Franchise SEO Strategies: A Guide for 2025

Operating a franchise is a fantastic way to start a business. 

People are already aware of your brand, you get the support and backing of a well-established organization, and there’s a pre-existing customer base ready to buy.

However, consistent effort is essential for long-term success.

Franchise SEO is essential for ranking in search engine results and increasing your reach to new customers. 

In this article, I’ll explain franchise SEO, how it differs from traditional SEO, and strategies to help your franchise stand out.

Key Takeaways

• Franchise SEO involves optimizing your online presence to help your franchise rank higher in search engine results.
• SEO for franchises is different from regular SEO as you have to ensure all your franchise locations are optimized for a local audience that’s ready to buy.
• Franchise SEO can be a balancing act. You need to ensure consistency between your locations but also ensure your locations stand out independently.
• Ways to improve your franchise SEO include identifying the right keywords to target, creating a Google Business Profile for each location, and getting NAP (name, address, and phone number) citations.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What is Franchise SEO?
• Franchise SEO vs Regular SEO: What’s The Difference?
  • Challenges With Franchise SEO
• Use These SEO Strategies For Your Franchise
  • 1. Identify The Most Important Keywords Related To Your Business
  • 2. Localize Your Keywords
  • 3. Localize Your Website
  • 4. Optimize Your Individual Businesses on Google Business Profile and Other Directories
  • 5. Make Sure Your Brand Is Consistent
  • 6. Target and Remove Duplicate Content
  • 7. Have A Local Link Building Strategy
  • 8. Ensure NAP Consistency
  • 9. Optimize E-E-A-T On Local Pages
  • 10. Develop A Great Content Strategy
  • 11. Encourage Local and Online Content Reviews
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What is Franchise SEO?

Franchise search engine optimization (or SEO) is when you optimize your online presence to make your franchise business stand out in search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

Key franchise SEO strategies include:

• Optimizing your website for local keywords.
• Creating website content to appeal to customers and localize the content when relevant.
• Getting backlinks from relevant local websites.
• Encouraging customers to submit reviews of your business.
• Ensuring your website loads quickly and is mobile responsive (57 percent of local search queries are done on a mobile device or tablet.)

With franchises, there’s a lot of competition. You’re not only up against other brands but potentially competing branches in the same franchise.

Given that three-quarters of people use Google to find local business information, the higher you can rank in the search engine results, the better.

Whether you run one franchise or twenty, implementing effective SEO for your franchise means your website receives more organic traffic. This in turn leads to more store visits, sales, and profits.

Franchise SEO vs Regular SEO: What’s The Difference?

Regular SEO focuses on keywords and content that pertain to a single website or company as a whole. 

On the other hand, franchise SEO is a specialized form of SEO that focuses on optimizing each franchise location. Typically, this means local SEO is a large part of the strategy. This includes making sure that each site contains the correct information—such as address and contact details—and that it is formatted correctly.

This makes SEO for franchises trickier, as you need to optimize each location independently.

If you manage multiple franchise locations, you also need to consider the structure of your website and how all your location pages work together. You don’t want to promote one location at the expense of another.

With franchise SEO, people tend to search for more niche, location-specific keywords. You must consider their search intent to optimize your website properly. 

Challenges With Franchise SEO

While effective franchise SEO is rewarding, it presents unique challenges.

Some of the challenges specific to franchise SEO include:

• The risk of duplicate content. Franchise websites often use similar content on each of the franchises website, which can lead to duplicate content issues in the search engine results. It’s essential to keep duplicate content to a minimum.
• Building local content. With SEO for your franchise, you need to balance the need for regular SEO with the need for local SEO. You need to make each individual franchise location stand out but ensure each operates within brand guidelines.
• Brand inconsistency. Franchises need to have a cohesive look and feel. While it’s important for your stores to rank as high as possible, they must share a consistent brand identity.

Use These SEO Strategies For Your Franchise

Now that we understand the differences between regular and franchise SEO, let’s look deeper into some SEO strategies to help your franchise succeed.

1. Identify The Most Important Keywords Related To Your Business

The first step in any SEO strategy is to identify and research the most important keywords related to your franchise. 

Consider:

• Your target audience. What keywords are they most likely to use?
• Your location. You want to target local keywords and terms.
• Your competitors. What keywords do they rank for?
• Search intent. Are customers looking for information or are they ready to buy?

There are many tools available that can help you identify and research the right keywords for your franchise.

