Why Most SEO for Franchises Doesn't Work and How to Do it Right

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Some people say trying to manage SEO for franchises is like trying to herd cats.

It's a frustrating experience, full of "No, don't do that!" and "Oh, come on!".

The main issue with SEO for franchises is the complexity added with the more locations and personalities you add into the equation.

But it can be done successfully... we promise.

To prove this, today we're going to list the biggest problems facing today's franchises when it comes to their SEO, and how you can work around them.

Problem #1: Lack of SEO Knowledge From Corporate
In most cases, the top level people have little to no knowledge of SEO for franchises or even SEO basics, for that matter. They just throw money at the problem and want to know why it's not fixed yet.

Most often when it comes to SEO for franchises, they will just outsource the SEO optimization to an agency (like us).

This is the right move, but often creates a game of broken telephone. Best practices and updates now have to travel from the agency to the corporate contact to the franchise owners.

Or, the company may decide to build their own internal marketing team, which can take one of those layers of miscommunication out of the chain. But in-house SEO teams don't always work out because corporate notices:

Their spending is going to employee surcharges (which can be 25-40% above their salary) like taxes, benefits, sick days, and mat leave, instead of SEO.
SEO employees tend to prefer working for an agency, so they get bored or frustrated working in-house and quit
There can be "culture clashes" as the "marketing minds" have issues meshing with the rest of the company
In either case, the problems and misinformation tend to start at the top and trickle down.

Problem #2: Lack of SEO Knowledge From Each Franchise
Let's say you open a Midas Muffler location. You probably did so because you're a car-person, not an SEO person. You know nothing of SEO for franchises. And why should you, right?

You've bought into a franchise because you want to go into business for yourself and attach yourself to a strong brand name that everyone has heard of.

You think "I don't need to worry about SEO. Besides, I assume the computer eggheads at corporate will take care of it. Right?" Wrong, most of the time.

As a result, you would be amazed how many household names and massively indonesia phone number list well-known corporations have absolutely terrible local SEO presences.

The smaller "mom and pop shops" may actually be showing up higher in local rankings, because they actually know what they're doing, or have clear strategy guidance from a local agency.

Problem #3: Problems Policing/ Tracking Each Location
Corporate's role in managing SEO for franchises is to make sure everyone else is doing the right thing. And only the right things, with no "extra measures."

Keep in mind, in many cases, they have little to no knowledge of SEO, and are merely acting as an informational middle-man for the best practices.

So the following things need to happen perfectly in order - or the whole thing falls apart.

The agency or marketing team comes up with an SEO for franchises plan and playbook of best practices.
The agency or team presents it and receive a sign-off from the corporate higher-ups.
Someone from the corporate side of things communicates the important details of this plan to the franchisees.
The franchisees communicate this plan to their employees to carry out the plan.
Someone from the agency or corporate side of things monitors and audits the franchisees' work to make sure it's done correctly.*
*This person may or may not have any knowledge of SEO and may be working with nothing more than an SEO for franchises checklist they were given by the agency or higher-ups.

Misinformation Flows Downhill
See the fragility of this informational chain? If there is a missed step or a miscommunication at any level, you have a real problem.

Let's pose a hypothetical situation. Let's say Google announces that they are no longer indexing sites with keywords in their image titles.

Now, you need to remove the keywords from all the filenames from all the images on all of your franchise sites.

The agency tells the corporate contact, who misunderstands. They think you need to remove the keywords from the image captions (not filenames). So they send a mass email telling all the franchise owners to do it.

As we've already said, most of the franchise owners aren't SEO experts. So some owners remove the keyword from the captions, as requested. But some remove it from the filename and others remove it from the alt tags. Others do nothing.

Now, it's up to the corporate contact (who started the misinformation train, to begin with) to audit and police all of the changes to make sure they're done the correct way... when they don't even know what the right way themselves.

Did you get a migraine just reading that scenario? Imagine living it... every single day. That headache is the very nature of SEO for franchises.

Problem #4: Franchisees "Going Rogue"
In some cases, the franchise owner having some SEO knowledge may be more harmful than them having none at all. Here's why.

They may think that they know better than the information being handed down from corporate. So when information comes to them from the top, a franchisee may choose to:

Ignore it, because they don't think it will work
Follow it, but with a twist of their own SEO knowledge
Follow it, but quickly try something else because they don't think it's working
This creates problems, obviously. For an SEO for franchises plan to work effectively, everyone has to be doing the same thing so you can accurately measure the results.

But franchisees are responsible for the success of their own franchise, which controls the amount of money going in and out of their own personal bank account.

So they may care less about the importance of an overall SEO for franchises plan, and will only care that they're losing business to the local competition and need to do something to turn the tide ASAP.

Failure Through Success
Now, in another ironic twist, the worst thing that could happen is this franchise owner is right and actually sees some SEO wins because of their own rogue tactics.

This is going to be a big problem for two reasons:

Information coming from the top level has now lost all credibility to the franchise owner. They will second-guess or disregard everything from now on. They will always assume that they know better.
They could even pass on their SEO "tricks" to another local franchise owner that they're friends with.