The Franchise Challenge: How should I handle 200 franchisee websites?
-
Hi all.. this is not a question about how this can be done but which is better for SEO.
Franchises make up 8% of the USA small business market. This is no small potatoes. But everything about Google seems designed for the unique, stand-alone business (Places, Analytics, Adwords, Duplicate Content Rules, etc.) ... I think about this issue a lot so wanted to put it to the community.
Imagine a franchisor with 200 locations. This company licenses its brand and business operations system - that's what a franchise is. So each local franchisee starts out with a "content ready" website template which they are required to use for brand compliance.
(Each local franchisee has a Google Place page and a Local Website in their territory.)Assuming each solution has the same number of local citations around 50% duplicate content on its services pages (e.g. branding text)... which of the following does Google like best?
- A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee site in a subfolder of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version.
domain.com/location - A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee in a subdomain of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version. location.domain.com
- A multi-manager dashboard (e.g. ManageWP) which operates an individual Wordpress installs on a single server (dedicated self-install server, sites share IPs)
_localdomain.com _ - A multi-manager dashboard which operates an individual Wordpress install on multiple, diverse servers (e.g. shared hosting on diverse hosts.)
localdomain.com
I know that the best case would be for each franchisee individually to be so motivated to set up their own site and properly use brand elements, get links, etc. but this is impractical (trust me.)~~~~~~(*update 4/4/13 - I have written a blog post which describes what I think is the ideal franchise web marketing & SEO program and would welcome additional comments!)
- A single, customized CMS (e.g. Drupal) which places each franchisee site in a subfolder of the TLD. Highly duplicated services pages are given canonical pointers to the main site's version.
-
This thread is fantastic and very helpful to me - thanks to all who chimed in to answer questions. After a lot of thought and a few months' drafts, I created a post which I hope describes the current "state of the art" for franchise/franchisee web marketing and SEO. I would be happy to have commentary/debate on the solution!
-
I have been through this with other sites. Nightmare. Every time.
There is a period of time when any properly designed, optimized franchisee "site cloud" is built before it ranks, and most franchisees will freak out - making the CMO's life a living hell. Search engines, analytics, paid search programs, ratings/review sites and social networks are not set up to help manage the parent/child relationship inherent in franchises. There are no super-user, admin setups so that, for example, you could have all of your franchisees in YELP with normal capabilities, but have a superuser which could manage them all from a single page, fix things, and even remove them if needed.
Anyone out there thinking of starting a franchise needs to lock "imminent domain" rights onto any website created right in the franchise agreement. The franchisor needs to state, with clarity, that they can make any change to the franchisee's provided website they wish, and that all franchisee-initiated online marketing programs must be approved by the franchisor. No rogue sites, no rogue facebook pages, instagram sites, etc. are allowed. If they do they forfeit their franchise license and ultimately could be sued for trademark infringement.
But this implies that the franchisor must come out firing on all cylinders, with a seriously good plan and best practices giving the franchisee the best chance of success.
Many franchisees are horrible business people, who have been mad at the franchise since the first week of ownership. This is often their life savings we're talking about, and after grand opening is when the hard work starts, and poor decisions come back to haunt.
-
I have a franchise customer who is looking to reel back in several "rogue" franchisees who did set up their own domains, like www.[franchise][location].com. The problem is that, as I think was mentioned here, those local sites are ranking higher than the "fully optimized" main site with the location sub-folders. Now having to go back and require 301 redirects is an absolute nightmare, particularly when you're at 100+ locations.
Has anyone done a successful migration away from multiple sites into a single root domain?
-
This is a great point, Scott. I wonder though if you couldn't use the zip code feature in Adwords to create unique campaigns for each store location, even in the same market, and then drive each ad to their respective location page on the root domain. Would this work?
-
In one case, which uses subfolders, the number of authority high page rank sites linking to the individual franchisee subfolders (and therefore contributing to the TLD's link equity) is substantial, yet the overal site cannot seem to break into page 1 of Google (despite weak competition.) Their SEOMOZ crawl and LInkScape profiles are good. They also have sporadic local ranking regionally despite linked Google Place pages and decent local citations (BBB, chambers, etc.) Other competitors, with less attractive link profiles are eating their lunch - out ranking them at every turn and at every region.