Ubersuggest allows you to get insight into the strategies that work for others in your market so you can adopt them, improve them, and gain an edge. 

In the example below, the term “best mattresses near me” has an SEO difficulty of 35. This means that while it might be easy to rank highly, you may struggle to clinch the top spot.

However, “best mattress stores near me” has an SEO difficulty of six, meaning there’s less competition and more chance of clinching the top spot.

Another valuable free tool for franchise SEO is Google Keyword Planner. 

While it’s designed for use with Google Ads, it can suggest a wealth of relevant keywords based on a seed phrase or your website URL.

2. Localize Your Keywords

Localizing your keywords ensures that you target the right customers in the right areas. 

If you have multiple locations, it is especially important to localize your keywords in order to reach customers in each area.

Let’s say you run a car maintenance franchise in Broward County, Florida. Good localized keywords to use might include:

• “Car repairs in Fort Lauderdale.”
• Car servicing in Pembroke Pines.”
• Car mechanic in Hollywood.”

Hyperlocal SEO focuses on targeting specific geographic areas, like neighborhoods or streets, to maximize visibility.

3. Localize Your Website

Localizing your website is a great way to optimize for local SEO and promote your individual franchise locations.

Create dedicated pages for each franchise location with a clear address, phone number, and other relevant information.

This helps you rank for local keywords and increases your number of NAP (name, address, phone number) citations, which I’ll talk about later.

Also include a map of the area with each franchise’s location marked. This will not only make your website more search engine-friendly, but help customers find the nearest location.

Oftentimes, franchises use multiple domains. The main corporate domain serves as the central hub for the franchise brand, providing high-level information, while individual franchise locations use separate domains to target local audiences more effectively.In this case, linking all of the domains together will help search engines understand that they are related.

4. Optimize Your Individual Businesses on Google Business Profile and Other Directories

One of the best ways to enhance your franchise’s search engine presence is to set up Google Business Profiles for each location.

A Google Business Profile provides additional context about your franchise locations, including your address, phone number, hours, and products or services you provide. 

Having a Google Business profile also increases the chance of your franchise appearing in the “Local Pack” map at the top of the search results.

Be sure to complete as many fields as possible and keep your profile up to date to ensure you always provide searchers with the most accurate information. 

As well as signing up for a Google Business Profile, signing up to other directories can increase your franchise’s visibility online, build additional NAP citations, and generate backlinks to your website.

However, it’s vital to choose well-established, relevant, and authoritative directories. Low-quality, spammy directories can potentially harm your online presence.

Sites like Yelp, Foursquare, and YP (Yellow Pages) are good starting points. I also recommend speaking to your local government’s business team to see which directories they recommend.

5. Make Sure Your Brand Is Consistent

McDonald’s is one of the largest franchised businesses in the world. It has a massive “marketing bible”, which tells franchisees everything from what colors to use to which words to avoid. 

Source: It’s Nice That

As a result, McDonald’s has amazing brand consistency, and customers can expect the same high-quality experience wherever they are in the world.

While you don’t need a large guide like McDonald’s, you do need a cohesive look and brand voice. This not only helps customers trust you, but helps the search engines understand that you are a legitimate business.

This means making sure that your brand messaging, logo, visuals, and fonts are uniform across all platforms, including your website, Google Business Profile, and social media accounts.

The easiest way to do this is through a style guide and regular audits to ensure all your digital marketing assets are consistent.

6. Target and Remove Duplicate Content

When you have a website with multiple location pages that are very similar, you risk confusing the search engines.

If a search engine sees several pages with duplicate content, it has to decide which one to rank. It uses a number of factors to work this out, but there is a chance it gets the answer incorrect.

This means there’s the possibility that the search engines show the wrong location page to the wrong person, which can frustrate your potential customers.

Contrary to popular belief, duplicate content won’t tank your search engine rankings unless you’re using it deceptively. However, to keep the search engines happy, it’s best to minimize duplicate content on your website where possible.

For example, let’s say you operate a chain of restaurants and have the same menu at each. Rather than having an identical menu on each location page, have the menu on a stand-alone page and link to it instead. 

7. Have A Local Link Building Strategy

Link building is when other websites link back to your own site. 

When you get links from relevant, high-quality sites, this shows the search engines that your website is trustworthy and reliable, leading to a boost in the search results.

Link building is one of the trickiest aspects of franchise SEO as the results are out of your control—there’s no guarantee that other websites will link to you. Plus, you need to get backlinks for all your locations to ensure they all see an enhanced search engine presence.

