SEO for Franchises

A Step-by-Step Franchise SEO Guide

Are you ready to attract more customers to your franchise through organic search? Keep reading to learn how a targeted SEO franchise marketing strategy can help you get found by potential customers online.

In this guide you will learn:

Chapter 1
Intro to SEO →

Chapter 2
Keyword Research →

Chapter 3
On-Page SEO →

Chapter 4
Off-Page SEO →

Chapter 5
Best Practices →

Chapter 6
FAQs & Resources →

What is SEO for franchise owners?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your franchise website or web pages to increase their visibility in search engines, like Google and Bing.

SEO is crucial for franchise owners looking to attract more customers to their individual locations. The higher your franchise website ranks in search engine results, the greater the likelihood of potential customers clicking through to your site and ultimately choosing your business.

Think of it like regular maintenance for your franchise’s online presence.

Just as a franchise must maintain brand consistency and quality across all locations, SEO ensures that your website is ‘healthy’ by making it easy for search engines to find and rank. This means more traffic to your website and increased chances of attracting local customers to your franchise.

A person searching for a franchise on Google may use a search query like “best [industry] franchise near me” or “top [industry] franchise opportunities in [city name]”.

They may search for specific aspects such as “low-cost [industry] franchise” or “high-profit [industry] franchise”. Or they may even include investment criteria in the search query, such as “franchises under [investment amount]” or “franchise with financing options”.

In order to benefit from SEO, you want your franchise website to rank for these kinds of searches.

Why is franchise SEO important?

Here are some of the benefits of using SEO for your franchise business:

• Increased visibility: SEO boosts the visibility of your franchise website on search engines, making it more likely that potential customers will find your business when searching for related products or services.
• Cost-effective: Compared to traditional advertising methods like print or TV ads, SEO offers a more budget-friendly way for franchises to reach new customers, often providing a higher return on investment.
• Targeted audience: SEO allows franchise owners to target specific keywords that match their offerings, helping to attract customers interested in the exact products or services your franchise provides.
• Local SEO: Local SEO is particularly important for franchises with multiple locations. It enhances your website’s visibility for people searching for businesses within specific geographic areas, driving more foot traffic to individual franchise locations.
• Building trust: By optimizing your website with high-quality, relevant content, SEO helps your franchise build trust with search engines and potential customers. This strengthens your reputation in local communities and attracts new customers to your franchise.

How do search engines work?

Search engines work by crawling billions of webpages with their own web crawlers, known as search engine bots or spiders. These are then stored and saved in an index.

Google Search Essentials (formerly Webmaster Guidelines)

The Google Search Essentials define the actions that webmasters can take to make their websites better indexable or crawlable.

Read them here: Official Google Guidelines

The guidelines are based on three central aspects:

1. Crawling – webmasters should support Google in finding websites.
2. Indexing – webmasters should help Google to classify and “recognize” the content.
3. Usability and user experience – webmasters should support the users of the websites in their use (usability and user experience).

Essentially, according to these Google guidelines,  a website should support the search engine in crawling and indexing and ensure a good user experience. 

Before you get started with SEO, there are a few prerequisites you want to check off first:

SEO Basics

At a bare minimum, you want to make sure you cover these basic standards before embarking on doing SEO:

• Website Speed – Have a fast loading site so potential customers don’t get tired of waiting for things to load.
• Mobile Friendliness – Make sure your site works on mobile as over 50% of users browse on mobile devices
• Analytics – Setup Google Analytics, Google Search Console & so you can understand what is and isn’t working.
• XML Sitemap – search engines use this to get your site’s URLs
• Robots.txt – tells search engine crawlers where they can (and where they can’t go) on your site.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of making website and server optimizations to help search engines to crawl and index your site more effectively (and therefore help to improve organic rankings).

Technical errors can hurt a website’s ability to rank. There are potentially a lot of errors, but here are some of the most common that will have the biggest impact when fixed:

• 404 errors
• Broken backlinks
• Poor URL structure
• Duplicate/thin content
• Poor internal linking
• Poor website architecture
• Missing metadata (page titles & meta descriptions)
• Missing H1 tags

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What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying the words and phrases that people use when searching for specific products or services:

Once you understand the keywords your target audience is using, you can optimize your website to appear for these in search results.

Think of keyword research like a diagnostic test for your franchise’s online presence. Just as a diagnostic test helps assess the health of a system, keyword research helps franchise owners understand what potential customers are searching for when they’re looking for services or products related to your business.

