How Does Franchise SEO Services Benefit Your Marketing Strategy?
Purchase journeys that used to exist in the physical world now take place through a complex combination of physical and digital actions. Today’s Customers discover brands online and buy products in the real world, at stores.
Needless to say, search engines facilitate the majority of business transactions. To run a successful business, franchise owners have to reconfigure their marketing strategies to optimize multiple-location businesses for search engine visibility.
The bottom line? Search engine optimization ensures your business is exposed to the right customers at the right time when they’re busy online. The greater your online visibility, the higher the chances of capturing business.
Franchise SEO is the only viable way to outrank thousands of other online businesses and enhance brand equity online, which has a positive impact on your brick-and-mortar stores.
When franchises partner with us, we ensure they’re not only found online, but that high-intent customers choose them over their competitors.
Other digital marketing benefits include:
- Increased visibility in Google Maps and Local SERPs for multiple business locations;
- Improved foot traffic, leads, and sales;
- Cost-effective online marketing;
- Higher customer loyalty and trust;
- Greater online prominence and business credibility;
- Consistent and powerful brand building; and
- Sustainable business growth.
Comrade’s Transparent Franchise SEO Process
Unlike other brand marketing systems, franchise marketing is complex and intricate, making it all the more challenging to find the right agency that understands your business needs and knows how to drive conversions.
While franchise branding tends to remain consistent, each location is affected by seasonality, competition levels, service offering and individual marketing budget, which makes it tricky to balance individual franchise marketing KPIs with overall brand demands.
Franchises need SEO specialists who are not only experts at understanding the digital space but also have intricate knowledge of the unique requirements that come with franchise marketing. Luckily, Comrade has got you covered.
As search engine optimization experts, we guarantee transparency, results, and affordability. By that, we mean we deliver results within efficient time frames. We do the necessary work and won’t charge you for something you don’t need. And lastly, we are always happy to explain each part of the process, so you know exactly how we’re making a difference in your business.
We’re not about fancy jargon. We’re about tangible results that increase profit margins. With us, you get a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that includes:
Franchise Business Audit
Our 20-point SEO audit measures website efficiency and visibility. It determines whether your website is fully optimized for search engine traffic, has broken links or files, loads properly, is user-friendly, and how engaging its content is. Once complete, we’ll understand exactly how to increase your online performance.
Target Audience Development
We’ll analyze your customer base to gain a comprehensive understanding of your ideal target audience and its different segments. This allows us to create targeted and personalized online experiences that grab the attention of potential customers with the right messaging at the right time.
Target Audience Keyword Research
Keyword research is a fundamental part of the SEO process. During this stage, we identify popular words and phrases your target audience uses when searching for products, services, and content online. With this data, we’ll know which words and phrases to utilize throughout your SEO strategy.
Technical SEO Audit
Next we conduct a technical SEO audit, which is like a website health check, to pinpoint any technical issues that may prevent search engines from properly crawling and indexing your franchise website. This lets us optimize the back-end of your website to improve its search engine rankings.
Local SEO Strategy
All businesses operating in specific areas benefit from local SEO. From optimizing Google My Business profiles to increasing citations in local business directories and managing customer reviews, we’ll make certain your franchise is visible to people in your area who are searching for your products or services.
Content Marketing
Content is still king. When strategized and properly executed, it generates quality leads and sustains healthy sales growth. Our marketing strategists and talented content creators will produce bespoke content that answers your audience’s questions, builds trust, develops relationships, and positions your franchise as an industry leader.
Link Building Strategy
When other websites with relevant content and high-domain authority link back to yours, they let search engines know your franchise is a trusted authority, which boosts visibility and rankings. Through outreach, content collaboration with key industry players, and other off-page SEO tactics, we’ll help your franchise acquire robust backlinks that build a powerful brand.
