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Local SEO For Franchises Means Teamwork

SEO is commonly viewed as one of the most challenging marketing activities to orchestrate across a national-to-local network. In addition to trying to figure out how to “win” at SEO in general, franchise businesses also often face the unique dilemma of needing multiple sites from the same domain to rank well in a search results.

Localization no doubt comes to mind immediately as the solution to this problem. While this is the ultimate route to success, some very specific considerations must be factored in for a local SEO campaign for franchises to be properly executed.

Start At The Beginning

Certainly the primary website should be the first area to focus on. Duplicate content is, of course, the big no-no here. One way that franchisors can avoid this is to offer their franchisees multiple versions of the basic website.

Each version can include not only slightly different copy but also varied images. It’s important to remember that content is not synonymous with copy.

Localize With Purpose

Gone are the days when localization meant simply changing out the city and state in the body copy or a headline and keeping all other content as is. For starters, localization today should focus not just on a city or geographical region but a neighborhood or smaller locale. The pendulum is shifting back to the more personal and more local.

All localized sites and landing pages, even if they share a domain, should find ways to create H1s, H2s and URLs unique to their specific business location. In addition, the inclusion of name, address and phone number (NAP) information and store hours provides immediate differentiators.

On those landing pages, social sharing buttons should be prominently placed with links to the social accounts for the specific location.

Despite the oft-cited claim that Pigeon was created to help small businesses, the truth is that its focus is on local businesses, which are not always small. An individual franchise operation may be a small business, but the larger franchisor company is quite often a rather influential national brand. Therefore, Pigeon most definitely applies to franchise operations.