Collaborative Strategies to Boost Local Franchise SEO
Location marketing is a continually-changing beast, not least because its tenets—search, social, algorithms—themselves are in a constant state of flux. And while SEO is certainly a long-winded game, it is not a losing one.
Whether you’re a franchisor or a franchisee: you have the means to improve local visibility and customer engagement. How? By working together to successfully navigate the local SEO landscape.
Navigating the local SEO Landscape
We’re not going to lie: it is difficult for a franchise business to create a top-down SEO program at scale. Because every location has different needs; because no two locations are the same. And that is why franchisees need to get involved.
Work together on a global and local level
Collaboration is the linchpin of successful local franchise SEO, and franchisees play a pivotal role in executing localized SEO campaigns.
As a decision-maker in headquarters, you should start at the CMS level: does every franchise have their own website, or is there only one global site? If everyone has their own website, how do you manage branding, consistency, and best practices?
- Centralized marketingmeans your corporate marketing team deploys localized content on behalf of your franchisees.
- Decentralized marketing means you give autonomy to local franchisees to do their own marketing.
- Collaborative marketing means sharing marketing responsibilities between the headquarter and local managers.
As part of the licensing process, you might want to set out best practices for franchise SEO services. Or a minimum investment as well as resources to ensure local SEO solutions produce results.
Consolidating all location-based websites under a single national domain tends to perform better for your SEO across the board—mainly because you’re not cannibalizing your own traffic. With this in mind, HQ will want to have a well-articulated process and system for websites as a starting point, potentially for social media as well.
For the most part, it’s best for franchisors to give franchisees room for local deployment of SEO campaigns. But getting everyone on the same page will help to mitigate internal competition that drives up cost per click.
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Get aligned with marketing shareholders
With local franchises under pressure to maximize their online marketing budgets, many are looking for quick-wins and obvious big numbers. But that could be detrimental to their longer-term franchise marketing plan.
Franchise SEO strategists need to connect regularly with marketers handling paid media, content, PR, and so on.
- The PPC team can share which keywords and topics convert well, so SEO can create landing pages and content pieces to leverage.
- The social media team will know what’s getting great engagement for the SEO team to create and share resonating assets.
- The PR team can coordinate with SEO to help drive traffic for promotions and improve inbound links.
By coordinating and sharing learning, you’ll make sure everyone is pushing towards the same goals—and not accidentally competing with each other. Oftentimes, SEO is put in a silo, and it's the worst place for SEO to be.
Improve local visibility
One thing that sits squarely in the franchise SEO marketing basket is the Google Business Profile (GBP), alongside similar local citations on platforms like Bing, Apple Maps, or Facebook. And you shouldn’t downplay the importance of these listings for improving local visibility and customer engagement.
- Make sure you have a Google Business Profile that is claimed and verified.
- Optimize your GBP by adding categories, attributes, visuals, services, reviews, links, and so on.
- Make sure to link to a relevant page—and not necessarily the global homepage—to provide more relevant information.
Because your local franchise is a recognizable outlet for a much larger business, users will judge and search for you according to the overall brand. Maintaining contact with the head office, even though you are a separate and local licensed operator, is crucial.
Avoiding the biggest pitfalls in Local SEO
Operating a local business as a franchise has some obvious advantages. Brand recognition tops that list, but it can make local SEO tricky at the same time.
To create a winning SEO strategy, you’d start with focusing on local keywords and content for a single website or company. Franchise SEO marketing, though, needs to focus efforts more—almost entirely—around location.
Franchises are aiming for “near me” searches more than anything else. And while those searches might seem straightforward, there are plenty of easy mistakes that can threaten franchise SEO, including:
- Deciding which keywords to target
- Prioritizing paid media over organic SEO
- Not thinking locally enough for blog content
Prepare for the long run (Local SEO) instead of a sprint (PPC)
One of the biggest mistakes seen in local SEO for franchises involves targeted keywords for organic SEO as well as for PPC (pay-per-click) advertising.