KPIs Tracking and Reporting
We monitor your SEO campaigns using a range of cutting-edge marketing technology to keep your online business performance on track. As a data-driven SEO agency, we believe marketing metrics are a quantifiable and reliable way to gauge effectiveness. Naturally, we share and explain these results with you, so you know what we’re working on, and how we’re optimizing your online presence for the best results.
Franchise Local SEO Is the Key to Success
Franchise local SEO is the process of optimizing a website, so it shows up in location-based search results (e.g., “Ace Hardware near me”). While it’s important to rank for industry-related keywords, local SEO helps franchises reach customers specifically looking for your products or services nearby to where you’re located, i.e., in your service area.
Why Is Local SEO for Franchises Important?
Most franchises have established brands, and those that don’t can leverage digital marketing to gain their footing in the market.
A successful local SEO strategy focuses on geographic keywords, local content marketing and location-specific testimonials and reviews to reach local customers and increase website and storefront traffic.
What’s more, unless customers are aware a franchise exists near them, they likely won’t visit or make a purchase. Therefore, local SEO is key to staying relevant and growing your business, whether you’re a franchisor or an individual store owner.
Our Local SEO Strategy for Franchises
We optimize schema markup, NAP data, local content optimization, Google Maps, and more, to establish your franchise in local search engine results.
Implement Location-Based Keywords in Content
Location-based keywords contain locale-specific words and phrases that help people in your franchise location find and learn more about your business. For example, if you’re a gym based in Manhattan, you’ll include the phrase “Gym, Manhattan, NY” in title tags, headings, and page copy.
Depending on your franchise location, we also use local landmarks, tourist attractions and regional names as target keywords. While local searches yield lower search volumes, their intent drives traffic with an 80% conversion rate!
Add Franchise Locations to Google Maps and Optimize Google My Business Listings
Google Maps and Google My Business (GBM) profiles are crucial tools that improve local online visibility. Once we’ve registered a Google My Business account for your franchise (or franchises if you have multiple businesses), we’ll optimize it to rank as high as possible.
This includes verifying all locations, accurate data entry, adding FAQs, and review management, as well as uploading high-quality images. Afterward, your storefront will be visible on Google Maps complete with vital information your customers need.
Include Franchise Locations in Yelp and Other Important Directories
Local business listing and citations play a vital role in reputation, search engine rankings, and revenue. They provide search engines with rich content and position your business as a highly valued listing. That’s why we ensure your franchise is listed in Yelp and other esteemed directories in your industry.
Local listings matter for SEO because they drive high-authority backlinks and affect traffic. The more credible online indicators that prove your franchise exists in a local area, the higher it will rank in search engine results, not to mention the boost it can receive from positive customer reviews.
Help Search Engines Understand Your Location with Schema Data
Structured data, also called schema markup, provides explicit information about your franchise’s web pages that help search engines understand its purpose and context. Our SEOs use it to enhance the look of your search result listing by adding review stars, product prices, or answers to FAQs, etc. This helps get your franchise URL listed as a rich snippet.
This is a normal Google search result with additional data that’s pulled from structured data found in your web page’s HTML. Higher click-through rates, greater search visibility, faster indexing, and voice search domination are some of the many advantages of implementing structured data that displays as rich snippets.
Get Reviews and Improve Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM)
A business’s reputation extends further than search engine results pages. Social media networks and review platforms influence how customers perceive your franchise. That’s why it’s important they’re monitored and enhanced to maintain positive perceptions among customers.
As much as 25% of a company’s market value is directly related to its reputation. Comrade helps franchises counter negative feedback and promote a positive brand image to improve credibility, boost customer engagement and trust, and most notably, show customers they care.
Conclusion
Franchise SEO translates to improved brand awareness, website traffic, phone calls, and visits to individual franchise locations. If you’re ready to work with a team of top SEO specialists to scale business growth then give us a call. We’ll perform a free 20-point SEO audit and provide you with a customized non-obligation SEO strategy for your franchise.
