Individual Websites: every franchisee must have their own website, with its own unique content. Duplicate content will only cause penalties by the search engines, making the websites more difficult to find.
Franchisors should provide every franchisee with their own “template” website copy that will be branded consistently to the main brand, but containing its own unique images and content.
Unique SEO: in addition to unique websites, the SEO meta data (H1 headers, meta titles, meta descriptions and URLs) also need to contain unique properties specific to each location. Landing pages should contain your franchise or business location’s address, phone number, hours of operation, and all social sharing buttons should link directly to the social accounts set up for that specific location.
Social Media: speaking of social media, every franchise location needs to have their own social media profiles. Of course, the social media accounts need to be set up with the details of the specific location (address, contact details, hours of operation), and you should be curating location-specific content on your profiles, as well as encouraging customer reviews for any products and/or services purchased at your location.
Customer Reviews: furthermore on customer reviews, setting up profiles on Yelp, Foursquare, Google My Business, TripAdvisor, etc., will help guide your customers to review your services. The SEO effectiveness of these local reviews are huge with Google, and will impact your search engine results as well as your customer satisfaction.
Mobile Optimization: The number of people using mobile for their browsing and online transactions are growing every day. So every franchise location needs to ensure their sites are set up to be mobile-friendly. This isn’t only an SEO tactic, but a way to ensure your customers are not frustrated when using your site.
Both Franchisors and their Franchisees, as well as multi-location businesses will benefit from the success of a well-implemented local-optimization strategy. Not only will it help to increase website traffic, but a consistent strategy between locations will only help to build and promote the overall brand.
To help understand the audience you should be focusing your local SEO marketing on, download a copy of our guide to inbound marketing for franchise & multi-location businesses.
