Latest Report on Search Engine Optimization Trends and Impact Within the 2023 Franchise Sector
Boosting SEO for Franchises: A Comprehensive Guide
A new study, titled the Franchise Industry State of SEO Report, has revealed key factors contributing to SEO success within the franchise industry. The research, which analysed the SEO performance of the top 500 franchises, provides valuable insights for businesses looking to improve their online visibility and organic traffic.
The study found notable variations in page speed performance across different franchise categories, with Home Improvement franchises having the highest average performance score. However, the average organic traffic for the top 500 websites was 508,369 visitors per month, with McDonald's being the top performer with 30,356,656 monthly visitors.
Industries with lower average On-Page SEO scores, such as Food and Retail, should prioritise their optimization efforts. To achieve this, franchises should tailor their strategies to the specific needs of their industry, understanding customer search behaviors, and leveraging relevant keywords.
Franchises can learn from top performers like Office Pride and Tech Businesses by studying their optimization strategies to enhance their On-Page SEO scores and overall digital presence. In fact, Office Pride has an exceptional On-Page SEO score of 99.3, a competitive advantage in search engine rankings and online visibility.
To improve their SEO, franchises should adopt a plain language approach, employing clear and concise language, avoiding excessive technical jargon, and simplifying complex concepts to enhance content accessibility. The average Flesch Reading Ease Score among the top 500 franchise websites was 73, indicating "fairly easy to read" content, but there was significant variation within this group.
The study also found that approximately 54% of the top 500 franchise websites have implemented some form of schema markup, with industries like lodging, personal care, and pets showing higher adoption rates.
Local link building for franchise locations is another effective strategy. Franchises have the advantage of multiple locations, each of which can earn backlinks from location-specific directories, local business listings (e.g., Yelp), and community sites. This distributed link acquisition strengthens overall domain authority and local organic rankings.
An aggressive and targeted content strategy is also crucial. Because franchises often compete in heavily contested markets, it's important to create high-quality, relevant, and locally optimized content for each franchise location. Use local keywords naturally and develop unique blog posts or landing pages that cater to specific user needs in each area.
The Skyscraper Technique can also be used to improve content. Identify already-ranking content related to your franchise niche that could be improved (more up-to-date, better visuals, deeper insights) and create superior versions. This method helps gain organic backlinks and boosts domain authority.
Backlink quality over quantity is another key consideration. Focus on obtaining high-quality backlinks through digital PR, competitor analysis to find link opportunities, strategic outreach, and content promotion instead of merely accumulating backlinks. These quality links better signal authority to Google and improve rankings.
Combining SEO with paid search can also help maintain visibility and traffic while organic rankings improve over time. Mobile search results often prioritize ads above organic results, so running Google Ads alongside SEO efforts can help ensure visibility.
Technical and On-Page SEO are also essential. For each franchise site or page, ensure proper keyword research, on-page optimization (meta tags, headers), good site structure, internal linking, and fast loading speed to maximize user experience and crawlability.
Finally, franchises should focus on domain authority and organic traffic over time. Domain authority grows with consistent quality content, natural link acquisition, and maintained site health, which in turn drives sustained organic traffic increases. Quality content creation, building a robust backlink profile, monitoring and analyzing performance, and collaborating with influencers and partners can help improve domain authority.
Summary table for Franchise SEO Strategy focus areas:
| Factor | Franchise SEO Approach | |--------------------|--------------------------------------------------------| | Organic Traffic | Localized, keyword-rich content for each location; strong backlinks from local listings and digital PR | | Rankings | Skyscraper content improvements; targeted keyword use; mobile optimization; Google Ads complement | | Content Quality | Unique, relevant, evergreen content; regular updates; good visuals and user-friendly structure | | Domain Authority | High-quality backlinks via strategic outreach and local partnerships, avoiding low-quality or spammy links |
By combining franchise-specific link-building tactics with modern SEO best practices in content and technical SEO, you can effectively boost organic traffic, improve rankings, increase content quality, and grow domain authority in the franchise industry.
- The study on SEO performance of franchises recommends that industries with lower On-Page SEO scores, such as Food and Retail, should prioritize optimization efforts and tailor their strategies to their specific needs.
- Franchises can benefit from studying the optimization strategies of top performers like Office Pride to enhance their On-Page SEO scores and overall digital presence.
- To improve SEO, franchises should adopt a plain language approach, using clear and concise language, avoiding excessive technical jargon, and simplifying complex concepts.
- Approximately 54% of the top 500 franchise websites have implemented schema markup, with higher adoption rates in industries like lodging, personal care, and pets.
- Local link building for franchise locations is an effective strategy, as multiple locations can earn backlinks from location-specific directories, local business listings, and community sites, strengthening overall domain authority.
- An aggressive and targeted content strategy is crucial, creating high-quality, relevant, and locally optimized content for each franchise location, using natural keywords.
- The Skyscraper Technique can be used to improve content by creating superior versions of already-ranking content related to the franchise niche.
- Backlink quality over quantity is important; focus on obtaining high-quality backlinks through digital PR, competitor analysis, strategic outreach, and content promotion.
- Combining SEO with paid search can help maintain visibility and traffic while organic rankings improve over time, with mobile search often prioritizing ads above organic results.
- Technical and On-Page SEO are essential for each franchise site or page, ensuring proper keyword research, on-page optimization, good site structure, internal linking, and fast loading speed.
- Focus on growing domain authority over time by creating quality content, building a robust backlink profile, monitoring and analyzing performance, and collaborating with influencers and partners.
