The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of Local SEO for Franchises
Today’s post ranks 3 website tactics used to improve local SEO for franchises. Read on to learn how your current strategy stacks up, and whether there’s room to improve your local SEO results!
The Ugly: Listing pages
Listing pages are a very common–and deeply flawed–approach to local SEO for franchises.
In this scenario, the franchisor is doing a lot of things right. They have a powerful, well-designed main site for their franchise brand, and they maintain active pages on Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter. They’ve even got a blog pumping out regular, high-quality content.
And yet, while the brand has a great online presence, they’re not doing much for the individual franchisees who are trying to compete for local traffic. In this scenario, all they’ve got are listing pages, which consist of generic copy, local contact information, and maybe a Google map listing.
Here is a perfect example of the listing pages approach and its limitations. Notice that there is no specific information about individual Wimpy’s Diners locations–just contact info and a map listing. You can’t read about location-specific promotions, news, or menu exclusives. It’s all pretty dreary for the user, and there’s not a lot of local ranking power on display here.
Indeed, there really aren’t any local benefits to this approach, unless the user is specifically searching for “[your brand name] + [your local city].” That’ll bring up your listing page, but that’s how a loyal customer searches for contact information. Why pay money advertising to audiences you’ve already got? You’re trying to engage local users who don’t know your brand, those who are just searching for local products and services.
Really the only benefit is that the franchisor saves time and effort. But at what cost?
The Bad: Single location pages under the national umbrella
Imagine the same brand from the first scenario, only now they’ve created regional pages dedicated to specific locations, rather than lumping all contact info into a single listing.
This is definitely a step in the right direction. Dedicated pages leave more room for contact details, multimedia, and location-specific information, which is more engaging for users and crawl-bots alike. Users enjoy the enhanced relevancy that dedicated pages offer. The location pages stand out better in local searches, and act as landing pages that draw users onto the polished main site.
However, you must accept the drawbacks to this approach. Navigating back and forth from local pages to main site pages can be confusing, and many leads are lost as a result. A single page may also not be enough to contain all the engaging localized features you plan to include.
The Good: Local mini-sites using subfolders
The logical next step is to dedicate local mini-sites to each location using subfolders. This gives each franchise the ability to really showcase their location and feature all of the engaging localized features they want. Set up pages dedicated to specific services, portfolios, videos, and more. By creating more pages, you make more opportunities to send local signals and build site authority, both of which help your site compete in local search rankings.
What’s the downside? Time and effort, of course. Creating unique and dedicated sites for each location is a big undertaking. But it definitely pays off–our case studies say so.
ClickTecs brings you the best local SEO for franchises
What if you could get all the benefits of local mini-sites–or even individual dedicated sites for each franchisee–without all the time and effort?
Call 866-311-7189 to learn how our team can make it happen.
We are experts in local SEO for franchises and we love nothing more than talking about it, so get in touch today via phone or book online for a free walkthrough.
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