Franchises with multiple locations often run into problems with SEO. Maintaining multiple locations can be difficult to keep information cohesive for each one, and any incorrect information can hurt your business.
Corporate offices aren't always the most knowledgeable when it comes to SEO, and many opt for white label services. Managing different locations can be difficult, but there are a few things you can to help rank higher on search engines.
Corporate control
Having multiple locations and giving each individual location listings can turn into a nightmare. Putting just one team in charge ensures that every location is uniform. Even with clear rules and instructions, not monitoring listing from the highest level can let issues go unnoticed. Should any problems come up from one location, corporate will quickly be able to fix it.
Clean up your website
While franchises might be focusing on their individual locations, most visitors on franchise site's will be looking at the main pages. Making sure your website is appealing and informative is the first step for anyone looking to improve their rankings. Take the time to create educational and entertaining can help keep visitors on your site around longer. Making sure that your site is easy to navigate is also an important thing to fix, if users can't easily find what they're looking for, they can leave for a competitors website instead.
With more and more people using mobile phones to search the internet, it's important that your website is mobile friendly to benefit as many people as possible.
Be active online
Along with a good website, a strong online presence is also an essential part of SEO for franchises. Each location should have its own social media pages with the relevant information for that location Continuously posting is a good way to engage with potential customers and clients. Being involved on social media also gives people the opportunity to share your pages and content to boost your brand's exposure.
Google My Business
Verifying individual branches information on Google My Business can increase its chances of showing up in organic search results. Google My Business allows you to control how information about your business is displayed. Many other websites get information about your business from Google, so having control over each of your listings ensures that people are getting accurate information even if they check somewhere else.
Location pages
Depending on how many locations your franchise has, whether or not you want to have separate websites for individual locations may vary. Franchises with only a few locations might find that having independent sites isn't cost effective and can all be included together. If the services provided at each location vary from location to location, that could be a reason you might consider creating websites for each. A single location landing page for each branch with location-specific information might be all you need.
