Differentiating Franchise Location Names to better optimize locations
-
Hello All,
I am currently spear heading SEO for a national franchise. I am coming across locations in the same city and zip code. I'm definitely finding difficulties in naming the location in a way that will be specific to the franchise locations (locations are 1 mile away from each other). I am looking to apply geo specific location names for each center regardless of local city terms. (e.g. Apexnetwork of north madronna, Apexnetwork of south madronna)
Also, building the website and location to read (apexnetwork.com/north-madronna….. apexnetwork.com/south-madronna)
While encouraging the client to continue using the geo specific terms while writing blogs.
Is this best practice? Any feedback would help.
-
Hey Jeff!
Great topic. Let me number by responses for easier reading:
-
First of all, important to be clear here that regardless of how you think of the business location, their name on all their local business listings must simply be their real-world brand, as it appears on street signage. So, only Apexnetwork on all listings. Not Apexnetwork North Madronna, Apexnetwork South Madrona.
-
When franchises operate in cities where there are distinct, known districts (like San Francisco with North Beach, the Sunset District, Bernal Height, etc) this would be my favorite way to differentiate branches on the website, it terms of what I would put in the URL, the tags and the text. People actually search this way (pizza North Beach, pizza Sunset District). But, in other cases where the public doesn't strongly identify different neighborhoods of a city, I recommend following Taco Bell's lead and just going by street address. Here's a example: https://locations.tacobell.com/tx/dallas/3127-inwood-rd.html?utm_source=yext&utm_campaign=googlelistings&utm_medium=referral&utm_term=001331&utm_content=website
So, unless you have two franchise locations on the same street (unlikely), the above model can work. Just remember, this is for website use ... not for differentiating the names on the listings.
- Finally, if you're needing to separate out a variety of locations for something like a spreadsheet, or Google My Business, or Moz Local, you can assign a store code to each of the locations.
Hope this helps!
-
-
Jeff,
If you have fewer than 10 locations, you’ll have to enter them individually.
Businesses with 10 or more eligible locations can add, verify, and manage them in bulk.
According to the Google partners test, if you end up listing less then 10 and want to differentiate them you use things like the street name or if it was like in a mall the malls name etc. IT indicates not to use store numbers. IF you're going to be doing web design or marketing that involves directory listings for entities like bing and Google, I highly suggest certifying for Google Partners, it's free and it will give you some versatility with the PPC bidding alongside SEO organic.
-
Hi Jeff, I think I can help you with this, but to clarify, it looks like you have three separate questions:
1. What is best practice for naming different locations to optimize for local SEO?
2. What is the best URL structure to optimize for local SEO?
3. Should geo specific terms be used in blogs?Be sure to let me know if I'm missing the mark. I'm also going to go heavy on industry jargon and assume you know what it means, so feel free to ask questions if I go over your head at any point.
1. For local SEO, it's important to start with a good foundation. This means you have citations claimed for each location with consistent NAP information on your GMB profile, your listings, and the landing page on your website for that location. So if your name includes the geo on the website, it should also include the geo on your GMB profile and citations. It's preferably to use the specific city name they are in. For example, if you're in Flower Mound, TX, be sure to use Flower Mound, not Dallas. Some local SEOs get tripped by targeting the metro area they're in and that can tank results. If some of your locations are in the same city, dividing them up somehow as North/South, East/West, etc. is fine. Google typically picks one or both in those circumstances to display in search.
2. For URL structure, using subpages the way you have laid out is fine. For enterprise local SEO my agency uses a proprietary, scalable CMS to build unique, local websites that rank very well, so I'm more familiar with that structure, but one of the tricks we use is to include a geo variable in the URL, which helps rank for some terms like "glass repair dallas tx", because we can get picked up on the exact match. Every little bit helps.
3. For blogs, I would recommend you completely ignore the geo unless your blog is very unique and specific to the location. You should really only target the location when it's a page that you're trying to rank for local queries and you typically don't have that in a blog. For example, a blog about "what to expect in a hundred year old house" will typically not rank for keywords that trigger the local algorithm, so there's no reason to add the geo. It just gets in the way of the content, and inferior content doesn't rank well. Now a blog like "what to plant in your [location] fall garden" just may have some localization to it, because what you plant in the fall in Des Moines is different than Atlanta. But I find these cases to be few and far between.
Hope that helps, let me know if you have questions.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is there value in including a city name in my keyphrase if my target demo is searching from within that city?
If I'm located in Phoenix, and I search for "mobile app development" it automatically adds an implied "near me" to bring up local results first, right? Therefore, I would assume searching "mobile app development phoenix" would garner the same results. It seems targeting "mobile app development phoenix" as a keyphrase is only valuable if I want people outside of Phoenix to find me when searching for mobile app development. Is it correct that focusing on national keywords/phrases ("mobile app development") will improve my ranking nationally AND in my local market? Links to reputable articles support your answer are much appreciated
Local Website Optimization | | Kitely_Katie1 -
Proper SEO structure for Franchise/ Franchisee websites
Hi Neighbors, Franchise website design and development can be difficult, there’s no doubt about it. I had to find the right balance between a unique and unified brand identity, and a localized experience that accurately reflects the individual franchisees and their efforts. Due to the many benefits, I have structured the to read _domain.com/location _ domain.com = TLD /location = subfolder (location page) I have also built a customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) and have given each location access to manage their location page (subfolder). To accommodate local SEO optimization, franchisees have complete control in terms of optimizing their location page (subfolder). Title tags, meta description, Alt tags, etc... Will any local optimization performed in the subfolder (location page) be stiffened because it was not done in the TLD but in the subfolder ?