Focusing extra effort on PPC can seem tempting for franchise SEO marketing because it’s quick and simple, whereas organic SEO strategies need to play a much longer game, often taking several months before showing any benefit.
In the latest episode of the Uberall podcast Local Marketing Beat, Andrew Shotland, Founder and CEO of Local SEO Guide, spoke about navigating the local SEO landscape for franchises. He was clear that as the cost per click is rising quickly—sometimes doubling year-on-year—local businesses are under even more pressure to get more out of their online marketing budgets. According to Shotland, though, marketers historically under-invested in SEO, as it can feel “flakey”.
“If you dig into the campaigns, a huge amount of the traffic is going against brand queries, or people searching for your business name. This is great, and will convert well usually—but they also will cannibalize your organic traffic.”
Many local franchises trip into the pitfall of taking an ad hoc approach to local SEO, or simply outsourcing it to a paid media company who may be more inclined to run pay per click programs at the brand query level.
Brand-level PPC targets can convert at a significantly higher rate than organic clicks, but before you spend a lot of money doing it, make sure you do your research. Make sure your PPC vendor isn’t just using these keyword targets to show off a high conversion rate.
“We had a thousand-location retailer accidentally turn off their local pay per click campaign for a day, and their organic traffic went through the roof—because it was all targeting brand queries.”
Localize and personalize your content at scale
Creating a regular cadence of content remains one of the top recommendations for organic SEO. But when it comes to a local franchise, the details in that content are key. “Global” or broader topics might help you to get higher in the page rankings or increase your domain authority, but are they driving the right sort of traffic to your business?
Let’s say you are running franchise SEO marketing for an appliance repair company with multiple locations around the country. The franchise owner gave you a fair bit of autonomy, so you decide to build your own website for this location and create a blog to go with it. Perfect for SEO, right?
Well, sort of. If you’re publishing articles like “Five signs your dishwasher might need to be repaired”, or “Why is my washing machine making this noise?”, you’ve got a great chance to do well in organic rankings. It’s useful content for users—but it’s not targeting a local search.
The vast majority of people coming to your website will be from outside your service area, so that content might not produce conversions and ROI. You want to ensure you’re using location-based keywords.
What are the biggest local SEO mistakes?
How can franchises measure the success of local SEO solutions?
When it comes to SEO solutions, obvious vanity metrics jump out and make a lot of noise. But local franchisees and franchisors need to decide together what metrics will be the most important for them to move the needle. These may not be what you’ve been told makes for strong SEO metrics.
SEO marketers often try to prove their worth by getting to page one on Google, or even domain authority. But are they actually worth that much?
“Occasionally, someone will ask ‘why aren't we number one for this thing?’, but rankings change by the mile. I can rank number one for something, and then walk a mile, and I'm no longer number one, because it’s relying on my location. Checking your rankings all the time is just a fool's errand.”
Rather, the most important metrics to look at are the trends in clicks, calls, form fills, conversions, and so on. Anything that can be tied back to hard leads—just check our blog article on data driven marketing.
It also pays to think in terms of unique visitors to your website or profile, new vs. returning visitors, and referrals—who’s visiting your online properties, where are they coming from, and are they coming back or leaving never to be seen again?
Whichever metric you decide to use for your local SEO for franchises, make sure it’s realistic, and that whoever you’re reporting those metrics to has an understanding of the realities for SEO programs.
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The Future of Local Franchise SEO
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, local franchise SEO remains a dynamic and indispensable tool for businesses. Embracing collaboration, optimizing Google Business Profiles, avoiding common pitfalls, and selecting meaningful metrics are integral steps toward success.
Local franchise SEO is not a one-time endeavor but an ongoing process that requires adaptation to changing algorithms and consumer behaviors. By staying informed, leveraging collaborative strategies, and embracing the power of local SEO, franchises can position themselves for sustained growth and success in the competitive digital marketplace.
Better yet, deploy an AI-powered platform to help unleash the potential of location data when nearby customers search. Talk to our experts about how Uberall’s location marketing platform can help franchisees and franchise owners work together to maximize local SEO solutions.