How to Create a Winning Franchise SEO Strategy 

Franchise SEO is one of the most unique, effective, and tricky forms of search engine optimization. 

Why’s that?

It’s because it’s both local (individual franchise locations) and national (promoting the overall brand) at the same time, meaning you need to employ both local and traditional SEO tactics. 

You also inherit the difficulties that go along with each, including some distinct challenges like dealing with duplicate content across multiple websites. 

Yet, SEO is one of the most effective marketing channels for franchises, so it’s definitely worth the hassle. 

As proof, research by BrightLocal found that 85% of consumers used the internet to find a local business within the past year. 

Also, 60% of mobile users have contacted a business directly from the search results, proving the importance of having a Google Business Profile (it’s how Google can display your business’s information straight from its results pages). 

On the brand promotion side, ranking #1 on Google is one of the best ways to spread brand awareness, and 90% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a brand that they recognize. 

So, if you want to generate more foot traffic to your physical locations while improving awareness for your overall brand, you need to invest in franchise SEO. 

The good news?

We’re about to teach you everything you need to know about franchise SEO, including how to successfully navigate all its challenges, so stay tuned! 

Understanding Franchise SEO and What Makes it Unique

Franchise SEO has two ultimate goals, which are:

1. Generate more customers for your brick-and-mortar businesses. 
2. Build brand awareness and a positive reputation for your brand nationwide.  

The first goal revolves around mastering local search, which is why franchise SEO and local SEO are similar. 

However, they are not the same. 

This is because of the second goal of franchise SEO, which is to build brand awareness nationwide (or in the specific part of the world where your franchises are located). 

For this reason, you can think of franchise SEO as a hybrid of local and traditional SEO instead of thinking of it as a specific type of local SEO. 

As a result, franchise owners should brush up on both types of SEO (local and traditional) to ensure they have the necessary skills to generate the best results. 

On the local SEO side, this means employing classic techniques like:

• Creating and optimizing a Google Business Profile listing (or claiming an existing one) 
• Uploading your franchise locations’ NAPs (name, address, and phone numbers) to relevant local business directories. 
• Researching local keywords that have the potential to generate lots of traffic. 
• Building valuable backlinks on appropriate local websites to build authority and rank higher. 

On the traditional/national SEO side, important techniques to learn include:

• Building backlinks on relevant websites. 
• Creating thought leader content that attracts shares. 
• Engaging and interacting with audiences on social media (and sharing content). 
• Uploading your main franchise website to national business directories. 

Taking this two-pronged approach will ensure franchise owners cover all the bases when advertising their businesses on search engines like Google. 

Why is franchise SEO such a crucial marketing channel?

Now that you know a bit more about franchise SEO, is it really worth investing time and money into it?

The answer is definitely yes, and here’s why:

• Better local visibility. If you want to drive more foot traffic to your franchise’s physical locations, then you’ll need to rank #1 for crucial local SEO keywords (like ‘best pizza place near me’). Research shows that 76% of consumers who search for ‘near me’ keywords will visit the business’s physical location within a day, so local keyword targeting is incredibly important! 

• Boosted brand awareness. Whenever your main brand website has flawless SEO, it builds brand recognition and trust amongst prospects. This is especially true if your brand has a lot of positive reviews on Google and other websites. More research from BrightLocal proved that people trust positive reviews as much as they do personal recommendations from friends and family members. 

As you can see, the benefits of franchise SEO far outweigh its occasional hassles, so it’s worth the investment when implemented properly. 

What Makes Franchise SEO Different From Local SEO?

The main difference between local SEO and franchise SEO is franchise businesses have multiple locations, which muddies the waters a bit. 

In particular, duplicate content is a considerable challenge for franchise SEO strategies, and it doesn’t affect standalone local businesses in the same way. 

Why is that?

It has to do with the fact that most franchises have multiple websites for each one of their locations. 