For example, if you own a fitness franchise, keyword research might reveal that people are searching for terms like “best gym near me” or “affordable fitness center.” By identifying these high-value keywords, you can optimize your website to rank higher in search results when customers search for these terms. This increases the likelihood that potential customers will find your franchise location and inquire about your services.

In short, keyword research ensures that your franchise website is visible to the right audience at the right time.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is important for franchises because it helps to:

• understand what people are searching for when they are looking for any particular franchise’s services or goods, and to optimize the website accordingly.
• identify the specific needs and pain points of their target audience, which can inform the content they create and services they offer, ultimately leading to more conversion and better customer experience.
• identify the competition in the local area and understand what they are doing, so they can create a more effective SEO strategy.

What keywords are best to target?

Understand that there’s no “best” keywords, just those that are highly searched by your audience. With this in mind, it’s up to you to craft a strategy that will help you rank pages and drive traffic.

The best keywords for your SEO strategy will take into account relevance, authority, and volume. You want to find highly searched keywords that you can reasonably compete for based on:

• The level of competition you’re up against.
• Your ability to produce content that exceeds in quality what’s currently ranking.

How to do keyword research for your franchise business

To start keyword research: put yourself in your customers shoes.

What words, phrases and terms might they use in order to find solutions to these problems? These are the keywords you want to find and target.

Here is a simple process to follow:

Step 1) Make a list of broad topics

Create a list of general topics related to your business. These might correspond to product categories, services or anything you believe your target audience would be interested in.

For example, broad topics like:

• Franchise opportunities
• Business growth
• Customer service
• Local marketing
• Business solutions

Step 2) Expand topics into a list of phrases

Now you want to take those topics and expand them into a list of related phrases to target.

Imagine yourself as a buyer looking for your product or service and ask yourself: what would I type into Google?

Whilst keyword research tools are useful here, you can do this for free by Googling your keyword.

For example, Google “which franchise is the best” and you’ll get a list of related questions people ask (which you can answer with blog content):

As well as related searches which may uncover other keywords to target:

Step 3) Analyze your keywords

Once you have a list of potential keywords, you need to gauge which terms are worth targeting.

You’ll need to use a keyword research tool here to pay attention to the following keyword metrics:

• Search volume
• Trends
• Search value over time
• Difficulty
• CPC
• SERP features

But most importantly, you want to consider relevancy and search intent:

Relevant keywords:

For relevancy, you want to ask yourself:

• Are these keywords relevant to my business?
• Do I have a chance of ranking for these terms based on the competition?
• Is ranking for these keywords going to have a positive ROI?

If you can answer YES to the above questions, chances are you have picked a relevant keyword

Search intent:

Search intent is the goal and purpose of a search query in Google. When someone searches for something, they are typically looking for more information before performing an action.

Search intent falls in four buckets:

• Informational – Searchers looking for information, they’ll use words like: how, what, why, when etc.
• Navigational – Searchers trying to find a specific site, they’ll use words relating to the service/product/brand
• Transactional – Searchers looking to purchase, they’ll use words like: buy, cost, pricing, cheap etc.
• Commercial investigation – Searchers researching prior to making a purchase, they’ll use words like: best, review, comparison etc

Not only is it important to select good keywords, but also to pick keywords you have a chance of ranking for.

If you want your franchise website to rank for keywords like “Best Franchise Opportunities” or “How to Start a Franchise”, but your page doesn’t provide detailed insights into available opportunities, startup costs, or the franchising process, you may struggle to rank.

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What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO describes specific elements of the pages on your website that you control, such as:

• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• Header tags
• Internal linking
• Images
• Content

Why is on-page SEO important?

On-page SEO is important for franchise business owners because it ensures that their website is easily found and understood by search engines, helping to increase visibility and drive more traffic to their site. This can ultimately lead to more customers for the franchise.

For example, if a franchise offers a specific service, like “home cleaning” or “fitness training,” but those services aren’t clearly mentioned on the website, it will be less likely to appear in search results when potential customers search for related terms like “best home cleaning service near me” or “affordable fitness training.” On the other hand, if the franchise has optimized its website with these services as focus keywords, it will be more likely to appear in search results when someone searches for those terms, helping to attract more customers.

Additionally, on-page optimization can also improve the overall user experience of the website, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. For instance, having a well-organized, easy-to-navigate website with clear calls to action like “Contact Us” or “Request a Quote” can significantly increase the chances of converting visitors into loyal customers.

On-Page SEO Checklist

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What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO refers to specific actions done outside of your website, such as getting backlinks from other websites or social media.

What is link building?

Link building is the practice of building one-way hyperlinks (also known as “backlinks”) to a website with the goal of improving SEO. Common link building strategies include content marketing, building useful tools, email outreach, broken link building and guest posts.

