Franchises, like all local businesses, need to use local SEO to rank in search engines and reach new potential customers.
This includes SEO best practices such as website optimization for individual franchise locations and creating business listings in national and regional directories.
However, franchise SEO differs from regular local SEO in a few ways.
Read on for more information on how to rank your franchise on Google and other search engines.
Importance of Franchise SEO
Like all local businesses, franchises can use search engine optimization to get potential customers’ attention.
From creating a Google Business Profile listing to writing blog posts that target relevant keywords, using the right franchise SEO strategy can help increase brand awareness and sales.
Organic traffic from higher search rankings is free.
As long as you maintain your rankings, you can grow leads and sales at very little cost.
Franchise SEO specific challenges
Franchise owners who want to build an online presence face a number of unique challenges.
One of the biggest challenges you face is avoiding content duplication.
Each location has a website, but the look and theme of each website should be similar to each other.
For business owners who own multiple copies of the same business in different locations, it’s difficult to avoid duplicate content.
Unfortunately, duplicate content doesn’t help your rankings, even if you own both sites with duplicate content.
Another challenge is determining the right SEO strategy for your franchise website.
Are you optimizing the content for each office or area, or are you following a national strategy?
It is also important to provide correct contact details and addresses for each franchise business.
Franchise SEO: 7 Steps to Boost Your Rankings
No matter what product or niche you sell, follow these steps to rank for targeted search queries and drive organic traffic.
1. Use consistent branding
The first step is to use consistent branding across individual websites.
The overall purpose of the franchise chain is to provide the same user experience at each physical location.
Your online presence is no exception.
People who have visited various branches of the franchise expect similar experiences at each one.
Similarly, when you visit each franchise’s store website, you’d expect similar layouts and color themes.
This is all about user experience.
If people expect your website to look one way and land on a webpage with a completely different design, they may leave your page thinking they landed on the wrong page.
2. Incorporate locality into individual franchise websites
Regardless of your industry, there are elements you need when building a franchise website.
Not only do they help with SEO and usability, they also provide value for what people want from their website today.
- Optimize your franchisee page Use most search localized terms and include them in your title tag and content).
- Embedded Google Map franchise location.
- business hours.
- Management image, before and after the work to be performed. The original one in its place.
- localized testimony From that franchise location.
- Directions, where are you?If you are a service area operator, what area do you cover?
- Structured local business markup.
3. Use good NAPs
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number and using the correct format is important for local SEO.
If you run an SEO campaign in multiple locations, you’ll need to use the correct NAP for each location.
Additionally, NAPs must be in the same format on each website.
If you use brackets for one franchise’s area code, use brackets for phone numbers on all franchise websites.
It is important to use the local NAP and not the corporate NAP.
You can include your company’s contact details on a separate page and place a “Company” option in the footer menu.
4. Use location-based keywords
Use location-specific keywords on each website.
Use the Keyword Tool to find competitive keywords that allow locals to find you.
Targeting national search terms on each website may not be the best approach.
You may rank for them, but the people who end up on your page may live far away from where the individual franchisee is.
The exception is if you have a national website that automatically redirects people to the nearest franchise location.
5. Determine your content marketing strategy
This part is important.
Content is a key aspect of a successful digital marketing campaign.
However, if you are a franchise, be careful
- Should I blog about general topics? Is it related to your niche or product?
- or, Should I blog about a topic related to a specific place? Or territory for each franchise?
As a general rule, it’s best to do the latter.
Create blog posts with nearby residents in mind.
There are two types of locally targeted blog posts.
The first type covers general local news and events.
This type of blog post can be useful, but only if you have a broad audience or sell a product that can be used by a wide audience.
For example, if you run a franchise of bagel restaurants in several cities, you can blog about your local holiday and offer a limited-time promotion at the end of your post.
However, as a general rule, it’s best to blog about your niche, but tend to be local.
As an example, if you have a roofing franchise, you can talk about how different weather patterns in a particular city can damage your readers’ roofs and require repairs.
Or, if you’re in the pest control business, you can talk about the common pests and rodents that people in that city (or different areas of the city) deal with the most.
