Doing SEO for franchises is similar to doing SEO for a single location business, but it requires a few additional considerations. The simplest way to do franchise SEO is to use one website and create an area/city specific local landing page for each location. Beyond that, it is possible to build a page under each location’s subdirectory. Each of these pages should also have its own citations, social profiles, and link building campaigns attached to them.
Over the past few months, we’ve had an opportunity to look at three different franchises that came to us for help and dig into the various strategies that deal with franchise SEO. Many franchises like to control the marketing in terms of offers, promos, graphics, web design and other things, but allow the franchisee to customize certain things like pricing in their specific territory.
The Pros:
- The franchise website will probably have a large amount of authority so Google will rank the pages more easily and you can use duplicate content more freely.
- There is only one asset to manage.
- The branding is simpler and more uniform.
One thing we know for sure is that your site’s layout and use of certain design “codes” count as SEO ranking factors. Failing to design your site according to these user preferences and SEO best practices can spell trouble for your franchise website visibility:
- Unique, descriptive title tag: Each page should have a clear, informative title tag that tells Google crawlers and readers what you’re offering.
- Way finding headings tags: Headings tags help readers skim through your page to find the answers they need, and these context indicators also help Google identify quality, relevant content.
- Helpful Meta tags: Meta titles and descriptions don’t really interest Google crawl-bots, but they’re still vital to your click-through ratings. These tell your readers at a glance whether or not your page is right for them.
- High-speed load-ups: Though this has more to do with hosting than design, it’s still worth a mention. Cleaning up your design can trim vital seconds off of your load-up, which can be all the difference for your franchise websites SEO.