

How long: an afternoon

Get your short Google review link from the profile, save it in your phone as a text you can send in two taps, and send it to every customer as the job finishes, while you are still standing there. Not the next week by email.

Reviews move because of the share of customers who are actually asked, and most owners ask far fewer than they think. A text sent at the moment the work is done, with the person still holding their phone, is the version that gets answered.

Asking is allowed. Paying, discounting or offering anything in return is against Google's review policy, and that includes a dollar off, which owners assume is harmless. Do not filter who you ask based on how happy they seem. On a site built by us this is a button in the app on your phone: your link and your wording are already saved, so asking is one tap at the end of a job rather than something to remember and retype.

How long: ongoing

Write, in plain words, what you charge or your price range, exactly which towns you cover, what you do and do not take on, how soon you can come, and your licence or insurance number. One page, your own words, no polish.

This is the content of your website, and it is the part nobody else can write for you. Every build that stalls stalls here. Every generated page that reads as empty reads that way because this page did not exist, so the words had to come from somewhere generic.

If you only do one thing from this plan, do this one. It makes every later step cheaper and faster, including the ones you pay someone else for.

How long: an afternoon

Answer each review in a sentence or two. On a complaint, say what happened, say what you did, and give a way to reach you. Do not argue the facts in public and do not copy the same reply onto ten reviews.

The reply is not written for the reviewer, who has moved on. It is written for the next person reading, who is deciding between you and the listing below you. A calm answer under a one-star review does more for that decision than the star average does.

Reviews that break Google's policy can be reported, but most unfair reviews stay up. Plan on answering them well rather than on getting them removed.

How long: ongoing

We search your business name, find the listing if one is already there, and claim it in your name. If there is none we create it, under the real business name and nothing else. Then we take it through verification, which for most small businesses now means a recorded video: one continuous take, no cuts, starting outside with the signage or the unit number, then branded equipment or stock, then something printed with the business name such as a licence or a utility bill, then opening, unlocking or operating something only staff could. We write that shot list for your premises and run the attempt with you. Ninety seconds of it has to happen on your phone at your address, because that is where the camera has to be. Everything either side of those ninety seconds is ours: the list, the order, the submission, and the appeal if it comes back rejected. The login is yours at the end of it.

The profile is what puts you in Maps and in the local results, and until it is verified in your name nobody can set the hours, the phone number, the categories or the photographs those results are built from. Video verification is checking three things at once: the place is real, the business is real, and you are the person who runs it. Filming only the inside proves one of the three, which is why most rejected submissions look fine to whoever filmed them. It is the step owners fail at, and failing it twice is how a profile ends up stuck for a month. It is near the top because it is quick to start and it comes with the build, not because it does the website's job: a profile cannot hold your prices, explain a service or answer the questions that decide between you and the next listing.

We enter the real business name only. “Smith Plumbing” verifies. “Smith Plumbing Emergency Plumber Chicago” is the most common cause of a failed verification and of a suspension months later. After two rejections we stop resubmitting and appeal with documents, using exactly the address format we typed in. We cannot promise any profile gets verified or reinstated, and nobody who tells you otherwise can either.

How long: a few days, most of it waiting on Google

Four things, in this order. Duplicates: we search your business name, your phone number and your address separately, signed out of Google, and where a second listing exists we claim it when it is unclaimed or request access when somebody else holds it, then merge it or ask for it to be taken down. We keep the profile that holds the reviews, even when the other one has better information, because reviews cannot be moved by hand. Primary category: we open the three businesses that outrank you in Maps and read the primary category off each profile, where Google publishes it, then set yours to the one that describes what you actually sell most of and take off the vague extras. Service area: you tell us where you will actually drive, and if you travel to customers we put your real address in for verification, hide it from the public, and define the towns and zip codes you named. Google allows up to 20 of them, which is Google's published number and Google changes it without notice, so we spend them on the places you want the work. Hours: the real opening times, the days you are closed, whether you take calls outside them, and the special hours before each holiday.

Two listings split your reviews and send some customers to the wrong phone number or the wrong hours. The primary category decides which searches your profile is eligible to appear in at all, and a roofer sitting under “Contractor” has opted out of the searches that matter; it gets picked in four seconds when a profile is created and never looked at again. Without a service area you either show your home address to the public or you turn up in places you will not drive to and take calls you have to refuse. Wrong hours cost money twice over: somebody drives to a closed shop and writes about it, or somebody does not call because Google says you are closed when you are not. Holiday hours also have to be set again each time, and Google's prompt for them is easy to dismiss, which is the reason this one sits on our list and not yours.

Three of these are how profiles get suspended, so they are done once and done carefully. Two profiles sharing a phone number but disagreeing on the address is the pattern that suspends both. Nine loosely fitting categories makes the profile compete worse for all nine, and changing the primary on an established profile can unsettle results for a week or two, so we change it once and never while the profile is suspended. A mailbox, a virtual office or a co-working desk used to get a pin in a better part of town is not eligible, is one of the most common causes of a hard suspension, and is not something we will do.

How long: a week or two, Google sets the clock

We design and build the site, $99 one time, from the page of answers you wrote and the photographs you took. Three to five pages is the right size for a local business: what you do, the towns you cover, prices, who you are, how to reach you. If you already have a site, this replaces it, and the addresses people have already linked to are kept pointing at the right pages.

This is the only part of your presence you own, and the only one that can actually sell. It holds what a Google profile structurally cannot: your prices, a service explained in more than two sentences, your licence number, and the answers to the five questions that decide between you and the next listing. Being able to edit the wording of a site is not the same thing as the site being able to do that work. Where we could read yours, the line under this says what it is missing. Where we could not, judge it yourself: open it on your phone, press the number, and try to book a time without telephoning anybody.

After the build you pay the real running costs directly: a .com is roughly $12 to $20 a year and hosting is in the region of $5 to $30 a month. Check current prices, they move. A blog is not part of this and for a referral-driven trade it is not worth starting one.

How long: a week