An example would be having two sandwich shop locations in the same city. Ideally, you’d want to create a website for each location to provide their unique:

• Hours of operation
• Location
• Contact information 
• Products available 

The problem is that each franchise website must be unique to avoid duplicate content. If you have two identical pages that you want to rank on Google, they’ll wind up canceling each other out. 

Duplicate content is a notorious no-no for SEO because it confuses Google’s algorithms. 

Yet, with a franchise, your websites are likely to be very similar, especially if you want to maintain consistent branding. That means product images, fonts, graphics, and logos will be the same across the websites – which can lead to duplicate content. 

Two other notable challenges of franchise SEO include:

• Maintaining brand consistency. Since there’ll be a difference between your franchise’s brand and each individual business, it can be difficult to maintain a consistent brand image across all locations. 

• Double the competition. Also, franchise businesses experience competition from A) other local businesses and B) other franchises, which can make maintaining top rankings more difficult. 

While these challenges are nothing to ignore, duplicate content is definitely the biggest obstacle for franchise owners. 

Tips to Avoid Duplicate Content

Since duplicate content is the biggest challenge for online franchise marketing, here are some tips for avoiding it while maintaining brand consistency. 

Provide branch-specific information on the site 

Including branch-specific information is a great way to distinguish between local landing pages. That will help Google (and other search engines) realize that each branch’s website is unique and not a duplicate. 

Not only that, but this information is valuable to your customers and will provide a better user experience. 

Here’s the information you should include for each branch:

• An embedded Google map of the franchise’s location 
• Location-specific target keywords in the title, tags, metadata, and body content 
• Detailed directions for how to get to each location
• Include testimonials unique to that location 
• Unique hours of operation 
• Pictures and bios of the staff 
• Local schema markup for each location 

These tactics will help Google recognize each franchise location as a separate website, which is what you want. 

Localize your content for each branch 

Next, you’ll need to create original content for each one of your franchise locations. If you’re currently sharing blog content across all locations, that’s not the best way to distinguish them from one another. 

If you have the budget for it, localizing your content strategy will yield impressive results, and it will help you avoid duplicate content. 

Instead of creating content for general topics within your niche, get as location-specific as possible. 

If you own a restaurant franchise, you could blog about the preferred cuisines in each branch’s city or neighborhood – as well as mention exclusive items only available at specific locations. 

Pro tip: Pay attention to each area’s local news, especially community events. Neighborhood festivals and holidays make excellent content topics, and you can also develop special promotions and offers for them. That way, you’ll be able to pick up a few sales and avoid duplicate content.

It’s also wise to add a personal touch here and introduce the team for each franchise location. 

This is as easy as adding photos and a brief bio for each team member, but it’s a great way to make each franchise website distinct, and it builds trust with customers. 

In that same vein, you should include high-resolution photos of each branch and nearby landmarks to create a sense of familiarity. 

Double-check the NAP for all franchise locations 

Some franchises run into duplicate content because they haven’t formatted the NAP (name, address, phone number) for each branch properly. 

That poses two problems; not only does it confuse search engines, but the wrong NAP misinforms customers and can lead to lost business. 

For instance, if one branch lists the same address as another, Google will see it as duplicate content, and your customers won’t be able to find it. 

That’s why it’s so crucial to double-check the NAP for each branch. 

Here are some NAP formatting tips:

• Assign a phone number to each location and ensure it’s consistent across all your listings (Google My Business, Yelp, etc.). You never want to use more than one phone number for a single location. 
• Permanently delete any duplicate listings you find for the sake of your SEO. 
• Use the same business name for each branch. The only difference should be the address and phone number (i.e., don’t number the locations). 
• Don’t forget to update all your listings whenever you move locations or close a branch. 
• Delete any inaccurate data you find to ensure consistency (i.e., wrong addresses or phone numbers). 

Sometimes franchise owners forget to update their business listings whenever they move locations or close one of their locations. 

That can lead to an abundance of false information about your brand online. 

The last thing you want is for potential customers to attempt to visit or call one of your locations only to be misinformed. To avoid this, set a reminder to update your listings every time one of your locations moves or closes down. 

