The listing Google wouldn’t unlock.
Stil i Lund had the hard part already: a full book, a 4.9-star reputation and a loyal following in a university city. What it did not have was a way to be found by anyone who wasn’t already a customer — because Google had flagged its Business Profile as a duplicate and locked it.
- Client
- Stil i Lund
- Sector
- Salon & personal services
- Market
- Lund, Sweden
- Scope
- Website, search, Google profile
A real business, an unreachable one.
The salon serves two audiences that search in two different languages. Lund locals search in Swedish. The city’s students, researchers and visitors search in English. The site spoke both languages, but only through a toggle that showed different text at the same address — so as far as a search engine was concerned, the English version did not exist.
The bigger problem sat outside the website. Google had flagged the salon’s Business Profile as a duplicate. That single flag blocked verification, blocked every edit, and left the owner unable to correct her own hours, categories, photos or description. Support answered for three weeks with the same reply — complete verification first — while the profile that needed verifying was the one Google had already locked.
Meanwhile the listing that customers actually saw carried 4.9 stars and a growing pile of reviews. The reputation was there. The route to it was not.
What we did.
Four fronts, run at the same time — because the website work was worthless while the profile stayed locked, and the profile work was worthless if the site couldn’t convert the visit.
Rebuilt the site as two real sites.
Five Swedish pages and five English pages at their own addresses — not a toggle. Each set carries its own titles, descriptions, canonical tags and hreflang, so Google can serve a Lund local and an English-speaking searcher the right page instead of guessing. Salon structured data tells Google the hours, the service area and the booking route without it having to read the layout.
Made it fast, and made it cookie-free.
WebP images with fallbacks, explicit dimensions so nothing shifts as the page loads, lazy loading below the fold, app icons and a web manifest. No analytics cookies and no third-party pixels — which means no consent banner standing between a visitor and a booking, and a GDPR position that holds without a lawyer.
Built the search foundation properly.
Search Console verified, sitemap submitted, pages discovered, zero reported problems. The measurement went in before the campaign did, so improvement could be proven rather than assumed.
Took the Google case to resolution.
When the support queue looped, we escalated through a second channel and got a Google Product Expert engaged on the record. That reframed the case from “get verified” to the real question — which account held the live listing. It was traced, ownership was resolved, and the business regained full control of the profile customers actually see.
What changed.
The owner is winning new customers daily. The profile is unlocked, the English pages are live, and the search foundation underneath both is measured rather than assumed.
What we’re doing now.
Local citations
Building the salon into the Swedish directories customers actually use, and unifying the name and address details that had fragmented across four different versions of the business name.
Review growth
Turning a 4.9-star listing into a bigger one — more reviews, answered properly, on a profile the owner now controls.
English-market visibility
Pushing the English pages into the searches Lund’s international residents and visitors actually run.
Measurement
Adding cookieless analytics so performance is visible without giving up the no-banner position.
Entrepreneurs, not consultants. The difference matters.
We take a limited number of engagements at a time. If you’re an established business owner ready to sharpen your competitive edge, let’s talk.