Local Website Optimization | | Jeffvertus1 -
Should Multi Location Businesses "Local Content Silo" Their Services Pages?
I manage a site for a medical practice that has two locations. We already have a location page for each office location and we have the NAP for both locations in the footer of every page. I'm considering making a change to the structure of the site to help it rank better for individual services at each of the two locations, which I think will help pages rank in their specific locales by having the city name in the URL. However, I'm concerned about diluting the domain authority that gets passed to the pages by moving them deeper in the site's structure. For instance, the services URLs are currently structured like this: www.domain.com/services/teeth-whitening (where the service is offered in each of the two locations) Would it make sense to move to a structure more like www.domain.com/city1name/teeth-whitening www.domain.com/city2name/teeth-whitening Does anyone have insight from dealing with multi-location brands on the best way to go about this?
Local Website Optimization | | formandfunctionagency1 -
Service Area Location Pages vs. User Experience
I'm familiar with the SAB best practices outlined here. Here's my issue: Doing local landing pages as described here might not be ideal from a user experience point of view. Having a "Cities We Serve" or "Service Areas" link in the main navigation isn't necessarily valuable to the user when the city-specific landing pages are all places within a 15-mile radius of the SAB's headquarters. It would just look like the company did it for SEO. It wouldn't look natural. Seriously, it feels like best practices are totally at odds with user experience here. If I absolutely must create location pages for 10 or so municipalities within my client's service area, I'd rather NOT put the service areas as a primary navigation item. It is not useful to the user. Anyone who sees that the company provides services in the [name of city] metropolitan area will already understand that the company can service their town that is 5 miles away. It is self-evident. For example**, who would wonder whether a plumbing company with a Los Angeles address also services Beverly Hills?** It's just... silly. But the Moz guide says I've got to do those location pages! And that I've got to put them high up in the navigation! This is a problem because we've got to do local SEO, but we also have to provide an ideal experience. Thoughts?
Local Website Optimization | | Greenery1 -
Does having a host located in a different country than the location of the website/website's audience affects SEO?
For example if the website is example.ro and the hosting would be on Amazon Web Services. Thanks for your help!
Local Website Optimization | | IrinaIoana0 -
Ranking could be better - wondering why
Hi there, I do SEO for the page conny-ehm.de. I improved the subsite http://www.conny-ehm.de/bewerbungsfotos-freiburg.html to receive an A grade by the on-page grader for the words Bewerbungsfotos Freiburg. However when searching for Bewerbungsfotos Freiburg it is not the subsite that shows up but the main page www.conny-ehm.de. This however get an F in the on-page grader. What should I do to improve the ranking? I do not care which one shows up but I think it should be feasible to get under the top 3. a) Should I improve also the main page for the keywords? I think than I am building an internal concurrence to the subsite which is maybe rather bad. b) Should I place a del canonical on the main site referring to the subsite? c) ??? Thanks for your answers Best regards Marc
Local Website Optimization | | RWW0 -
What is the effect of CloudFlare CDN on page load speeds, hosting IP location and the ultimate SEO effect?
Will using a CDN like CloudFlare.com confuse search engines in terms of the location (IP address) of where the site is actually physically hosted especially since CloudFlare distributes the site's content all around the globe? I understand it is important that if customers are mostly in a particular city it makes sense to host on an IP address in the same city for better rankings, all things else being equal? I have a number of city-based sites but does it make having multiple hosting plans in multiple cities/ countries (to be close to customers) become suddenly a ridiculous thing with a CDN? In other words should I just reduce it down to having one hosting plan anywhere and just use the CDN to distribute it? I am really struggling with this concept trying to understand if I should consolidate all my hosting plans under one, or if I should get rid of CloudFlare entirely (can it cause latency in come cases) and create even more locally-based hosting plans (like under site5.com who allow many city hosting plans). I really hope you can help me somehow or point me to an expert who can clarify this confusing conundrum. Of course my overall goal is to have:
Local Website Optimization | | uworlds
1. lowest page load times
2. best UX
3. best rankings I do realise that other concepts are more important for rankings (great content, and links etc.) but assuming that is already in place and every other factor is equal, how can I fine tune the hosting to achieve the desirable goals above? Many thanks!
Mark0 -
Multiple Locations with Branded Name/Keyword in URL
I have a client, let's call him "Bob". Bob has 2 stores where he sells "Widgets", Bob's Widgets and Bob's Widgets South. These locations are roughly 40 miles from each other and serve two different marketplaces. Each location has their own website "www.bobswidgets.com & www.bobswidgetssouth.com". Each location is run by different individuals. The Store Manager at Bob's Widgets is complaining that when you type "Bob's Widgets" into the search engines "Bob's Widgets South" website is indexing in the 2nd and/or 3rd position. The Store Manager at Bob's Widgets feels that Bob's Widgets South could be stealing business from him because of the way Google is indexing the sites. I have explained to him that the keyword the user is typing in is in both names of the locations and in each URL and this is prompting the search engine to index both sites. Am I missing something else???
Local Website Optimization | | mittcom0