10 SEO Strategies for Franchises In 2023

10 SEO Strategies for Franchises In 2023: Franchises and local businesses rely on internet marketing and local SEO to rank in search engines and attract new clients.

But how can you stand out in a market with over 750,000 franchises?

While broad SEO knowledge is necessary for digital marketing, SEO for franchisees differs from conventional SEO strategies. Understanding such distinctions is critical for distinguishing oneself from the competition and reaching out to potential clients. 

What is the Difference between Franchise and Regular SEO?

Franchises have the advantage of having several locations, but this may make local SEO difficult. When there are many pages for the same business on different sites, it is critical to understand how to optimize each location individually. 

Daily SEO focuses on keywords and content specific to a single website or firm. Franchise SEO on the other hand is a subset of local SEO that focuses on optimizing each franchise location. This involves ensuring that each site contains the necessary information, such as address and contact information, and that it is properly structured.

Regular SEO, for example, may concentrate on the finest couch brand. This will encompass worldwide brands offered in numerous countries, but the sites that want to rank are those that want to be seen as experts on the subject.

Franchise SEO will concentrate on specific locations that provide services or goods relevant to the search. For example, a person may look for the best ‘couch’ near me. The outcomes are significantly different from those described above.

Franchise SEO also takes into account potential clients’ local search inquiries. This implies you should prioritize local keywords and phrases like “franchise near me” or “best franchise in (place).”

Use These 10 SEO Strategies for Your Business

Now that we’ve established the distinctions between franchise and general SEO. Let’s take a look at 10 SEO methods that will help franchisees prosper in 2023 and beyond.

1. Determine the Most Important Keywords for Your Business

The first stage in developing SEO Strategies is to identify and investigate the most significant keywords associated with your franchise. You should concentrate on local keywords and terms connected to distinguish you from the competition. We don’t expect you to become an expert in keyword research overnight. However, there are several tools available to assist you in identifying and researching the best keywords for your organization.

Ubersuggest provides insight into successful techniques for others in your industry so that you may adopt, adapt, and gain an advantage. As you can see in the sample below, the term ‘best mattresses near me’ is quite competitive. From there, you may opt to select relevant keywords that don’t have as great of a problem to rank for or are geographically related like ‘top couches near New York.

2. Determine the geographical areas where your company is most successful.

When you’ve determined the most crucial keywords for your franchise, it’s time to concentrate on local SEO. This entails determining which geographic areas are most likely to bring in business and optimizing for those specific areas.

Google Ads is an excellent tool for this purpose. You can use its location targeting feature to determine where your ads perform best and focus on optimizing for those areas. You can also utilize the location targeting function to determine which geographic locations have the greatest number of potential clients and target them with your SEO efforts.

3. Make Your Keywords More Local

It is critical to localize your keywords when optimizing for local SEO. For example, if you’re looking for “best couches near me,” You could also concentrate on localizing the word with phrases such as “best couch in (city)” or “best couch in (area).”

Localizing your keywords guarantees that you are targeting the correct clients in the correct locations. It also helps to ensure that your website ranks for local searches; it will increase your exposure and allow you to reach out to potential consumers.

If you have many locations localizing your keywords is vital to target clients in each area.

4. Make Your Website Locale

Local SEO optimization necessitates the localization of your website. This involves ensuring that each franchise location has its page with the address, contact information, and other pertinent information prominently displayed.

You should also provide a map of the area with the location of each franchise noted. Not only will this make your website more search engine friendly, but it will also assist clients in locating the nearest franchise store.

It is common for a franchise to have many domains. In this scenario, you should connect all of the domains to assist search engines to recognize that they are linked.

5. Improve Your Individual Businesses’ Google Business Profiles and Yelp Reviews

Each franchise must have an up-to-date Google Business Profile and Yelp page for local SEO success. This guarantees that potential clients may readily locate information about your franchise locations.

You get the most out of local SEO, be sure to include correct contact information, company hours, photographs, product specifications, and other important information on these sites. It’s also critical to maintaining this information up to date if business hours change due to holidays or vacations.

6. Ensure Consistency in Your Brand

Consistency is the key to good local SEO. This includes ensuring that your brand messaging, logo, and other graphics are consistent across all channels, such as your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp page, and social media profiles.

Consider one of the most well-known franchises, McDonald’s. Even without a word or context, the company’s golden arches are instantly recognizable worldwide. That is the kind of brand consistency you should aim for.

This will assist search engines in determining that you are a reputable firm. It will provide clients with a better overall experience when looking for franchise locations. Regardless of the number of sites, your franchise should have a consistent brand appearance and voice so that people can quickly identify it.

7. Enable NAP Consistency

 NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) consistency is critical for local SEO performance. Search engines are continuously looking for NAP consistency across all platforms to assess the authenticity of a firm.

In 2021, 81% of customers used Google to look for information on local companies.

To maximum exposure, ensure that your franchise name, address, and phone number are correct and consistent across all platforms. Incorrect information makes it harder for potential clients to locate you and discourages them from using your services.

8. Improve E-A-T on Local Pages

E-A-T is an acronym for “Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness” and it is critical for local SEO performance.

You should add a range of material on your franchise’s local sites to improve E-A-T, such as customer reviews, product descriptions, contact information, FAQs, and more. This will aid in the development of trust and credibility with search engines and clients.

You should also consider adding additional content connected to the franchise, like blog entries, podcasts, or videos, to provide potential consumers with more information about your services. If you own a fitness studio, you may write blog entries about fitness and health-related issues to build your credibility as an expert in the sector.

EAT is crucial for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) websites. This term refers to websites that have the potential to affect someone’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. Franchises, such as spas and gyms, frequently fall into one of these groups. As a result, it’s even more crucial to use EAT throughout your website to reassure search engines that you’re producing high-quality material.

9. Create an Excellent Content Strategy

Content creation is critical for SEO Strategies. Create a content plan focusing on local and national franchise themes, including blog entries, podcasts, infographics, and more.

Include keyword-rich titles and descriptions with each piece of content to help search engines understand what it is about and rank it appropriately.

To attract potential clients, you should also focus on providing both educational and engaging content. Videos, audio interviews, infographics, and other forms of multimedia material are excellent methods to keep customers interested in your company.

Creating content does not have to be a difficult effort. Tools like BuzzSumo and Ahrefs can assist you in identifying popular subjects in your market. This will assist you in creating relevant, interesting content. That will increase your chances of ranking high in search engine results.

10. Encourage frequent and local online reviews

An online review is 50% more likely to persuade a consumer to buy than a discount or promotional offer. As a result, one of the most crucial components of local SEO is encouraging consumers to submit reviews. Reviews not only help your franchise gain trust and credibility in the eyes of search engines, but they also provide prospective consumers with more information about what it’s like to do business with you.

Make an effort to react to every review, whether favorable or critical. This will demonstrate to consumers that you are active and receptive to input, which will aid in the development of trust and credibility with potential clients. Most businesses do not reply to bad reviews, therefore, leaving money on the table, since firms who respond to at least one out of every four reviews earn 35% more than unresponsive businesses.

Conclusion

SEO Strategies for franchisees is an excellent strategy to increase site traffic and establish trust with potential clients. By implementing the aforementioned tactics, you can ensure that your franchise locations appear in local searches and earn increased internet visibility.