Franchisers, just like other small business owners, have goals for driving sales at the local levels. With marketing strategies changing constantly in our connected world, consumer-based marketing to support those sales goals can be quiet a challenge. Today’s franchisers must gain expertise and/or dedicate adequate resources to keep up with competition in the fast-changing world.
Are you operating a franchise business and need in-depth guidelines on how to go about it successfully? This article sheds light on ways to optimize franchise websites and other new marketing techniques that may help your website become an authority in the franchising industry.
Optimizing Franchise Websites for Local Markets
You need a plan to stay relevant in the turbulent waters full of experts aiming to get the most out of franchise websites. Here are a few simple and straightforward tips you can use to have an edge in optimizing your website.
1) Make a web page for each store location.
List the store’s address, phone number, business operation and include any other contact details. If you use call tracking numbers, make sure you add them using Dynamic Number Insertion. Having an easy to reach URL that is unique for each store is also a best practice. This significantly helps during the creation of sitemaps, which are vital in search engine optimization.
2) Keep all your web pages on the same domain.
This approach keeps your web pages from competing with each other, which may result in self-cannibalization in local search engines. Self-cannibalization is the act of placing similar keywords in webpages of a website specifically by using titles in order to rank well in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Having multiple web pages on different domains does not work on brick-and-mortar-stores. This causes confusion to your customers and visitors, as well as search engines.
3) Add an HTML sitemap for all store locations.
As a franchiser, you’re on a quest to see your business succeed. So, you must create sitemaps for specific web pages. Sitemaps become a necessity when optimizing websites, since they not only necessitate your site’s visibility to search engines, but also serve as an information benchmark to crawlers in case of any changes you make on your website.
4) Create a Google+ local page for each store location and add links.
You may have an arsenal of SEO tools to apply for your website, but Google+ has proven to be a valuable resource. Not only is it a powerful social media platform, but is also a powerful page ranking tool. Your website receives a Do-Follow link, which means that you benefit from incoming links. Our related blog post here shares some reasons why Google+ is an essential tool for business.
Here’s a description from Google of Google+ Local pages:
5) Set up tracking and analytics for each store location.
Consider setting up call tracking for each location. The reason behind this step is to have your website data integrated with your CRM system. It is therefore a good idea to consider Google Analytics to track and understand visitors who frequent your franchise websites. You can also use page tracking as part of your campaign, as it allows you to measure the number of page views you receive on particular pages on the website.
Final Thoughts
All in all, optimization of franchise websites is not only a difficult task, but it requires a skill that every business-minded individual should consider investing in to compete.
By mastering these five tips, you could be a few steps away from optimizing your franchising websites and improving your marketing techniques. For more tips on beginning and improving a franchise business, check out our helpful resoure below for a roadmap to franchise success.
