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10 Simple Ways to Rank Your Franchise's Digital Presence Above the Company Site in Local Searches

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Nachum Langsner
10 Simple Ways to Rank Your Franchise's Digital Presence Above the Company Site in Local Searches

Franchising works differently for each brand.

For local services that rely on nearby customers, unifying a brand's digital presence across franchises is not practical.

It's better for customers to jump directly to their local franchise site for the menu, services, and information that they really need.


But what do you do when searches show the company over-site first?

Technically, this is less convenient for you and the customers, when they'll only need to search for locations and be redirected to your site, anyway. 

The best thing you as a local franchise owner can do is to purposefully rank your site above the company site in local searches.

This way, your direct local customers will find what they need more quickly and you won't have to worry about losing customers to the redirect cycle through the company site.


Today, we're here to share some of the best practices for ranking your franchise's digital presence above the core brand.  


10 Ways to Rank Your Franchise's Digital Presence

1. Hyper-Localize to Top Local Searches

The core brand will always have powerful SEO, something that your franchise naturally contributes to.

Where a franchise can rank is by qualifying through local searches as more immediately relevant to the searcher than the company site.


You can do this by hyper-localizing.


This method focuses specifically on marketing your digital presence to your nearby neighborhoods and the people within.

You want to both integrate your location with local tools and localize your content to appear on searches for specific neighborhoods and suburban cities.


2. Claim & Curate Your Google Business Profile Location

Get started with your Google Business Profile, (formerly Google My Business) the predominant listing, and reference service for local businesses.

Make sure that you have claimed your GBP address with your business name and accurate address.


Open an advanced guide for listing yourself on GBP and fill out every possible space of data and metadata.


The more Google has to work with regarding your business, the more they will willingly vouch for you via search results. 


Build up your GBP listing with photos and menus, and encourage customers to leave reviews. Respond to questions and negative reviews. Welcome customer-shared photos.


Curate your GBP location to become an online hotspot in your town with glowing reviews and detailed information for new customers to rely on.


3. Include Your NAP on Every Page

Your address is critical to hyper-localizing because many local-search tools relate to your company's exact location. For this reason, one simple SEO trick can make a big difference: Include your NAP on every page.

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone. It is the core information block for any business.


Create a custom NAP block that includes email and simplified hours, and make sure that block is on every single website page.


The best place for the NAP block is usually either on your header bar or footer bar. On the header, use NAP to direct customers to alternate forms of service or contact. On the footer, use it to provide all possible forms of contact and locations.


4. Create a Service Area Reference

Beyond marking and claiming your franchise's street address location, you also want your digital presence to localize for your service area.


Most businesses can serve more than just their own several-block neighborhood. They can send drivers out to several of the nearby small cities, nearby downtown centers, and sometimes out to the nearby rural areas as well.


This means letting search engines and customers know that your service radius spans out that far. So, create a list of relevant service areas. Find the names of the regions, cities, and neighborhoods in your service area and print them.


Place this list at least once on your website and once again on every third-party listing.


5. Use Better Tags & Metadata

Tags and metadata are subtly powerful when it comes to SEO ranking.


Tag every image of a product with the product name and brand.


Use metadata descriptions for every page that will help searching customers find what they need.


Make your website more informative and search-engine friendly. Describe every page, image, link, video, and asset. Use accurate and detailed tags.

With some focused metadata curating, you can often overcome the efforts of the franchise company website.


6. Advertise Your Online Ordering System

Online ordering is often what customers are looking for, and they'll happily skip the homepage to get there.

If your franchise company's home site does not have a marketplace or an online menu, you can often beat the page rankings through this avenue.


Have your e-commerce portal or your online delivery menu push above other search results when customers are looking to shop or browse menus.


By focusing your digital presence on menu-based keywords, you can ensure that your local franchise menu appears at an exalted search result position.


7. Include Pictures of Every Item

Modern searchers love images. This is especially true when customers are shopping for food or products online. Search engines know this and prioritize results that can be paired with tempting photos.


Product photos with detailed meta-data tags can be an excellent way to boost your SEO for franchise search results. These will add complexity and relevance, and draw image searches to your site in addition to shoppers who love the brand and want a good look at the menu items or products.


8. Build Buzz and Traffic with Your Digital Presence

One of the best things you can do is to bring more traffic to your franchise's local website. Give your repeat customers a reason, or many reasons, to come back to the site daily.


Share raffles and prizes that people can win by returning. Include fun clicky games that users will wander back to day after day.


Create an active forum or a rich comments section of your blog.


The more people visit your website every day, the more active, relevant, and authoritative it will be considered by search engines. This is excellent for ranking and can raise your site above a franchise parent for local online activity.


9. Craft Hyper-Local Content

Inbound marketing and content marketing play an important role in local website ranking.


You don't just want to repeat the names of your service area markets. You want to include those names in a diverse and useful set of content.

The best way to do this is with localized blog articles and help section guides as part of your digital presence. 

Write about current events and your own company's involvement in local events. Get involved in festivals.

Share testimonials or interesting local cases, with client permission.

Share tips based on local conditions or weather concerns. Include the names of your service areas in these local content pieces.


10. Pair the Website with an App

Finally, don't forget mobile integration.

We don't just mean a responsive website design, though this is essential.


You can also use a mobile app to help boost traffic and relevancy on your local franchise website. By using your web server for mobile functions or by directing mobile users to sometimes access the website, your website can get a boost from mobile customer activity.

We Can Help Build Your Digital Presence

Ranking your local franchise website above the company site is not as hard as it sounds.


While the parent company may have a larger umbrella marketing budget, you have the advantage of local business venues, local customers, local service areas, and more focused website content creation.


For more local marketing insights, contact the experts at LocalBizGuru today!

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Nachum Langsner
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