Franchise SEO Best Practices: Building a Multi-Level Optimization Checklist
Today’s post shares some basic franchise SEO best practices. Read on to learn 4 key criteria for technical and content search optimization that will take your franchise website’s performance to the next level.
Technical Optimization
1-Titles tags
Putting aside all the creative power it takes to write good titles, title tags have specific technical criteria that need to be met for optimal franchise SEO:
- Each page should be limited to a single title tag
- Title tags should be placed correctly within the head tags
- Title tags should have few or no extraneous tags, including inline CSS and span tags
2-Heading tags
Headings are usually thought of as tools to structure content, funnel reader’s attention, and make your articles more “skimmable,” but they’re also important franchise SEO components:
- Each page should be limited to a single H1 tag (which should include a keyword!)
- Headings should be free of extraneous tags, including inline CSS and span tags
3-Internal links
Your internal links need to enable indexation of content. Domains have finite crawl budgets, and will always prioritize sites that are easily discoverable through well-indexed content.
4-Clear home for fresh content
To ensure the best franchise SEO results, we recommend designating specific parts of your website as “fresh content hubs.” This is exactly what our blog section does.
Content Optimization
1-Title tags
To be clear, we’re still not talking about the quality of your content; we’re only looking at specific franchise SEO criteria that all content should have.
- Titles should be shorter than 80 characters, as anything longer will not be visible when your content appears in search
- Titles should accurately reflect the content to minimize bounces
- Titles should consistently contain the franchise’s domain name
2-Heading tags
Go over your page’s heading tags to ensure:
- Every page has a unique H1 tag (no duplicates)
- H1 tags reflect the content on-page
- H1 tags contain targeted keywords
3-Internal links
Internal linking needs to support organic discovery. For example, since this article is about franchise SEO, we might want to embed an internal link to our franchise SEO services. This link will likely perform well because readers are already interested in learning about SEO. The best links continue the user’s natural “journey” of organic content discovery, so look for opportunities for topical progression where possible.
It’s also a good idea to vary your internal links. Spamming that franchise SEO service page throughout this article would be as ineffective for crawl-bots as it is obnoxious for readers.
4-Quality content
This is highly subjective and will likely require a case-by-case evaluation, but there are some general guidelines you can use for a quick-and-dirty self-assessment:
- Do you want to read the content? Titles and topics should be inherently interesting. Moreover, they should be “predictive,” which means anticipating the user’s questions and answering them before they’re asked.
- Is there enough content? Unless you’re working a specific “thin content” strategy (which works in the right conditions!), aim for 500+ words per piece for franchise SEO results.
- Is your content high-quality? Again, this is highly subjective. But a website stuffed with thin “listicles,” generic information, and spelling errors is clearly not optimal.
- Are my images in high resolution, or are they grainy?
- Are my images unique, or do they come from stock sources?
- Are my images and videos repeated on multiple pages?
If you’d like to dig deeper into our franchise SEO best practices, be sure to visit our blog, or give us a call at 866-311-7189.
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