1. Does Beauty Industry need SEO?

Yes. All industries need SEO and the beauty industry is not an exception. In fact, with the extreme competition in the market, SEO for the beauty industry can be a crucial part of the brand’s successes. It makes the website better visible in the search results and therefore easily accessible by potential buyers among thousands of other products. Combined with PR and social media activity, search engine optimization can ensure that cosmetics industry companies grow the incomes and the business itself.

2. How much do I have to invest in SEO for Beauty Industry?

It’s hard to name one price when it comes to the SEO process. The pricing depends on factors like: your website’s current online visibility, domain history and its authority, the current state of your website optimization, the size of the website and its complexity, the industry and the competitiveness of your niche. That’s why the price for every SEO process should be determined individually based on the website’s condition, goals, and business characteristics. If you want to find out how much you’ll have to pay for the process you can get a free quote anytime!

3. Does Delante have experience with beauty industry SEO?

Yes, we do! We are successfully run SEO processes for both big names in the beauty industry and small businesses. Thanks to that, we can base our strategies on proven link sources, and tactics suitable to the industry.

SEO for Beauty Industry - What Do You Need To Know?

Table of Contents

Cosmetics Industry – Where Is the Market Headed?

The Polish cosmetics industry has been proving for several years now that it can compete on the same level as Europe’s biggest players. The market value crossed symbolic thresholds long ago, and everything indicates that by 2026 we are no longer talking only about growth, but about market maturity. Consumers are more aware, more demanding, and—importantly—far less driven by impulsive purchases.

The beauty market today is much more than creams or makeup. It includes research laboratories, biotechnology, dermocosmetics, niche brands, packaging manufacturers, e-commerce, and local producers. Poland maintains a strong position in Europe, and domestic brands are increasingly building recognition beyond national borders.

The way products are chosen has also changed. Price is no longer the only factor. Customers pay attention to ingredients, origin, brand ethics, transparent communication, and real quality. This creates a major opportunity for small and medium-sized companies that know how to tell their story and reach the right audience.

This naturally raises a question: how does SEO fit into all of this, and does it remain one of the pillars of online marketing in the cosmetics industry in 2026?

SEO in the Beauty Industry and Influencers – Competition or a Perfect Match?

Influencer marketing is still going strong. Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube remain important sources of shopping inspiration. The challenge is that user attention spans are shorter than ever. A story disappears after 24 hours, a trend lasts a week, and algorithms change faster than seasonal collections.

SEO works differently. It is a long-term foundation that doesn’t disappear once a campaign ends. A user who looks up a brand or product in Google after seeing it recommended by an influencer expects to find it. If they find nothing—or worse, a competitor—trust disappears instantly.

So what does SEO actually bring to a beauty salon or cosmetics brand?

Building credibility

Imagine not being able to find a product in search results after an influencer mentions it, even when you type in the brand or product name. That kind of promotion doesn’t inspire much trust, does it?

Higher conversion rates

Maybe you once saw a fantastic banana powder on an Instagram story, but couldn’t find it among Google’s top results. As a potential customer, you may get distracted and abandon the purchase—or end up choosing a competing product that’s easier to find, cheaper, better packaged, or delivered faster. In that case, all influencer efforts go to waste.

Increased organic traffic

Influencer collaborations can boost traffic from social media through “swipe up” links and similar features. However, organic traffic remains unchanged—and in the long run, paid collaborations and ads may be far less cost-effective than strong organic rankings and search-driven clicks.

SEO + social media = better results

SEO works very well in the beauty industry. Social media is also extremely important for cosmetics brands. Now imagine how effective combining both approaches can be—each one reinforcing the other to expand your website’s reach.

How to Plan an SEO Strategy for a Cosmetics Store

In 2026, SEO is no longer about keyword stuffing. It’s a data-driven strategy based on user intent and content quality. What does SEO actually have to do with the beauty industry, and where should you start?

Choose the right keywords

At the very beginning, it’s worth considering how customers search for specific products and which phrases they use.

Long-tail keywords—more specific queries—help you reach users who already know what they want. Instead of competing for “face cream,” it’s better to address a real need: “natural cream for sensitive skin.” Lower volume? Yes. Much higher conversion? Absolutely.

Optimize your website: focus on UX and aesthetics

The beauty industry is all about aesthetics. High-quality products alone are not enough to keep users on your site. A well-designed interface, easy product selection, smooth checkout, and clear presentation of salon services all directly influence user engagement and conversions.

