As a franchisee, you must create two businesses. One must establish a corporate identity across the nation, while the other must accrue customers in dozens, potentially hundreds, of local markets. Franchisee SEO integrates those components. Further, it builds on the foundations of brand-focused SEO and combines it with the SEO efforts of particular markets.
This article explains the components of franchisee SEO, its importance, and provides seven actionable techniques franchisees can adopt to dominate local markets.
Franchise SEO is a collection of techniques used to improve the search results for a multi-location brand on a national scale and on a local level for each specific branch. Because of its reliance on local SEO, it provides a solution to one of the primary challenges of a franchise, which is not a brand’s national attribution, but rather if that specific location will appear in the results when searched for by a user in the vicinity.
For this reason, a franchise location will need its own local SEO in addition to a cohesive brand website that has been optimized, which is noticeably different from a branch with a single location.
Franchise SEO heavily impacts the likelihood of a potential customer visiting your specific store location as opposed to your competitors. The majority of local search engine queries end with the person visiting the result within the same day.
To see how important SEO is, let’s imagine you’re a part of a franchise that operates a chain of gyms, with a location in Andheri, Mumbai. If someone in the area does a Google search for “gym in Andheri,” having properly optimized location pages and Google Business Profiles helps your branch show up in the local map pack.
Leverage the trust and recognition of your franchise brand. Once local customers discover a franchise location, they are far more likely to visit compared to an independent brand. SEO is an investment, and the return is even greater when combined with local marketing for businesses with multiple locations.
Your site is your digital storefront. Pages for your franchise locations must present a uniform appearance just like your locations do. If a page looks different regarding layout or in the logos, colors, or any branding, online visitors will think they’ve been redirected to a page that is outdated or not official, and they will leave.
Visitors leaving a page quickly is a negative signal for search engines because that indicates the page is not relevant to what the visitors are looking for. Consistency in design will prompt customers to see that a location of your franchise is the official store.
Your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) should be uniform for your franchise across all platforms and listing sites from your business website, Google Business Profiles, social media pages, and listing directories. Examples of listing directories include Justdial, Sulekha, and IndiaMART.
Minor inconsistencies for your NAP, such as “Road” versus “Rd” and phone number formats, can rank your business lower on search engines and impact your local listing visibility. Most franchises resort to utilizing a local listing management tool or a local SEO agency to ensure that their NAPs are uniform and accurate across all local business listings.
Creating location-specific keywords for each branch is essential. For example, if you have a coaching center chain with a branch in Indore, the Indore page should include a phrase such as “JEE coaching classes in Indore” in place of a brand-wide term.
This page will appear in search results if someone types in something super specific to Indore. It is better for your page to appear in a search result for Indore coaching classes than have a page for a different location or for your Indore branch to have no page at all.
Creating location-specific keywords for each branch is essential. For example, if you have a coaching center chain with a branch in Indore, the Indore page should include a phrase such as “JEE coaching classes in Indore” in place of a brand-wide term.
This page will appear in search results if someone types in something super specific to Indore. It is better for your page to appear in a search result for Indore coaching classes than have a page for a different location or for your Indore branch to have no page at all.
Creating content that is useful can help improve your credibility for potential customers and for search engines. Since this is a useful strategy for franchises, it is a great marketing tactic for your dance studio chain that has a branch in Jaipur. Hard work and dedication help you establish useful pages that can help you attract potential customers, even for those who don’t know that your dance studio exists.
A content strategy, such as this, not only inspires potential customers to take action and supports your credibility, but it also strengthens your likelihood of ranking in search results for your content!
Structured data, or schema markup, is a code option to describe business hours, reviews, ratings, prices, and services. Search engines use this code to comprehend page content. When built correctly, structured data enhances ordinary blue hyperlinks by adding colorful details like star ratings and business hours. It also helps distinguish your data from competitors.
For a business like a franchise, which has multiple pages that are almost identical, structured data differentiates your pages even further in search results.
Reviews that customers post online are very similar to recommendations made in person. Because of that, generating reviews is an effective way to gain customers.
Encouraging customers to leave reviews doesn’t have to be difficult. Computers are able to send links to customers in so many ways, including via receipts, and emails and SMS messages. For reviews to be seen, they need to be written on the Google Business Profile for that location, so the reviews of a different branch will not be seen by customers of the branch you are in.
While the core tactics in both local SEO and franchise SEO are the same, local SEO typically requires the application of those tactics within one location, whereas franchise SEO requires scaling the same techniques many times over while ensuring consistency across the brand in NAP and content. This is a large coordination effort when compared to local business optimization.
You should consider leads and quotes more than traffic and rankings as they have more of an effect on your sales funnel.
You don’t necessarily need a blog. But if you post new content and keep it updated, even a couple of pages, that will help you visibility. It doesn’t matter if you have a small company or a huge one.