How to Develop a Franchise SEO Strategy 

Okay, now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and start developing a comprehensive franchise SEO strategy. 

This means you’ll implement everything that you’ve learned so far about traditional and local SEO, such as:

1. Conducting localized keyword research 
2. Creating high-quality content that attracts shares and builds brand awareness 
3. Building valuable backlinks from trusted local news outlets and media sites 
4. Setting up and optimizing a Google Business Profile
5. Auditing your website for any glaring technical errors 

Each of these five steps is just as important as the last, so no skipping is allowed! 

To make things easier on you, let’s break down each step in more detail so that you know exactly what to do. 

Step #1: Conduct localized keyword research for your franchises  

Keyword research is a necessary step for any type of SEO strategy, so it’s definitely something we’ll need to do for your franchise locations. 

In particular, you need to research local SEO keywords for each branch location. 

Once you find keywords that have the right metrics, you can start creating content for them (and adding them to your existing web pages). 

How can you find trending keywords that will drive traffic?

There are lots of ways, but let’s explore two quick and easy methods. 

First, you can use our free keyword planner tool (or any other keyword research tool, but ours is free) to track down local keywords to target. 

Here’s how to use it. 

Enter a seed keyword (a broad industry keyword) that relates to your franchise. For the purposes of this tutorial, let’s say you run a pizza restaurant in St. Petersburg, Florida. 

Knowing that, let’s enter ‘pizza restaurant st. petersburg’ into the tool and hit View Keyword Research. 

After logging in with your LinkedIn profile, you can access the keyword research:

 

Here are some key metrics to look for:

• Volume refers to how many people actively search for this term on Google. Look for keywords with relatively high search volumes. 
• The difficulty score represents how hard it will be to rank for that keyword, so try to find keywords with low difficulty scores. 
• Lastly, the search trend is a graph that shows the interest in the keyword over time, so you should look for keywords that are trending upward. 

Besides our free tool, you can use Google autocomplete to find *** keywords related to your franchise. 

All you have to do is bring up Google and start typing a seed keyword related to your business:

And voila, Google spits out some keywords that it thinks we’re trying to type. 

Why is this useful?

It is because they aren’t random suggestions, they’re actual keywords from Google’s index, and the ones at the top are the most popular.

Step #2: Create high-quality content that attracts shares and generates traffic

At this point, you should have a list of relevant local keywords to target. 

The only thing you need now is content so that you can actually use them. 

SEO 101 is to base your content around the keywords you’ve researched in order to:

1. Capitalize on trending searches 
2. Solve user pain points and build thought leader status 
3. Generate more traffic to your website 

For example, if you noticed in your keyword research that people are searching for a particular type of pizza, like Chicago-style pizza, you could write a ‘how-to’ blog post called How to Bake a Picture-Perfect Chicago-Style Pizza. 

At the end of every post you create, don’t forget to add a call-to-action (CTA). 

This is a brief phrase that reminds readers of the next action you want them to take. 

It could be you want to generate leads by collecting contact information (i.e., sign up for our newsletter!) or you may want to increase revenue (i.e., don’t wait to check out our products). 

For this reason, you should designate a goal for each content release. Goals include:

• Generating leads 
• Increasing newsletter sign-ups 
• Generating more revenue 
• Getting more people to schedule consultation calls 

Also, you should try to create different types of content if you have the capacity. The most popular types of SEO content include:

1. Informative blog posts (how-tos, tutorials, and ultimate guides) 
2. Infographics 
3. Short videos (Instagram Reels, TikTok, etc.) 
4. Podcasts 
5. Lead magnets (free content that you create to generate leads like whitepapers and free eBooks) 

Lastly, your content needs to embody Google’s E-E-A-T acronym, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. 

Wherever possible, demonstrate your expertise and first-hand experience with the topic at hand. Also, link out to authoritative sources to back up your claims. These three ingredients will help you build the fourth letter of the acronym, which is trust. 

