How to Do SEO for Franchises: A Guide for Franchisers and Franchisees

That’s why we’ve compiled this guide to help you market your franchise, whether you’re the franchiser or franchisee. Skip ahead to the information that’s most relevant to you:

3 strategies to do SEO for franchisers

If you’re a franchiser, check out these strategies you can use to improve your franchise locations’ performance in search results:

1. Balance national brand SEO with local SEO

As a franchiser, your locations are across cities and states. Your SEO strategy needs to be a balance of national and local SEO. National SEO will help you maintain your brand visibility across multiple geographic regions, while local SEO will help your franchisees effectively reach people searching in their area.

Having a balance of these two strategies enables you to increase your reach across multiple markets and improve your rankings. Here’s how you can balance the two:

💡 Pro tip: Consider having your franchisees handle your local SEO efforts! Since they are familiar with the local market and area, they may have great insights on how to tailor local SEO efforts for their location!

2. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly and fast

Whether someone wants to learn about your company or one of your locations, they’re coming to your website to do it. It’s important that, when they visit, your website provides a positive user experience.

People don’t want to wait for pages to load. They don’t want to have to pinch to zoom in and click buttons if they’re looking on their phone. Your audience wants to see a fast-loading website that’s easy to access — and it’s crucial for franchise SEO.

When you deliver a good user experience on your website, it leads to better rankings. People will dwell on your pages longer and won’t bounce as quickly, indicating to Google that your website is relevant to search results. 

To create this experience, you need to do two things:

• Integrate responsive design into your website: Responsive design allows your website to adjust and adapt based on the device’s screen. Integrating this ensures you provide the best experience for visitors, regardless of device.
• Ensure your website loads quickly: Having a fast-loading website keeps people engaged on your website longer. Check your website in Google PageSpeed Insights to see how quickly your website loads and where you can improve it.

3. Do on-page optimizations to improve visibility and traffic

With SEO for franchises, you’ll want to optimize your on-page elements to help your franchise rank better in search results.

Here are some things you can do to improve your visibility:

• Optimize your title tags: Optimizing title tags for search results is crucial for driving traffic and clicks. Your location pages, for example, should have title tags that include the location to help rank in local search results.
• Create detailed meta descriptions: Your meta description provides details about the page. Make sure the meta for each of your pages is descriptive and provides a preview of what people can expect to find on the page.
• Focus on readability: Readability plays a big role in whether people stay on your website or leave. Use headings and subheadings to break up text. Leverage bulleted and numbered lists to make information easy to skim.

Doing these on-page optimizations will help you improve your franchise’s performance in search results and drive more traffic searching for your products or services.

3 strategies to start doing franchise SEO for franchisees

Ready to dive into SEO for franchisees? Here are three cutting-edge strategies you can use to build your search presence in your protected territory:

1. Target location-based keywords to drive people to your branch

One of the tricky parts of owning a franchise location is the balance between national brand SEO and local SEO. So, while you have the nationally recognized name, you still need to build the brand up within your local community.

You may need to check with corporate or your Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) to see how much you can control your local SEO efforts — some franchises are more willing to let franchisees handle local marketing because they’re familiar with the market.

If that’s the case for you, start by targeting location-based keywords, so you can appear for those searches. Even something as simple as creating a social media page, like Facebook, and targeting your location in your profile page name can help you rank for local searches!

You can leverage the known brand name of your franchise to promote it within local searches, so you can reach customers in your area.

2. Optimize your local listing to drive people to visit your franchise location

Optimizing your local listing is a key component of SEO for franchises. You’re the only branch operating in your protected territory, so it’s on you to drive locals in your area to your location. A key component of that is optimizing your local presence.

Again, you might have to check with corporate or review your FDD to see if you have control over your Google Business Profile. If you do, you’ll want to optimize it.

You can optimize your local profile by:

• Making sure your name, address, and phone number is accurate
• Adding images of your location, staff, and products (be sure to align with corporate standards for imagery)
• Adding a short description that describes your franchise and what you offer (make sure to follow operational uniformity guidelines)

Having a complete profile ensures locals get all the information they need about your franchise location.

3. Manage your reputation and reviews

As a franchisee, you have a reputation to uphold. That’s why reputation management is a crucial component of franchise SEO. You need to build a positive reputation within your community to keep locals coming back to your branch.

A great way to do this is to build up your local reviews on platforms like Google and Yelp. Encourage visitors to leave feedback on your profile, so you can build up your reviews — 65% of people will leave reviews if asked by a business.

When people leave reviews about your franchise location, take time to respond. You may need to consult corporate guidelines to ensure you’re maintaining the brand’s voice when responding, but be sure to respond to both negative and positive reviews.

Showing that you’re listening to locals and responding to their feedback (positive or negative) can help you build up a positive reputation within the community.

Need franchise SEO help?

Whether you’re a franchise owner or franchisee, SEO can help you build your brand name in search, increase website traffic, and drive more revenue. But tackling multi-location SEO, that includes national and local SEO, is a big task — one that we’re up to the challenge of doing for you.

With over 29 years of experience in digital marketing, we know how to craft SEO campaigns that improve your business’s bottom line. We’ve helped franchises like Kampgrounds of America (KOA) improve their organic traffic, transactions, and revenue.

Ready to build up your revenue? Contact us online or call us today at 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about our SEO services!

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