If you have a hair salon franchise, you can talk about how weather patterns affect people’s hair and what to do about it, or discuss trends and popular local hairstyles. .
If you own a well-known national brand, you don’t need to write locally targeted content.
Most people already have some exposure to your brand.
They may see you as an authority in the industry and turn to you for general information.
Examples of such companies include Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts.
Of course, chances are you don’t own a business that’s all that famous.
But the key points are: A business with that level of visibility can establish itself as an authority on coffee, donuts, burgers, and more.
6. Be featured on Google Business Profiles and other platforms
You’ll also need to create Google Business Profile listings for all your individual businesses.
Each location should have its own Google Business Profile listing.
However, there are several ways to manage access and control.
Franchise owners can create their own listings depending on their marketing responsibilities.
Alternatively, you can set up each listing with your own Google account (you can use one account for all your listings).
You can then add franchise owners as users to manage and control your listings.
Either way, having a GMB profile that links to each franchise’s website is important for local SEO.
Websites aren’t the only results you see when you search for local businesses on Google.
In addition to websites, Google shows some local GMB profiles at the top of search results.
These profiles are displayed with ratings and other attractive data. The lucky businesses that appear in the first few GMB profiles tend to get the most clicks.
Similarly, with a local GMB profile, you can show up on Google Maps. Many local searchers use Google Maps to find businesses instead of searching on Google itself.
Google uses data such as the distance from the searcher to each company to determine which companies appear first.
If you have multiple franchises in your city, you’re more likely to show up in any search.
However, creating a Google Business Profile is just the beginning.
Also create profiles in other popular directories like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Apple Maps, etc.
These are national directories, but appear optimized for local searches.
In addition to large platforms like Google Business Profiles, you should create listings in as many local directories as possible.
Getting citations and links from local directories can do wonders for your search engine rankings. The more local citations you can create, the better your results.
Franchise SEO services can take care of this and send data to multiple directories at once.
Each franchise must obtain a listing from a directory focused on that city or region.
A local directory should not be the only source of citations.
Look for national directories, but they cover specific niches.
For example, if your franchise offers home repair or construction services, list them on a directory like HomeAdvisor.
Including correct contact data is important for both GMB listings and local quotes.
Use the same NAP format that you use on your franchise website.
Additionally, we optimize each listing or quote by ensuring the store hours are correct and uploading images where allowed.
You can also publish post updates on your Google Business Profile. This should be done from time to time to indicate that it is active.
Various post types are available in GMB.
Some include general updates, others announce discounts and promotions, new product launches, changes to business hours, and Covid-19 updates.
You should include your top target keywords not only in your post updates, but also in your GMB profile description.
Each platform and directory has different requirements.
In general, though, try to add as much relevant information as possible, upload as many images as possible, and target as many relevant keywords as possible.
Once you have your listings on GMB, Yelp, and other directories, encourage customers to leave reviews.
Profiles with more positive reviews tend to rank higher.
Many platforms prohibit incentivized reviews, so you can’t offer discounts or giveaways to customers in exchange for reviews.
However, you can put up stickers and posters at each franchise location to encourage reviews and encourage customers to search on Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc. to share their feedback and comments.
Creating QR codes that direct users to your official Google or Yelp profile and placing those QR codes on menus, storefronts, receipts, and other materials is a great hack.
7. Build Local Backlinks
Local backlinks are also important for local rankings.
Building local backlinks as a franchise can be complicated.
On the one hand, you need to find local businesses to work with within each region in which you operate.
On the other hand, we don’t want to get links from or link to our competitors.
Cooperate with local organizations, schools, charities and events.
For example, you may be able to announce your sponsorship and sponsor a lunch day at your local school in exchange for a blog post that links to you.
If you own a food-based franchise, you may be able to set up initiatives in partnership with local charities to feed the homeless.
final thoughts
In many ways, the same SEO practices and strategies that apply to most local businesses also apply to franchises.
However, it is important to understand the challenges franchises face and develop a roadmap and list of guidelines that all individual stores should adhere to.
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