how to build your franchise with effective seo strategies(1)

8/11/2016 How to Build Your Franchise With Effective SEO Strategies

https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-build-your-franchise-with-effective-seo-strategies/ 1/6

John Connolly August 03, 2016

How to Build Your Franchise With Effective SEO Strategies

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SEO is cheap in terms of costs-per-lead when compared to offline marketing and the pay-per-click options. But

operating SEO for a franchise can be tricky because you’re dealing with so many moving parts – domains versus

sub-domains, local versus corporate landing pages, national versus regional visions, mobile users – it’s one of the

most challenging activities to orchestrate across the national to local networks.

Franchisors: Support Franchisees with SEO Campaigns

Conventional wisdom is that large franchisors should never leave the SEO to the smaller franchisees, opting

instead to have one main office working with the smaller offices. Make sure, too, that you’re optimized for your

site. When doing SEO for your franchise website, keep these things in mind:

Set benchmarks and utilize keyword positioning reports at the onset.

Make sure your page is mobile-optimized as Mobile and Local are related.

Apply best practice SEO mark-ups on each location landing page (very important step that is often

overlooked).

Things won’t happen overnight: it can take up to 90 days to see impactful results, but will pay off long-term

when used properly.

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There are several ways to create good links like article marketing, video SEO, social bookmarking and blog

posting

Choose optimal keywords and make sure you’re putting relevant geo-local content in each unique location

page. Make sure it ties to your core domain to leverage your franchise’s authority. You can use tools like

SEMrush to help you find the right keywords.

This is really important: simplify your SEO strategy for the masses. Some SEO’s recommend subdirectories vs

subdomains, but do what’s best for your business and figure out your SEO needs based on that.

“Franchises often have huge challenges when it comes to SEO, but in a way they are no different than non-

franchise multi-location brands, and often SEO is no different than any other marketing channel the franchise is

trying to provide to franchisees,” says Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide. “It’s a problem of simple

communication. The franchise and franchisee often [don't] have a good understanding of SEO.”

Shotland added that what often happens is a situation where a franchisee that has their own SEO vendor tries to

push the vendor onto other franchisees, creating confusion at the top as well as other strange things.

“The most important thing to nail down in the beginning is the communication process and of course how

you’re going to report on progress. Inevitably there are going to be issues that pop up from different

franchisees and having a system set up to prioritize, triage and communicate back to the main office is critical.”

Franchise Social Media and SEO

Having one social media page for the entire company is the best. Post short, relevant information and include

carefully worded subliminal advertising.

When do you post things? When something interesting happens, not just for the sake of posting. The usual rule

of thumb of once or twice a week is good to follow.

Facebook can provide plenty of data of when your customers are online, time of day and the day of week. Use

this information to your advantage. Increase your posts’ power by split testing to different audiences when your

post is a success in an organic reach. This is an opportunity to build relationships with your customers, talk about

your product which will all help to increase the activity on your site – and it will also have a tremendous effect on

your search engine rankings.

Franchisors find Facebook as the most effective social media tool and at times ignore all the other social

media channels like LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest.

Twitter can be a great place to post updates on new locations, products and services.

LinkedIn is a power platform to build a large pool of qualified prospects and develop a soft sell strategy to

draw potential franchisees in requiring and finding more information about your business.

Pinterest helps create a positive buzz around your brand share your business values and build a community

around your name.

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Think of social networks like TV channels – turn your channels on and specify the marketing goals for each of

them according to what they’re best suited for.

“Fresh content is always a winner for SEO, but not always required,” Shotland said. “Links from other sites can go

a long way towards making up for a lack of content strategy. But it’s always best when the two go hand-in-hand.

The type of content, well, that’s totally dependent on the business and the SEO strategy.”

Having quality content is more important than ever since Google updated its Panda 4.2 algorithm. This update

prevents websites with poor quality content from moving up in Google’s top search results. A good rule of

thumb for franchises to avoid being labeled as having poor quality content is to create tags on your website that

include titles, meta descriptions and optimization tags. Shotland recommends creating an editorial calendar that

maps these kinds of things out based on relevance, opportunity and available resources.

“There’s no need to add content if you don’t have a lot to say, but for others there may be a good reason – which

are most likely photos and videos they can share with the public,” Shotland added.

Franchise SEO is No Mystery

The key to getting your franchise ranked by the search engines is all about relevancy. Remember, Google looks

at ‘themes’ of content. If you wrote an informative article about automobiles, it would likely talk just as much

about tires and engines. Google know this, which is why it forms themes.

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Content Marketing

John Connolly

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The goal with SEO is to generate leads and sales, which ultimately grow into business. Part of that goal is to

make certain your website is ranked high enough so it’s seen by the best possible audience and potential

clientele. SEO for franchises works best when all strategies, locations and management work in unison for the

greater good of the company.

Do you have a success story about SEO for franchises? What worked for you? Let us know in the comments

below.

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