Archives August 2022

When a business has multiple locations the challenge of Search Engine Optimization becomes bigger than if a business has just one local location. Franchises must focus on what is called Franchise SEO.

Franchise SEO

Businesses with multiple locations or has franchises must ensure the websites focus on local website traffic and promotion of the broader overall brand identity. This requires creation of landing pages for local content and keyword research for both the local traffic and broader brand driven traffic.

Additionally, there are technical issues that are often seen with franchise websites; the quality of each franchise website; and SEO approaches that are scalable. It is important that repetitive content is removed – if there is duplicate information when examining the franchise website with content and information from the brand website and the localized franchise location website, the duplicate content must be removed.

Google My Business Profiles

It is important that each franchise location has created a Google Business Profile. The information in this profile must be accurate to ensure that your business will show up in Google’s results. In particular, your goal should be for your business location to appear in Google’s 3-pack for local businesses.

The information that must be present and accurate in your Google Business Profile includes: primary category, secondary category, name, phone number, and hours of operation. If your business has a physical location, you should also ensure that the listed address is accurate and verifiable.

Incorrectly categorizing your business will also lead to either being listed in Google’s results for the incorrect category and keyword searches or you will miss the opportunity to be listed in Google’s 3-pack for local businesses.

Keyword Search for Franchises

A major part of Google’s algorithm is E-A-T which refers to Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This is how Google determines if the content is important or helpful to users. In essence, E-A-T is a measurement of the quality of a webpage or website.

Expertise refers to the content’s author.

Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness refers to the author, the content itself and the website or webpage being evaluated.

To improve SEO, businesses should frequently update the content of the website(s); ensure the content of the website is helpful, trustworthy, and produced by an industry expert; and ensure the website where the content is found is an authoritative website. Authoritativeness is often helped by quality backlinks.

For small and large businesses alike the importance of branding, brand protection, and well-established brand usage guidelines cannot be understated. Far too often, businesses are hyper-focused on business development and revenue and allow some of the key branding “rules” to go unchecked and unmonitored.