Like all local businesses, franchises need local SEO to rank in search engines and attract new potential customers.
This includes SEO best practices such as optimizing the website of each franchise location and creating business listings in national and local directories.
However, franchise SEO differs from regular local SEO in several ways.
Read on to learn more about how to rank franchises in Google and other search engines.
The Importance of Franchise SEO
Like all local businesses, franchisees can use SEO to get the attention of potential customers.
from Create a Google Business Profile Listing arrive write blog posts Using the right franchise SEO strategy for relevant keywords will help you increase brand awareness and boost sales.
Organic traffic from search ranking increases is free.
As long as you stay ranked, you can drive leads and sales for almost free.
The Unique Challenges of Franchise SEO
Franchisees looking to build an online presence face a variety of unique challenges.
One of the biggest challenges you will face is Avoid duplicate content.
While each of your locations has its own website, each website should look and theme similar to each other.
Avoiding duplicate content is even more difficult when you’re a business owner with multiple identical businesses in different locations.
Unfortunately, Duplicate content won’t help your rankingseven if you have two sites with duplicate content.
Another challenge is determining the right SEO strategy for your franchise website.
Do you optimize content for topics relevant to each business location or region, or do you employ a national strategy?
It is also important to provide the correct contact details and addresses for each franchise business.
Franchise SEO: 7 Steps to Boost Your Rankings
Regardless of the products you sell and the niche you’re in, follow these steps to rank for your targeted search queries and drive organic traffic.
1. Use Consistent Branding
The first step is to use consistent branding across all personal websites.
The whole purpose of a franchise chain is to Provide the same user experience in each of your physical locations.
Your online presence should be no different.
People visiting the different branches of your franchise will expect a similar experience at each branch.
Likewise, when they visit each franchise location’s website, they’ll expect a similar layout and color theme.
It’s all about user experience.
If people expect your site to look one way, and they land on a page with a completely different design, they may exit your page thinking they landed on the wrong page.
2. Build localization into each individual franchise website
When building a website for your franchise, no matter the industry, you should have certain essentials in place.
These not only help with SEO and usability, but also provide value for what people want from a website today:
- Optimize Your Affiliate Page Search for the most localized terms and include them in title tags and content).
- Embedded Google Maps Franchise location.
- business hours.
- Your management image, the work performed, before and after. Any original content at that location.
- Localized recommendation From that franchise location.
- route details, where are you. If you are a service sector business, what sectors do you cover.
- Structured local business markup.
3. Use the correct NAP
nap rep Name, address and phone numberand using the correct format is critical for local SEO.
When running a multi-site SEO campaign, you must use the correct NAP for each site.
Also, the NAP format should be the same on each website.
If you use parentheses as an area code for a franchiser number, use it as the phone number posted on all franchisee websites.
Using a per-location NAP is critical compared to a corporate NAP.
You can include company 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 of your sites.
Use the Keyword Tool to find competitive keywords that locals can find you.
Targeting national search terms on every website might not be the best idea.
You might rank for them, but the people landing on your page might live far from where individual franchisees are.
The exception is if you have a national website that automatically redirects people to the nearest franchise location.
5. Decide on a Content Marketing Strategy
This part is critical.
Content is a key aspect of any successful digital marketing campaign.
For franchises, however, it can get tricky
- Should you blog about general topics Related to your niche or product?
- or, Should you blog about a topic related to a specific location Or the area of each franchise?
As a general rule, the latter is preferred.
Create blog posts with nearby residents in mind.
There are two types of blog posts for local.
The first type discusses general local news and events.
This type of blog post can be useful, but only if you have a broad target audience or sell a product that is widely available.
For example, if you own a bagel restaurant franchise in multiple cities, you could blog about local holidays and then offer a limited-time promotion at the end of the post.
However, as a general rule, it is best to Blog about your niche But there are local tendencies.
For example, if you have a roofing franchise, you can talk about how different weather patterns in a particular city can cause your readers to have damaged roofs and need repairs.
Or, if you have a pest control business, you can talk about the common pests and rodents people deal with the most in that city (or different parts of the city).