Linda Treska, CEO of Pinch of Colour, shares her experience:

“It was a completely new experience. In July this year, I designed and built my own website. I worked extremely hard to make sure the site follows current trends and actually converts users into customers.”

Create valuable content

Both content and context are now among the most important tools in any SEO campaign. A company blog is a true must-have for brands looking to increase website traffic. Product and category content also remains a vital part of on-site optimization.

Beauty blogs genuinely attract customers. Tips, tutorials, and shopping hauls catch the attention of both Google and potential buyers. Michelle Ranavat, founder of Ranavat Botanics, explains:

“I wish I had clear answers to SEO questions. I believe that instead of optimizing variables, SEO should be built by creating truly great content across multiple channels.”

Brands like Glossier and Fenty are excellent examples of content-driven brand recognition—they gained loyal audiences by delivering value and standing out visually.

Source: @fentybeauty

Link building still matters

It may seem that links no longer matter—but that’s not true. While they are no longer the dominant factor they once were, links from trusted websites still have a positive impact on your domain. This includes collaborations with beauty bloggers and visibility across multiple channels, not just brand-owned social media.

James H. La, founder of Niucoco, explains:

“Find platforms that drive traffic to your website: press, social media, vloggers, bloggers, exchange programs, and more. This also helps increase brand awareness and domain quality (Page Authority).”

Analyze and adjust

Sometimes strategies don’t work as expected. If something fails to deliver results, don’t keep pushing a campaign that doesn’t perform. Analyze what went wrong, redefine your target audience, update your social media approach, and reassess whether your SEO efforts are heading in the right direction.

Visibility increased by 77% and traffic by 41% in one year.

See how SEO works in the beauty industry!

Can Small Businesses Compete in a Large Market? A Realistic Perspective

Big brands, recognizable logos, extensive ad campaigns, and strong social media presence may suggest there’s no room left for smaller players. Yet recent years clearly show that consumers are increasingly drawn to niche and local brands.

Customers today are looking not just for products, but for stories, values, and real solutions to their problems. There’s one condition: your brand must be visible in Google exactly when users know what they want.

Instead of competing for broad phrases like “hair conditioner,” which generate millions of results and are dominated by marketplaces, small brands should focus on queries that solve specific problems.

Google rewards E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). As a small manufacturer, you have real experience that corporations often lack. Show your production process, explain ingredient sourcing—this directly supports search rankings.

With AI-powered search experiences, users now ask complex questions. Queries like “fragrance-free solid shampoo for low-porosity hair” or “which solid shampoo to use after keratin treatment” show strong purchase intent. Users who search this way are ready to buy.

Beauty Salon vs Online Store SEO – What’s the Difference?

Do you run an online cosmetics store? Or maybe a local beauty or hair salon? Before launching an SEO campaign in the beauty industry, it’s crucial to consider your business model. Improving search visibility for a local service works very differently than for an e-commerce store.

Aspect	Online Store (E-commerce)	Local Salon (Service)
Main goal	Nationwide reach, product sales	Local reach, appointment bookings
Keyword focus	Product-based, problem-focused (long-tail)	Service + city/district (geo-targeted)
Key tools	Product pages, expert blog	Google Business Profile (Maps)

For local salons, a complete and up-to-date Google Business Profile—with photos, opening hours, and reviews—has a strong impact on local SEO results and customer engagement.

A New Dimension of Optimization: AISO in the Cosmetics Industry – SEO + AI

Traditional SEO alone is no longer enough. AISO (Artificial Intelligence Search Optimization) expands beyond classic keyword and link optimization, focusing on how content is interpreted and cited by AI-driven systems such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and AI-generated search answers.

AISO doesn’t replace SEO—it extends it:

SEO focuses on visibility in traditional search results.
AISO focuses on whether AI systems reference your brand or content in generated answers.

Why AISO matters in the cosmetics industry

More and more users start their research with AI, asking for product recommendations, reviews, or usage instructions. Being mentioned in AI responses significantly boosts brand awareness and traffic.

AISO-optimized content aligns better with natural user queries, as AI favors context, intent, structured content, and trustworthy sources.

AISO allows brands to appear even in zero-click results, where users get answers without clicking—offering a major competitive advantage.

Video – Essential Beauty Industry SEO Trend

Since more and more people are purchasing beauty products and services online without having the advantage of talking with in-store advisors or trying on samples, videos are an excellent way of demonstrating your beauty product or services online.

Nearly half of the videos online are beauty videos, which makes this SEO trend crucial for beauty industry.