Step #3: Build local backlinks 

Next, you need to incorporate link-building into your franchise SEO strategy. You can’t go for just any backlinks, though. You’ll want to target trustworthy local backlinks to see the best results. 

That means you’ll need to work with reputable local organizations to acquire backlinks. At the same time, you don’t want to link to your competitors or get any links from them, which makes it a bit tricky. 

Some effective techniques for local link-building include:

• Target backlinks from local travel and review sites. Almost every city has a ‘visit (city)’ website that contains local businesses (and a backlink for each one). For example, here’s one for St. Petersburg, Florida. To target these links, you should A) try to generate as many positive reviews as possible (to increase the chances that they’ll link to you by themselves) or B) send an outreach email giving an overview of your business and a backlink to include. 
• Write guest posts on local sites and blogs. Guest posting is a tried and true link-building tactic, and it still yields results. Try searching Google for keywords like ‘(your industry) “guest post”’ to find opportunities. 
• Reach out to local news sites. Local news outlets are another great opportunity for backlinks. However, you should only reach out to them if something is happening at your business that’s newsworthy, or if you have an opinion to share on a trending story.  

Want to know an insider trick?

Target local schools, charities, events, and churches. These are all seen as trustworthy by Google, so their backlinks will carry a lot of influence. They’re also hyperlocal, which will work in your favor. 

For instance, you could sponsor a church food drive in exchange for a backlink. Or you could endorse a scholarship for a university and acquire a backlink that way. 

Step #4: Create a Google Business Profile and get listed in local directories 

Creating a GBP listing is a core aspect of local SEO, and it’s crucial for franchise SEO, too. 

The twist is that each franchise location needs a Google Business Profile, not just one. You’ll also need to include the proper NAP for each listing, so don’t forget to double-check them before going live. 

There are a few ways you can manage GBP access for each location. You can have each franchise owner create an account, or you can manage them all from one centralized account. The choice is yours, as both methods can work. 

Why is GBP so important?

It is because Google has a SERP feature called the Map Pack (also called Local Pack), which displays several local GBP results. This is significant because the Map Pack appears above the organic results and often snags a majority of the clicks. 

In fact, research shows that 44% of users opt for the Local 3-Pack whenever it shows up. 29% of users choose organic results, 19% go for paid ads, and 8% choose other local results. 

A GBP listing will also cause your franchise to show up on Google Maps, which is a plus. 

While GBP is the most important, it’s far from the only directory you should use. Other significant local directories include:

The more directories you can list your business in, the better, so don’t stop at GBP. 

Step #5: Don’t forget about technical SEO  

Besides the written content on your website, the technical aspects of your website need to be immaculate to avoid confusing search engines. 

This is known as technical SEO, and it involves tweaking factors like:

• Page loading speed 
• Broken links 
• Duplicate content 
• Missing sitemap 
• Lack of SSL/HTTPS 
• 404 Not Found pages
• Mobile-friendliness 

If you neglect technical SEO, it won’t matter how good your on-page and off-page SEO efforts are – you likely won’t rank at all. 

For instance, if you don’t have a responsive website design or a mobile version of your website, you’ll get thrown to the back of the line during the indexing process. 

That’s because Google uses mobile-first indexing, which means it will always look at the mobile version of your website first. The best solution is to use a responsive design, where your website’s dimensions will change depending on the user’s device. 

Concluding Thoughts: Franchise SEO 

By now, you should have a solid understanding of the core components of a franchise SEO strategy. 

It’s a special type of SEO that involves some tricky challenges, such as avoiding duplicate content and maintaining accuracy amongst all your business listings. 

Yet, with the right tactics in place, a proper SEO strategy will yield a ton of organic traffic which you can convert into visits to your brick-and-mortar stores. 

Are you a business owner who needs help formulating a franchise SEO strategy?

Then don’t wait to check out our managed SEO services at HOTH X. Our team consists of seasoned SEO gurus who are always willing to share their expertise, so feel free to book a consulting call today.