Why is link building important?

Link building is important for franchises because it helps to increase the visibility of a website on search engines. Google, for example, use links to a website as a way to determine the authority and trustworthiness of a website.

The more high-quality links that point to a website, the more likely it is to be considered an authority in its field and be given higher rankings in the SERPs (search engine results page).

This increased visibility can drive more traffic to a website, which can lead to more customers for the franchise business.

Additionally, link building can help establish a franchise business as a reputable and trustworthy provider of its services/products, which can be a key factor in attracting new customers. High-quality links from reputable websites within the industry or local community can signal to potential customers that the franchise is well-respected and reliable.

Link building can also drive referral traffic to your franchise website, where visitors come through links on other reputable sites. This can help increase brand awareness and expand your reach to new audiences who may not have otherwise discovered your business.

In summary, link building is important for franchise businesses because it helps increase visibility, establish a strong reputation, and drive more referral traffic to the website, ultimately leading to more customers for your franchise.

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Franchise business SEO Best Practices (+ 4 Tips)

4 Actionable Franchise SEO Tips

Here are some things you can do to begin the process of developing a good franchise marketing strategy.

1. Add relevant keywords
2. Optimize for local searches
3. Start blogging
4. Earn links

1. Add relevant keywords to your website

People looking for franchise businesses often search for specific services, such as “affordable gym memberships” or “fast home repair services.” Long-tail keywords typically have lower search volumes but the traffic they bring is often highly targeted and more likely to convert into real customers.

For example, instead of focusing solely on broad terms like “franchise” or “business services,” you could optimize your website with more specific keywords like “fitness franchise in [your city]” or “affordable home repair services in [your area],” or “family-friendly restaurant franchise in [your city], [state].” By targeting these more specific search terms, you can attract highly interested potential customers who are actively looking for the services your franchise provides.

2. Optimize your site for local searches

If your SEO plan doesn’t use local SEO to target specific areas, you’ll likely miss out on some great leads. Adding the name of your town and nearby towns to your website copy is the easiest way to get better results.

But don’t forget about things on your site besides writing copy. You should also add places to the titles and URLs of your pages.

Also, make sure that your business is listed on Google Maps and local directory sites. This will help your business show up more in local searches.

3. Start writing useful content

The main goal of franchise SEO is to get more custom by making your website more visible in Google.

One effective strategy is to create a blog for your franchise. By writing posts that offer helpful tips or industry insights, such as “How to Choose the Right Home Repair Service” or “Tips for Finding Affordable Fitness Centers,” you can attract interested readers who are your potential customers.

As your traffic grows, so will your search rankings, and people searching for relevant services in your area will begin to see your franchise as a trusted source. This not only boosts your website’s visibility but also helps establish your franchise as an authority in your field, driving more local customers to your business.

4. Earn quality links

How high your site ranks in search results for keywords and phrases related to your business depends on how many and how good the links are to it. This means that you need to get good links if you want to keep your rankings.

You can do this by making good content and reaching out to bloggers and leaders in your field to ask them to share it. This will not only help you move up in search results, but it will also make your franchise business look like a leader in the field.

Backlinks are a very important part of SEO for franchises. They are like a vote of confidence for the content your practice puts out. Because of this, links are one of the most important ways that search engines like Google decide how to rank pages.

How does franchise SEO work?

SEO for franchises means making sure that your website is optimized for both search engines and users. This makes your website more visible in relevant and organic search results.

Optimizations include:

• on-page SEO
• link building
• technical SEO review
• content audit
• local citation audit

Why do franchise owners need marketing?

Marketing helps set your franchise apart from the competition.

Your customers are the lifeblood of your franchise. A strong marketing plan not only helps you identify your target market but also communicates to potential customers why they should choose your service or products over others.

A good marketing strategy for your franchise should attract new customers, retain existing ones, and increase awareness of your services. The primary goal is to drive potential customers to take action, whether that’s calling for more information or scheduling a service or appointment online. Effective marketing helps build your brand and grow your franchise business.

How long does franchise SEO take?

Typically, franchise SEO takes at least six months to deliver results.

In some cases, franchises may start to see results like increased traffic, phone calls, and appointments, in faster time frame than this.

Although typically 6 months is a good benchmark as SEO is a long-term strategy vs. a short-term strategy like PPC.

How much does SEO for franchises cost?

Prices for franchise business website SEO depend on multiple factors, but the average cost for franchise SEO is $1500 – $5000 per month.

If you’re looking to partner with a consultant or franchise SEO expert, the average rate is $100 – $300 per hour.