SEO for Stylists: How to Make Your Instagram More Discoverable

For stylists, the best place to interact with potential clients and fill an appointment book is Instagram. However, one of the trickiest marketing tools to navigate is – you guessed it – Instagram!

So many hairdressers and salons adore this social media platform, but that means the market is saturated with balayage and beautiful makeovers galore. How are you supposed to make your content stand out and your page more discoverable in a sea of industry elites?

With the right keywords, tags, bio and gorgeous posts, Instagram is a powerful tool for building your business and carving out your niche. Ahead, we share how to perfectly SEO-optimize your profile to grow reach and discoverability.

Formatting Your Bio

You only get 150 characters to help people understand who you are. So before writing up your bio, consider who you’re trying to reach. What kind of work do you do daily? What kind of work do you want to be known for? Once you have these questions answered, you can base your bio (and overall content strategy) on your goals.

The most important tidbits of information to include are:

• Your name
• The salon you work at or your business name, if you have one
• Location
• What you specialize in
• Awards you’ve won
• Anything unique about your business, such as affiliation with a brand or eco-friendly practices

Feel free to use emojis and fonts to inject personality and draw attention to certain parts of your bio. You’ll also want to include a link to booking, your website, a recent campaign, or anything worthy of promotion.

Hashtags

Whether you aspire to be a global celebrity or put more clients in your chair, you’ll need a few well-considered hashtags in your posts. Hashtags label your post into categories which help people interested in a specific category find your feed. Using hashtags could get your post seen by people (maybe even hundreds of them) who haven’t discovered your work yet.

MODERN SALON has handy guide of the top 100 hair community hashtags you can incorporate right now to get more eyeballs on your work.

Keywords

Instagram recently began allowing users to search for content using keywords, not hashtags. If you type “bronde” in the Explore page, you’ll be given results based on keywords in an Instagram name, username, bio, and post.

When you optimize your account and content posts to include relevant keywords, you’re more likely to appear in search results.

If you’re hoping to rank for a keyword like “blonde” it’s a good idea to incorporate that primary keyword in both your display name and username. In your bio, add secondary keywords like “bridal” or “extensions” that expand on your expertise and represent your business.  

Captions

The Instagram Explore page considers captions when determining what content to show each user. By using relevant, descriptive keywords in your photo captions, you’re more likely to appear on the Explore page for users who have expressed an interest in topics related to yours.

Track Your Reach

Want to know if your SEO efforts are paying off? Upgrade to business account or creator account and use Insights to learn more about your followers and growth.