Search engine optimization (SEO) should be a top priority for any company, including those with franchises. But once you introduce multiple locations into the mix, SEO gets a little more complicated.
How can you uncomplicate it? First, check out our guide to marketing multi-location businesses. Second, implement the tips below.
Be Aware of the Common Pitfalls
How to improve your franchise ranking starts with what not to do. While most of these are issues that can arise with any business, franchises tend to get hit with them more than most. These are:
- Duplicating content between franchise pages and profiles.
- Putting too much emphasis on a single location.
- Interlinking.
- Failing to give each location anything unique.
- Treating the location pages on the main website as insignificant.
Take time to audit your site now for all of these issues and address them if they are present.
Work in Those Local Keywords
How can people tell if they are reading about the franchise location in their city or in the one across the state? They can’t, unless you incorporate local keywords.
Local keywords boost franchise rankings by landing on geographically tied searches. These should be used in your H1 and H2 headings to make them unique and tied to their specific city or region. They should also be incorporated into your URLs.
Flesh Out the Location Pages
Your company should have a website that anyone looking to learn more about it would head to. On that site, you should have individual location pages.
Many franchises don’t put these to good use, letting them sit mostly empty, save for information on hours, address, and phone numbers. Instead, treat these like they are the home page for a given location. Flesh them out with all that important info you want customers to know, working in those local keywords to increase the franchise ranking.
Require Owners to Keep Up Their Google My Business
Google offers their Google My Business page to each location of a company. This is often the first thing potential customers look at. As such, it should be in your contract that each individual franchise owner must keep theirs current.
Get All Locations on Board
When there are many interested parties, they all need to be team players. This means coordinating their SEO efforts so they complement each other rather than compete. Of course, if no one is an SEO specialist, this can be difficult to manage.
Our suggestion? Look for experts in franchise SEO in Atlanta and let them lead the way. To learn more, contact SEO Guru Atlanta.