However get your strategy right, and it’s worth the effort.

Here are some ways you can get links for your franchises:

• Befriend local journalists and they’ll give you a heads-up when they need a quote for a story.
• Partner with related local businesses. For example, if you run a coffee shop, join forces with a bakery.
• Hold special events, sponsor local sports teams, or run a competition to get links in the local press.
• Use tools like Ubersuggest to identify the backlinks your competitors have got. You can then approach the same websites to see if they’ll link to your franchise as well.

8. Ensure NAP Consistency

A NAP (or NAP citation) is a mention of your franchise’s “Name, Address, and Phone Number” on a website. 

This can be your own website, a directory, a social media profile, or another business’s site.

NAP citations are a significant part of local SEO success. They show the search engines that your business is active and legitimate.

It’s important to make sure your franchise name, address, and phone number are accurate and consistent across all platforms to maximize visibility. Accurate citations across the internet increase your authority. Similarly, accurate information helps potential customers find you more easily. 

9. Optimize E-E-A-T On Local Pages

E-E-A-T stands for “Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.”

Google wants to prioritize the most credible and reliable websites in the search engine results. It uses the E-E-A-T framework in its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines to determine which content to promote.

E-E-A-T is especially important on “Your Money or Your Life” (YMYL) sites. These are websites that could have an impact on someone’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety. 

In order to optimize E-E-A-T on your franchise’s local pages, you should include a variety of content, such as customer reviews, product descriptions, contact information, FAQs, and informational articles. 

Doing this will help build trust and credibility with search engines and customers.

Another good way to enhance your franchise SEO is to showcase your credentials. For example, if you run a daycare franchise, tell customers what qualifications and certifications your employees have can help build your credibility.

10. Develop A Great Content Strategy

When you operate a franchise, good content marketing is essential. 

Not only does it encourage customers to stay on your website and convert, but it also attracts backlinks and helps you rank in the search engines.

The great thing about content marketing is that there are lots of different types. This means that no matter what you sell, where your franchise operates, or what your budget is, you can create content prospective customers want to engage with.

Above is a blog on the Molly Maid website. The content is designed to focus on cleaning tips for users to read and use, so even if you end up not using their services, the content still has value.

These content types work especially well when it comes to franchise SEO as you can focus on both local and national topics and trends:

• Blog posts.
• Podcasts.
• Video content.
• Infographics.
• Social media posts.

To get started with content marketing, understand your target market and what their pain points are. 

You can then create SEO-optimized content that answers their questions and encourages them to use your product or services.

11. Encourage Local and Online Content Reviews

Two-thirds of customers say they’re influenced by customer reviews. This means the more positive reviews you can generate, the more likely prospective customers are to buy from you.

Having lots of reviews not only builds trust and entices customers to use your products or services but also supports local SEO. Reviews posted on platforms like Google Business Profile can include keywords naturally mentioned by customers, which helps improve your relevance in local search results. While these keywords may not directly boost your website’s rankings, they can enhance visibility on the review platform itself, making it easier for potential customers to find your business. Additionally, positive reviews serve as powerful social proof, showing future customers that others trust and value your business, which can drive more conversions.

The easiest way to get reviews is just to ask. Send an email to customers after using your services and ask them to leave a review, whether that’s on your Google Business Profile, your Facebook page, or a review platform like Tripadvisor.

Be sure to respond to all reviews, whether they’re positive or negative. 

According to Brightlocal, 88 percent of customers say they are “fairly” or “highly” likely to use a business that takes the time to leave feedback on all reviews.

FAQs

What is Franchise SEO?

SEO for franchises is the practice of optimizing your website (or websites) so you rank as high as possible in the search engine results for all locations you operate in.

How do I Build Local SEO for New Franchise Locations?

One of the most important things is to make sure that your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) is consistent across all websites and directories you are mentioned on.

This will help search engines find your information and ensure you rank as high as possible in the search engine results. You should also create trustworthy, engaging content related to your industry and encourage customers to leave reviews.

Conclusion

Franchise SEO is essential for driving web traffic, building trust, and building customer loyalty. 

Plus the fantastic thing is that it works whether you sell sandwiches, smoothies, or software solutions!

Remember that when it comes to SEO for franchises, you’ve got to be consistent. 

Make sure your information appears the same across all platforms and that each of your location pages uses the same branding and tone of voice.Get this right, and prospective customers are sure to fall in love with your franchise.