CEO of LocalSEOGuide.com, SEO veteran, editor of Local SEO Guide blog, cofounder of BayAreaSearch.org, 20+ years of internet experience.
SEO is fraught with myths and misconceptions. Although Google tells us more each year about its systems and updates, the search giant’s ranking algorithms are still a closely guarded secret. In the absence of fact, myth tends to rush in.
A lot of industry-wide local SEO misinformation is easily disproved (by searching Google, ironically). But the more insidious misconceptions are often happening inside your own business. And in the case of multi-location brands like franchises, the fallout from building a strategy based on misinformation can be costly.
SEO Insights Are Peak Business Intelligence
SEO insights are a powerful source of business intelligence for franchises—with utility far beyond marketing. Potential customers express their needs in countless interactions: search queries, website browsing behavior, search engine results page (SERP) clicks, clicks to call or get directions and conversions from local and organic searches.
SEO business intelligence can help determine market fit, inform expansion strategy, reveal in-demand product features and provide a share of the voice metric that quantifies opportunity based on competitive analysis. Unfortunately, I see too few franchise organizations activating this data and using it to fuel business growth.
Local Versus National Pages
I see too many businesses thinking that a dedicated website for each location is inevitably better than having franchise pages on the national site.
It’s true that Google prefers local pages for local queries. People searching for local information expect to see local results, which is why Google typically displays Map Pack/Local Pack results when it perceives local intent.
But in the local organic search results—those traditional ten blue links—it’s not so cut and dried. There are a lot of reasons franchisees and the franchisor might have once preferred that each location created its own website.
• Franchisees want control over their online presence.
• The franchise lacked local SEO support at scale.
• Online marketing was historically a low priority.
• The site predates enterprise-level software for brand/local management.
Many a franchise was born out of the success of a single location, and adding a new website for each location likely made sense when there were three, ten or fifteen stores. But it quickly becomes unmanageable the greater the location volume.
The drawbacks of using local microsites/pages versus a page for each location on the national site include:
• A lack of franchisor control over branding, content and messaging.
• Outdated technology and content on local sites.
• Security issues due to outdated tech or lack of franchisee knowledge/skill.
• Dramatically different user experiences across locations.
• Lack of insight into local SEO and marketing performance across the brand.
To Be Clear: Choosing Local Sites Isn’t The Mistake
Having individual, dedicated websites can be the answer. But the mistake here is choosing a local site on a unique domain without data to justify the decision.
There are many instances where local sites will perform better in local organic search results, and there are tools available to give brands control over local publishing permissions, content review and reporting insights. You can provide a branded, cohesive experience site across all franchise locations, even with a unique domain for each location.
However, this can still be a major waste of time and budget, and those pages may not perform as well as local pages on the national site.
How To Evaluate The Local Versus National Opportunity
As an example, my company worked with an employment law firm with offices in 23 cities. With 54 practice areas, the content volume in question was potentially 1,350 web pages. Alternatively, you could create 54 practice pages on the national website and feature each of the 23 cities on each one.
But which strategy best fulfills local searchers’ needs and will drive local organic rankings and visibility?
Start by scrapping the conventional thinking that search queries must be categorized as navigational, informational, commercial or transactional. Instead, with something like the law firm example, you should evaluate the company’s local search presence and sorted local queries into two categories.
1. Local search intent. These searches include things like “Employment attorney near me,” “best lawyer in Detroit,” “personal injury attorney” and “legal clinic for employees in NYC.”
2. National search intent. Searches in this category include: “Employment law firm,” “best employment law attorneys” and “class action suit.”
You this information we could identify which practice areas were best served by a local domain versus those with no local query intent. By doing so, we were able to eliminate 300 local practice pages and redirect to the corresponding national practice area page.
Why does this matter? First, it means 300 fewer pages for franchisees to manage and keep up with. Plus, a national page better serves those queries that enabled the law firm to rank higher and drive more traffic to the national website.
Another Example: Home Depot
Again, it might at first make sense that a major brand like Home Depot would want a local website for each of its 2,300 U.S. locations. Each has its own Google Business Profile page, which handles the Map Pack/Local Pack presence. But what about local organic results?
Home Depot’s local site strategy could include a domain for each store, with each location having a monthly average of something like 50,000 visits from organic search.
However, a deeper analysis would find that a large majority of clicks are on branded searches like “Home Depot Garden Center.” Whether they had 2,300 dedicated organic pages for the garden center in every location or one garden center page on the national website, the outcome for searchers and the business is probably not substantially different enough to justify managing 2,300 separate pages.
The Biggest Mistake In Franchise SEO Is Making Assumptions
Local sites aren’t always the answer any more than pages on the national site are. In reality, you’re probably not looking at choosing one or the other but a hybrid strategy that meets the needs of searchers across the brand. Only your SEO data will tell you what that formula looks like for your franchise.
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