I explained the Penguin issues to the client a few weeks ago (in this case it could be Panda also) and nobody was willing to rip out an entire site architecture (including the CMS training of hundreds of owners... and other related issues) just in case their page 2 rating was caused an algorithmic penalty. That's especially a hard sell when the entire system is providing good consumer experience and doing no fringe SEO. The "new" architecture would look very similar to the old one - so nobody's buying that plan
-
Lots of good answers here, so let me start at the top.
Looks like you are dealing with 3 issues/questions.
1. CMS - No difference
2. Shared server or different server - Google is most likely going to be able to determine an administrative relationship between your sites one way or another, so this probably doesn't matter anyway.
The real problem comes when you start to interlink 200 sites. This can cause penalty headaches when done aggressively between different domains or subdomains (especially in light of Penguin). This typically isn't a problem with internal links on the same domain. +1 for subfolders.
3. Subdomain, Folders, or Directories - As far as Google Places goes, all are fine - as long as each seperate business has it's own separate
- Webpage (whether it's on the same domain, subdomain or folder)
- Address
- Phone #
- etc
... then Google will treat them as different business that you can claim in Google Places. (and you can manage them in bulk)
The advantage of placing everything on the same (sub)domain is that you consolidate your ranking power. Instead of doing link building for 200 sites, you can link build for just one. (Although you still want to target local links to specific pages - helps a ton). As long as you spread link equity amoung the individual business pages (both internal and external) you may have an easier time ranking when everything is on the same domain. +1 for subfolders.
The disadvantage of the folder method is branding. It makes your URLs potentially longer, and you might prefer the shorter domain names for local websites.
There's no "right" solution, but if it were me, I'd build everything on the same domain.
By the way, here's an interesting article from Matt Cutts
"If you have a lot of store or franchise locations, consider it a best practice to 1) make a web page for each store that lists the store’s address, phone number, business hours, etc. and 2) make an HTML sitemap to point to those pages with regular HTML links, not a search form or POST requests."
Wish I would have found that before I wrote out my answer.
-
the downside here is pretty obvious - Google Adwords. Having the same top level domain name in multiple accounts is a problem. This means that in a dense metro, several franchisees could not show adwords ads at the same time. This causes squabbles and fits.
But I'm trying to figure out in a post-Panda and post-Penguin world how to make sure my legit franchisee network does not look like we're trying to manipulate listings. We just need to display the right listing in the right territory
-
look like you learn something from books you are correct some content in home page changing this days because of the new update but no this site is up in many areas and infect look in Google for locksmith service and tell me what you think about our position with such a strong general keyword.
regard the many locations , its really not something that i can avoid as this company really have about 1000 techs and subs in all this locations nationwide, i am just the SEO guy
Mike
-
sorry you are correct i didn't understand before what you need.
I will go with number 2 location.domain.com
Mike
-
Sadly, Google is not your friend when it comes to scaling this up. Especially on Google Places. Neither is Bing. It's a mess.
-
I really appreciate your response and those from others
This is not a question about how this can be done but which is truly better for organic SEO, especially for the local franchisees.
-
I also like the idea of one main site and then sub-domains for regions. This would allow the main site to focus on the overall brand and the sub-domains can concentrate in local search and adjust content to answer the specific problems of the region. Many technologies can do this but Wordpress multisite would be good. The main blog being the main brand and then all other blogs can be put on sub-domains based on the franchise regions. You also can control the brand with the Wordpress theme on offer. You could then even extend this model as a communication mechanism as you have all the franchises in one place.
-
Interesting. I ask because I own an independent (not franchised) business that provides non-medical in-home caregiving services, allowing the elderly to continue living in their own homes instead of having to move to nursing homes. I was speculating that that might be the industry of the client that you were asking about, or something similar.
-
I have several clients in different industries, each with their own deployment, none of which I think is ideal
I'll go as far as to identify:
-
home service, 220 locations.
-
health & fitness, 315 locations
-
healthcare & wellness, 42 locations
-
-
I really do not follow the answer. Did you read my original question through?
-
I like Mike's answer and it led me to wonder: I wonder whether the original poster would be willing to state what industry is this company in?
-
i will highly recommend you stay with one main site that refer to "local office" and you can also do many different maps on the sub domains.
