Franchise organizations face a unique set of challenges when it comes to driving their online presence and successfully outranking the competition.

On the one hand, each local franchise business wants to appear as the preferred ‘near me’ result when their potential customers are searching. On the other, the corporate, national brand entity needs visibility of overall performance for all locations.

The key to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) success, both locally and at a corporate level, is understanding what is working well and what isn’t. To do this, easily accessible, clear metrics are required, and this is where things can get tricky in the Franchise world.

The franchise website structure presents each location as a landing page of the main organization:

http://www.mikesdonutshop.com
http://www.mikesdonutshop.com/stores/2-hollywood-ca

This means that individual results and analytics are traditionally difficult to really break out at the local level, with several different analysis tools potentially required in the process.

Specializing in franchise marketing and technology, TruPresence is simplifying and streamlining reporting and analytics in this space.

With the TruPresence SEO auditing tool, WooRank, franchise marketers can now quickly assess the performance and effectiveness of each location’s individual site – a critical starting point in identifying what is working well and the areas that need improvement.

WooRank uses an intuitive scoring system that shows and prioritizes the impact of SEO errors and suggests easily actionable fixes.

Key Considerations for Franchise SEO Strategies

1. Location Analytics and SEO

Google needs to understand the exact location of franchise businesses and how they connect with the correct online details so that the right organic traffic is driven to each local site. For franchises, Google my Business and Google Maps are essential components of this and feed directly into the ‘near me’ local search results. Inquiries about local information make up an estimated 46% of all Google searches.

Markup code, or ‘schema,’ should be present on each individual franchise page, linking all physical and online information. It’s not just a matter of adding an address and phone number to a website; Google and search engines need schema markup to interpret these details and correctly serve them to the right customers.

Details that can be linked include:

• Physical Address
• Exact Coordinates
• Contact Information
• Social Links
• Online Reviews

2. Original and duplicate content

By the very nature of the franchise model, branding and marketing are replicated, and this is its strength. However, in the world of SEO, things are different! Content duplication can be penalized in Google rankings and negatively affect reach, giving competitors an advantage.

Franchise marketers are tasked with finding this duplicate content and replacing it with an original, location-specific copy.

3. SEO and location-based keywords

To stay ahead of the competition, Franchise organizations need to understand industry keywords and search terms that are relevant to their local sites as well as at a national level.

Like content, there is a danger of duplication or overuse across all franchise pages. This can result in ‘keyword stuffing’, and again, it can lead to Google penalties.

Identifying and monitoring the most sought-after keywords consistently is the ‘key’ to benchmarking against competitors and other franchise locations.

4. Competition and SEO

Understanding the competition is a part of every business’s success, but franchise organizations must monitor this nationally, locally, and even within the company, between locations.

Comprehensive multi-location reporting is vital to make sense of the vast amount of complex data involved and to break it down into clear and meaningful information.

Making a TruPresence

With the help of TruPresence, franchise organizations and marketers can:

• quickly confirm if schema markup details are correct or even present on multiple website pages
• use the WooRank SEO tool to crawl each page and easily identify SEO-harming duplicate content without hours of work
• drill down to page level, showing metrics, such as volume and frequency, for the keywords that searchers are using to find their local businesses and their competitors online
• comprehensively benchmark all aspects of SEO against their actual competitors as well as within the organization

Conclusion

For today’s multi-tasking franchisors, SEO is just one more thing that is constantly changing. Now more than ever, easily accessible, accurate reporting information is key to benchmarking and excelling against the competition.

With 20 years of franchise experience, TruPresence understands the unique business dynamics at play. Finally, franchise organizations can simplify their multi-location reporting and SEO analysis, giving them the clarity they need to plan for future success.