Wednesday, March 2, 2016
National SEO Campaign Tips for Franchises
Franchise SEO Services
Search Engine Optimization for Franchises
What is it?Franchise SEO is the process of improving the visibility of the organic search rankings of a franchise businesses website. The strategies used can differ depending on if you want to promote the corporate brand, your franchise locations, or even franchise development.
Why Start?Every Franchise wants their Franchisee to be the leader in their local market. With our Franchise search engine optimization services we get your locations ranking at the top of the search engines so that you can get more paying customers.
1. A Clear Site Structure & Brand Guidelines
Franchisors should set clear rules and guidelines to avoid franchisees creating competing domains and “rogue” websites. Establishing authority is important for SEO, so it is best to discourage franchisees from creating new domains that are outside the brand. Alternatively, franchisors should create subdomains inside their own site structure and allow franchisees to create unique pages with localized content and information to drive traffic from local searchers. Having your site structured in this manner will also allow your brand site to gain more authority, as well as create a consistent, quality brand message and user experience.
2. Quality, Localized Content
Fresh, relevant content is an important part of every SEO strategy. Franchises should focus on delivering unique, localized content for your sub domain pages and avoid duplicating content. You can include content unique to each franchise, such as the local customer experience, time in business, and team bios. Avoid taking short cuts and using boiler plate content for each local page.
It’s also important to remember to use localized images as well. This can create a better user experience and help customers better connect and identify with your brand. For example, for a roofing franchise, it is important to use pictures of home that reflects the region in the local pages rather than stock photos or general images. A home in New York City looks very different than a home in Albuquerque. Let your local franchisees shine by contributing high quality images unique to their location.
Also, when referring to your location, be specific with neighborhood and location names. This can help users better find you and recognize your proximity to their location. This is especially important in large cities and metro areas. For example, Los Angeles has over 272 officially recognized city, neighborhood, and place names , and that doesn’t include all the unofficial names searchers use daily. Most people in LA would not search for “day spa Los Angeles”, they would use a more specific name to describe their location, such as “day spa Riverside California”.
3. Consistent NAP Information
Franchises can earn authority for their websites by ensuring that their NAP (name, address and phone number) is accurate and consistent across the web.
It is important to ensure the listings for all locations are consistent across the top reputation, directory, and industry websites such as Yelp, Google My Business, Citysearch and more. Don’t forget about top industry websites that apply to your business, such as Angie’s List & Houzz for home improvement franchises. If your information is accurate on these authoritative websites, customers are more likely to find you, contact you, and leave reviews that will interest future prospects. Make sure your business information also the same on your website – down to the spelling and punctuation – in order to improve the SEO quality of your website.
Sometimes, correcting information across these websites for a lot of locations can be a daunting task, but it is well worth the effort. When correcting inaccurate information, it helps to find and update the source of the incorrect info to keep it from seeping out to other listings in the future. If you don’t fix the source, data aggregators can continue spreading the wrong information, leading to more clean up.
Localized Content: the national site has links pointing to it from all over the country, and it has geo related content from all over the country. For example, a single page for a San Diego location, a page for the Houston locations etc. None of this sends a strong local signal for the dozens, if not hundreds of different search terms Google and the other search engines receive daily for local queries in a particular metro area. Compare this to a regional website, for example, that is solely focused on franchise sites in Los Angeles. All the pages on this site have Los Angeles all over them, many of the links pointing to the domain are locally based, everything is sending a signal that the site is highly relevant for Los Angeles. But not only is beneficial to the search engines, it’s also beneficial to the end user, your customer.
A landing page is one single web page designed around one or more keywords. While you wouldn’t want to target general keywords for your business, you almost always benefit by targeting specific keywords your customers use to find you. For example, suppose a consumer was looking for a custom home builder in Vancouver, BC. If your franchise were in that category, then you’d want to have a web page specifically designed around the phrase, “custom home builder in Vancouver” and other similar searches. Below is an example of a microsite we built for AlairHomes.com and one of their custom home builders whose franchise is located in Lake Elsinore, CA.
Search Engine Optimization Strategies
Localize With Purpose: Gone are the days when localization meant simply changing out the city and state in the body copy or a headline and keeping all other content as is. For starters, localization today should focus not just on a city or geographical region but a neighborhood or smaller locale. The pendulum is shifting back to the more personal and more local.
All localized sites and landing pages, even if they share a domain, should find ways to create H1s, H2s and URLs unique to their specific business location. In addition, the inclusion of name, address and phone number (NAP) information and store hours provides immediate differentiators.
On those landing pages, social sharing buttons should be prominently placed with links to the social accounts for the specific location.
Despite the oft-cited claim that Pigeon was created to help small businesses, the truth is that its focus is on local businesses, which are not always small. An individual franchise operation may be a small business, but the larger franchisor company is quite often a rather influential national brand. Therefore, Pigeon most definitely applies to franchise operations.
Get the Right Strategy in Place.
An SEO strategy for a franchise typically has two tiers; Local and National. You have to tell the whole story to the engines of what the Franchise group is trying to accomplish. The National strategy for the brand is important as it must help to find potential Franchisee owners and promote the brand and its services nationally. The local piece is done very strategically, by store, with geo targeted keywords that are relevant and have a good amount of search volume. The optimization across each store’s sub pages within the main site, and a strong backlink strategy will achieve search visibility across all engines on a local level, thereby driving more site traffic and sales.
The Takeaway for Franchise Owners Thinking about SEO
Asking these questions doesn't always come to mind right away, but these are crucial if you own a franchise. Franchises are constantly growing and by nature have a lot of people working higher positions, so the managers working with you are constantly changing. This makes it even more important for a franchise to have an SEO strategy in place that caters to the franchise model.
It's also worth mentioning that these are not the only questions you need to ask if you own a franchise. All of the other typical SEO advice such as getting involved with local SEO and following analytics still applies.