I working on 2 sites that are the same for what you referring ( not franchise but with local offices) and they are up with all main keywords and city sub domains sample at 123locksmith.com
also as you said it will be way more easy for you to control this site and rank it up.
hope that help
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
-
My Website is not Coming in Google News. What should I do ? Already verified.
Hello Friends I verified my site in Google News but all articles are not coming in Google News. When I type www.example.com in Google news then only few stories shows but not coming on daily basis. What to do my fellow members ?
Branding | | sourabhrana0 -
Hosting videos on your own website versus youtube - which is best?
_Hi Folks, __simple question - We are creating a highly shareable video __to gain links/shares/traffic/google love for our site _and want to know if its worth hosting it on youtube i__n any circumstances.? We have the bandwidth to host it for sure. Cheers, Tom
Branding | | tomnivore1 -
SEO for franchises
I'm working with a client that's a franchise owner. His website is strictly controlled by the parent company, so no room to add unique content or optimize it for the area. I'm getting stumped for link building options. Anybody ran into this before? If so, any suggestions?
Branding | | mtwelves0 -
Should I fix a high quality link when the website linking was complaining? What would you do?
While reviewing 404 errors in Webmaster Tools, I noticed that a client had a link from a high authority, well respected forum, to a page which no longer exists. When I checked out the linking post, it was from 2004 and showed a campaign against the company for it's advertising tactics. I'll spare the details but the company has since changed their ways. It's tempting to implement a 301 to get the link juice from this DA 80 post, but since the reason for the link is a negative one and the co-citations are not going to be positive, is it better to just let this link go? Or what about something more up-front, such as setting up a page which states the company's mission statement and commitment to quality and standards and 301 redirecting to there? Even if we let this link be broken, a potential customer could be put off, so it might be a good idea to address this past issue on site? Let me know your opinions on whether there is a way to benefit from this link or whether we are better off allowing the 404.
Branding | | McCannSEO0 -
Which industry has the HIGHEST % of awful looking websites! ??
I have an auto upholstery client that wants a new website and some SEO work done here locally. I take to Google to check out the competition in some other states to get a feel for whats other sites are doing and I just spent 30 minutes looking at 53 different websites and I swear not a one of them is worth $20 Have you run into any industries that historically have terrible websites? Have a great Christmas everybody! Matthew
Branding | | Mrupp440 -
Should your company's name be in the title tag of your website?
First of all, I would like to provide some background information. Our company is small. We are just now getting into SEO research and have been improving over a couple months of research. We are somewhere in the 500,000's in the world rankings. From what I understand, the title tag provides a great amount of weight to whatever keywords you set up. The words in the title tag are supposed to represent keywords that you want to be high in the search engines for, correct? Well, in our title tag, we have the name of our company. To me, this is a waste of space. No one is going to go to Google and search for our company's name because we are not that widely known. Looking back at our search history for customers, there has not been a single search for the company name. What someone is telling me, is that when we put our link somewhere, having the name of our company in the title tag strengthens the "link juice" we get from those links. Is this correct, or is it worth trashing the company name for another keyword to optimize?
Branding | | FrontlineMobility0 -
Video's Pros and Cons - YouTube vs My website or both?
This isn't really a question per say, but more of a request for advise. We are in the process of creating videos for our travel website. They are more informational and do not promote any products as such. I am aware of the options, and I am leaning towards creating a pro account with Vimeo so that the videos are available only on our website. The reason for this is so that we can at least get credit for our work, as when they are on you tube, anybody can syndicate the video without linking to our website. I am also aware that there are allot of searches happening on YouTube, and it may be worse if we choose not to upload our videos there as we would loose out on a big audience. it would be GREAT if we had the best of both options. And i had an idea i want to get your opinions on. Create the video and upload onto our website with "lower competitive" title / meta / body. Submit the video on YouTube with a "Higher competitive" keyword / title /meta and description. When someone finds our video, they might search YouTube to avoid linking back and wont find it, (although it is there getting traffic from a similar keyword) Branding is the number 1 objective for these videos, so you tube + many other video sites would be the way to go. However, i would also like our own "private" video blog on our site so that if web masters like the video, we can give them the option of embedding it on there site (like SEOMOZ do it on there whiteboard Fridays) Your comments and suggestions will be muchly appreciated. Greg
Branding | | AndreVanKets0