NAVIGATING THE COMPETITIVE DIGITAL LANDSCAPE: 5 WAYS TO ELEVATE YOUR FRANCHISE’S LOCAL SEO IN 2024

By Lizzy Young, DevHub

When it comes to franchise marketing, one of the most effective ways to support franchisee growth in your markets is through local Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 

Not only does it help franchisees gain a competitive edge, but it also drives traffic to your website, user actions, and ultimately, revenue.

1. Understand the Different Types of SEO for Your Franchise Website

Local SEO is one of the most powerful tools for your consumer marketing and franchise development.

After all, you’re on a mission to drive franchisee success, and every click, call, online order, form fill, or request for driving directions is another revenue opportunity for you and your franchisees. There are three main types of SEO: on-page, off-page and technical.

On-page SEO primarily concerns each page’s content — from keyword optimization to relevancy. Search engines want to ensure that the pages they are recommending to users match their search inquiries. Meta titles and descriptions are types of “tags” that let search engines know what each page’s content is about so that they can better match it with search inquiries. Other components, like URL structure, internal linking and image optimization also improve site structure and accessibility.

Off-page SEO helps build your brand’s EAT — expertise, authority and trust. These are all crucial factors search engines consider in their rankings, and franchises can demonstrate it through guest posting for others and linking back to your site, managing your online reviews, promoting your content on social media, collaborating with other brands or influencers and acquiring backlinks from other websites.

Lastly, technical SEO is a key component of your digital customer experience and includes everything from the speed of your site to mobile optimization, easy navigation and schema markup (to communicate your page’s content to search engines).

2. Update Your Local Pages and Microsites

While many franchise brands have location or service area finders on their websites, having and regularly updating a local page or microsite for each one can drive business like never before for your franchisees.

Whether your brand needs local pages or microsites is largely dependent on your industry. For instance, those with a core offering (such as restaurants) typically opt for local pages, as they are enough to display each location’s relevant information — from their address and contact information to their menu and online ordering platform.

Meanwhile, franchises with multiple offerings (such as personal, home, or commercial services) benefit from microsites, as they can have a page dedicated to each specific service to enhance their SEO in each market. For instance, if a home services brand offers driveway repair as one of many services, an individual page on a microsite will ensure they show up on search engines when someone searches for that specific service near them.

3. Evaluate and Hyperlocalize Your Content for Each Market

Whether your internal team or an agency partner is running your local franchise websites, you’ll want to audit your website content regularly. Depending on how your CMS platform is set up, this could mean sorting through pages one-by-one or making systemwide tweaks and applying them to all pages at once.

Start by ensuring you are using the keywords consumers are searching for, and the ones competitors are ranking for. Use keyword research, competitive analysis, and reporting tools to determine what on-page changes need to be made, and don’t be afraid to test out new keywords or content as you build on your marketing strategy.

Your local pages and microsites should be using hyperlocalized title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords. And though localized information like addresses, service areas, and contact information may change, your local pages’ look, feel, and core content should be consistent throughout your brand.

If your site’s performance has been at a “standstill” for months, it may come down to gaps in your optimization strategy and a lower ranking in your local markets.

4. Combat Any Digital Discrepancies

Franchising is unique in that when it comes to your brand’s local presence, franchisor and franchisee efforts must be in sync.

From website content that does not match up with Google Business profiles to duplicate profiles with conflicting information, online listings fuel your local SEO and ultimately, consumer decisions.

You’ll want to ensure your listings are up-to-date, especially when it comes to each location’s NAP (name, address and phone number). Occasionally, a franchisee may lose access to their existing Google Business profile and create a new one.

This may also occur through acquisitions, as the old owners may not have transferred ownership of the listing to you or your franchisee before their exit. If that’s the case, you’ll want to gain ownership of your duplicate listing as soon as possible — you can do this by clicking “Claim this business” on any listing. A notification is then sent to the listing’s current owner, who will have to grant you access. If they do not, you may have the option to verify that you own the business through phone, email, or direct mail.

5. Maintain the Latest Web Standards

Because web and industry standards are always changing, launching local sites and pages is never a “one-and-done” situation. If you don’t keep up with the latest benchmarks, your SEO will suffer. Streamlining the management of all your sites and pages will allow you to make these changes system-side.

There are three core web vitals to maintain or strengthen your Google ranking: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). The first two are a measure of speed — how long it takes the largest piece of content on a page to load and the lag time from when a user takes an action to when a result appears. The last is a measure of stability — how the elements on a page shift as users click, scroll and hover.

Unlocking Franchisee Growth with Local SEO

Your website is your core presence, and it’s a lot more than just a “box to check” for your digital marketing. Local SEO turns your sites and pages into a powerful conversion tool — one that benefits your consumer marketing and franchise development efforts alike through discoverability, additional revenue, franchisee growth, and a smoother, more personalized customer experience.

Lizzy Young is the growth marketing manager at DevHub, a franchise website platform helping franchisors unlock hidden revenue and drive franchisee growth through CMS localization. Lizzy helps brands of all sizes own their markets (and their digital platform). Since getting her start in franchise marketing and public relations right out of college, Lizzy has worked with dozens of franchisors and franchisees to drive growth locally, nationally and internationally. For more information about IFA supplier member DevHub, please visit franchise.org/suppliers/devhub.