How Digital Marketing Helped Flirt Urban Salon in San Diego
On February 28, 2017, Left Lane Digital began marketing services for Flirt Urban Salon in San Diego. Services included Facebook, Instagram, blogging, and search engine optimization (SEO). As you will see below, Left Lane Digital was able to significantly increase keyword rankings, site traffic, and leads over a 6-month period for Flirt Urban Salon. Keep reading to learn how.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Flirt Urban Salon has been one of Downtown San Diego’s best salons for over 10 years. Despite being a well-established salon, Flirt’s website was only ranking for an average of 196 keywords per month in February 2017. However, by July 2017 (after 5 months of our SEO services), Flirt ranked for over 1,000 keywords on Google.
You may be asking "what does this mean and why is it important?"
When someone near your location does a Google search for a service or product related to your business, such as “best hair salon San Diego”, or “hair stylist San Diego”, you want your website to be presented as an option on the search engine results pages (SERPs) in the hopes that the searcher will click on your URL (website link) to be taken to your website.
The more keywords your website ranks for, the more opportunities your website has to be seen on the search engine results pages for people to discover your business.
As you will see below, as Flirt Urban Salon began to rank for more keywords, they also began to gain “impressions” month over month. Impressions are the number of times any URL (link) from your site was viewed by a user in search results.
Ranking for more keywords typically means more impressions, which lead to more clicks, which hopefully leads to more people contacting your business. As Flirt’s number of impressions increased each month, so did the number of clicks to their website.
Google My Business (Local SEO) Stats
A Google My Business (GMB) profile is a free listing that enables businesses to appear in results for local search queries specific to the business’s services or products. Once you’ve claimed and verified your GMB page, it’s important to optimize your profile to improve local SEO.
The effectiveness of your GMB page also relates to your website’s overall SEO. Below you will see how Flirt Urban Salon’s Google My Business listing increased in views and actions each month since Left Lane Digital took over SEO services.
February 2017 (Before Services)
August 2017 (Month 6 of Services)
"Searches" are the number of times people found Flirt’s listing while searching for their business name or address; or while searching for a category, product, or service. As you can see in the chart, searches continued to grow month over month since Left Lane Digital began SEO services for Flirt on March 1st.
You will also see that as searches grew, so did “Views”, which are the same as "impressions". Views of a Google My Business listing can either be found via Google Search or Google Maps.
As we saw in the previous section of this blog, as views (impressions) increase, so do clicks. In the chart below you can see that "Actions" on Flirt's GMB listing increased month over month as well. "Actions" are clicks to Flirt's website, requests for directions, or phone calls using the buttons available on the GMB listing.
Increase in Website Traffic & Leads
Below is data from Flirt Urban Salon’s Google Analytics account, showing the number of "goal completions" (unique pageviews of their contact page) in the 31-day period before Left Lane Digital started digital marketing services vs. month 6 of services (31 days of August).
As you can see, goal completions increased 113.54%, from 96 unique pageviews of the Contact Page, to 205 unique pageviews.
SEO Strategy: How We Did It
Flirt Urban Salon saw more online growth in the past six months than it has in the past 10 years. So how was this possible?
As part of their monthly SEO package, Flirt received optimizations on each page of their website, starting with in-depth keyword research, followed by adding more keyword-rich content, title tags, meta descriptions, and h-tags. Additional web pages were also created to help Flirt rank for keywords they wanted to be more competitive for, such as a new webpage on "Hair Color Services".
Left Lane Digital also began a monthly blogging strategy for Flirt Urban Salon, starting with two blogs per month and eventually moving up to four blogs per month. Blog topics were chosen that would help Flirt better rank for desired keywords, such as "hair extensions", "balayage", "color correction", "best salon in San Diego", and more.
The first blog we wrote on “How to Care for Tape-In Hair Extensions" was posted on 2/28/17. In the chart below from Flirt Urban Salon’s Google Search Console account (which helps track keyword rankings), you can see that Flirt began to rank for keywords related to “extension” starting after 2/28. By March 27th, the salon was ranking for 71 keyword queries with that term.
You can view Flirt Urban Salon’s blog page at http://flirturbansalon.com/blog/.
Social Media Marketing Services
In addition to SEO services, Left Lane Digital also helped Flirt grow their followers and engagement on Facebook and Instagram. A strong presence on social media can play an important role in SEO, bringing qualified traffic to your website and building brand awareness.
Facebook Services
In February (before social media services), Flirt Urban Salon reached 2,450 unique users on Facebook. When Left Lane Digital took over in March, Flirt reached 9,533 unique users. This was with less than $100 of Facebook ad spend.
We also tracked how Flirt's Facebook page engagement (reactions, comments, and shares) compared to a few local salons. Even though Flirt had 8 times less page likes than some of the other local salons, Flirt had the highest rate of engagement compared to the number of page likes, as you can see in the chart below.
Instagram Services
Left Lane Digital also took over Flirt Urban Salon’s Instagram account on February 27, 2017 when they had 469 followers. By March 31st, Flirt had 1,012 Instagram followers (an increase of 112%). No ad spend was used on Instagram and followers were not purchased.
Flirt’s most "liked" image in February had 143 likes. In March, Flirt’s most "liked" image had 240 likes (an increase of 68%).
Contact Left Lane Digital in San Diego
Left Lane Digital is a boutique digital marketing agency in San Diego, California dedicated to helping small businesses and nonprofits succeed. If you’d like to find out how Left Lane Digital can help you grow your online presence and gain more customers through SEO and social media services, please feel free to reach out to us. We’d be happy to provide you with a free website audit to get you started.