If you have a hair salon franchise, you can discuss how weather patterns affect people’s hair and what to do with it, or you can discuss popular local hairstyles.
If you own a well-known national brand, you don’t need to write locally-targeted content.
Most people already know something about your brand.
They may see you as an authority in your industry and seek general information from you.
Examples of such companies include Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, etc.
Of course, you may not own that well-known business.
However, the point remains: A business with such a high profile can position itself as an authority on coffee, doughnuts, hamburgers, and more.
6. Listing on Google Business Profile and other platforms
You’ll also need to create a Google business profile list for all of your individual businesses.
Each location should have its own Google Business Profile listing.
However, there are several possible ways to manage access and control.
You can have each franchise owner create their listings, depending on how responsible they are for marketing.
Alternatively, you can set up each list under your own Google account (you can use one account for all your lists).
You can then add franchise owners as users to manage and control their listings.
Either way, having a GMB profile that links to each franchise website is critical for local SEO.
When people search for local businesses on Google, websites aren’t the only results that come up.
In addition to the website, Google also provides some local GMB profiles at the top of the search results.
These profiles appear alongside ratings and other engaging data, and the lucky businesses that appear in the first few GMB profiles tend to get the most clicks.
Likewise, a local GMB profile allows you to appear on Google Maps. Many local searchers use Google Maps to find businesses instead of searching on Google itself.
Google will use data such as how close each company is to the searcher to determine which businesses will appear first.
If you own multiple franchises within a city, there’s a good chance you’ll show up on any given search.
However, Create a Google Business Profile Just a start.
Plus, create profiles on other popular directories including Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Apple Maps.
While these are national directories, they are optimized for and appear in local searches.
In addition to large platforms like Google Business Profile, you should also build listings in as many local directories as possible.
Getting citations and links from local directories will do wonders for your search engine rankings – the more local citations you can build, the better.
Chartered SEO services can take care of this for you and submit your data to multiple directories at once.
Every franchise should get a listing from a directory that focuses on its city or region.
Nor should the local directory be your only source of citations.
Look for national directories, but deal with your specific niche.
For example, if your franchise offers home repair or construction services, list it in a directory such as HomeAdvisor.
For GMB listings and local citations, it is critical to include correct contact data.
Use the same NAP format you use on the franchise website.
Also, optimize each listing or citation by ensuring the correct hours of operation and uploading images where allowed.
Google Business Profile also allows you to publish post updates, which you should do from time to time to show that you are active.
There are different post types on GMB.
Some can include general updates, while others can announce discounts or promotions, new product launches, changes to business hours, or Covid-19 updates.
you should include your Top Target Keywords In your GMB profile description and in your post updates.
Each platform and directory will have different requirements.
But, in general, try to add as much relevant information as possible, upload as many images as possible, and target as many relevant keywords as possible.
Customers are encouraged to leave reviews after creating listings on GMB, Yelp, and other directories.
Profiles with many positive reviews tend to rank better.
Many platforms prohibit rewarded reviews, so you can’t offer customers discounts or giveaways in exchange for reviews.
However, you can encourage reviews by posting stickers or posters at each franchise location, reminding customers to find you on Google, Facebook, Yelp, and more, and share their feedback and reviews.
A great trick is to create QR codes that take users to your official profile on Google or Yelp, and put those QR codes on your menus, storefronts, receipts, and other materials.
7. Build Local Backlinks
Local backlinks are also important for local rankings.
Build local backlinks Because franchising can be complicated.
On the one hand, you need to find local businesses to work with in each area in which you operate.
On the other hand, you don’t want to get links from or to your competitors.
Try partnering with local organizations, schools, charities and events.
For example, you could sponsor a lunch day at a local school in exchange for announcing the sponsorship and linking to your blog post.
If you own a food-based franchise, you can start an initiative to work with local charities to provide food to the homeless.
final thoughts
In many ways, the same SEO practices and strategies that apply to most local businesses apply to franchises.
However, it’s important to understand the challenges franchising faces and develop a roadmap and list of guidelines that all various locations should follow.
More resources:
Featured image: Monster Ztudio/Shutterstock