Many online marketers agree that SEO results suggest that Google prioritizes search results with the video above results without it. Although Google doesn’t confirm this, video can improve your other SEO metrics like dwell time, bounce rate, and CTR so that your website ranks higher in SERPS. Additionally, video can help rank your website for competitive keywords. Videos also keep people engaged longer with your high-quality content.

Including video in your overall SEO plan, you’re more likely to achieve higher SERPs, leading to more brand awareness and more conversions.

Popular beauty videos include how-to instructions like “how to pick the right shade of lipstick “, “how to properly apply foundation”, etc. Anything that can help consumers determine why they need to purchase your product or service is a valuable topic. Consumers want to know more before buying, and video is the perfect medium for that.

Now, you need to make sure that your beauty video stands out amongst the sea of beauty videos on the internet. A strategic video SEO plan will help your video rank higher in SERPs. Here are a few SEO tactics that will help increase your video’s visibility:

Pick a keyword-loaded title – the more descriptive your title is, the more likely your video will appear when people search for those keywords.
Write a good description for the video – begin your description with a hook that catches the audience’s attention immediately. Remember that only the first 110 characters will appear before your description is truncated in search results.
Create a video transcript, which gives Google additional information on the video, increasing your chances of showing up in search results.
Choose a thumbnail that stands out – a unique thumbnail is especially important for mobile, whether on a web browser or in an app. Your video’s title and thumbnail are your primary means of communicating to potential viewers.
Use clip markup, which manually marks important segments in your video to help users quickly navigate to specific points in a video.
Include seek markup – this enables Google to automatically identify key moments and link users to those points within the video by indicating how your URL structure works.

Quality Content – The Focal Point of SEO Trends for the Beauty Industry

Even with all this descriptive content, don’t forget Google’s EAT standards. In order to rank well in Google searches, you need to foster your brand for its expertise, authority, and trustworthiness — which is exactly what E-A-T stands for.

Establishing EAT may include having beauty experts rate your products, write guest blogs, or appear in a video interview about how they used your products. Whether it be video, blog, product descriptions, or information articles, your content must establish your brand in the minds of consumers as a brand they can trust and look to for beauty advice.

Quality content can be shared across the web and that’s how you acquire backlinks from other authoritative websites to help Google to see you as an authority. For example, a dermatologist who mentions your product or service as a great treatment for acne would definitely help your brand and service rank higher in SERPs, especially if you had other high-ranking backlinks.

To sum up, this SEO trend for beauty industry includes quality content that meets Google’s EAT standards and establishes authority with beauty experts and authoritative backlinks which increase your rankings and help to influence your customers to buy your product.

With today’s educated and eco-conscious consumers, it’s always a good idea to include content that details your products’ ingredients and ecological impact. If your products are not tested on animals, you need to say that. If your packaging is recyclable or planet friendly, mention that in your detailed product descriptions.

Hypoallergenic products are also on the rise and that’s why listing the ingredients of your products is important. Also, according to a Google report, many people search for beauty products by their ingredients, such as “aloe vera.” So, listing all your products that contain aloe vera is vitally important from the SEO point of view.

Writing a blog or creating a video of specific ingredients’ benefits or how the ingredient is cultivated and used in beauty products may also be helpful to position your website.

Knowing your target audience and what they are searching for is crucial to target your content to capture that audience. Several applications to ascertain what is being searched in beauty and services include Google Trends, Buzzsumo, Moz, and SEMrush, to name just a few.

Why SEO Is More Important Than Ever in the Cosmetics Industry

The online world has become the main decision-making space for customers. Products and salons are searched for online long before any action is taken. This makes SEO an integral part of beauty industry marketing strategies.

What SEO delivers today for cosmetics brands

Stronger credibility and brand recognition – absence from organic search reduces trust.
Sustainable organic traffic at a lower long-term cost compared to paid campaigns.
Better alignment with user intent through relevant keywords and content structure.
Improved user experience (UX) via faster pages, better navigation, and higher conversion potential.

Damian Hliwa

Head of SEO

Over the several years of his career in SEO, Damian has gone through many positions. They start from internship, through team leader to head of SEO. During these years, his main specialization has been and still remains SEO and technical audits, but he is no stranger to linkbuilding or content campaigns. After hours, a filmmaker and photographer as a so-called one-man-army, a lover of good coffee brewed with all kinds of methods, Polish mountains and cycling.

SEO for Beauty Industry – What Do You Need to Know?

Cosmetics Industry – Where Is the Market Headed?