Why Franchises Need Individual Franchisee Website Performance Analytics

There's a significant difference between maintaining a local presence and a national one for Franchises. No one understands this better than the Franchisor. Managing a brand on these two disparate levels takes planning, dedication, and know-how. Most search engine optimization (SEO) tools audit a corporation’s whole website performance but have difficulty providing the same level of reporting and analytics for individual-location web pages. Location analytics is critical to understanding location web page performance, and Franchisors need that data to make better business decisions.

While Franchisors are keenly aware of presenting to a national and local community, understanding location web page performance can be an uphill challenge. For Franchises with hundreds of location web pages, each with a URL identical to the primary website, having no way to automate the auditing process makes it incredibly difficult for a Franchisor to understand which branches are performing well and which ones need help.

An Incomplete Checklist

SEO tools do a lot to support Franchises. These tools can perform powerful website audits to help strengthen performance. Every SEO audit runs through a standard checklist, checking everything from crawling web pages, analyzing backlinks, optimizing for mobile and UX signals, measuring traffic against keywords, and improving the site content for a better SERP (search engine result pages) ranking.

To better understand individual location performance, multi-location businesses need tools that treat a location web page as its own site, running through the same SEO audit checklist.

Franchisee Location Analytics

Location web pages live under one corporate website, with the corporate site generally acting as the gateway to those web pages. A location web page will have specific characteristics in its URL to set it apart from the main page and other locations. For example, the individual-location URL and the main URL differ as so:

• http://www.mikesdonutshop.com
• http://www.mikesdonutshop.com/stores/2-hollywood-ca

Rather than see these location web pages as their own website, traditional SEO tools view them as subpages belonging to a parent website. Franchises understand that these location web pages need to meet their own performance goals and maintain their local SEO, showing up when users search for information close to them. If an SEO solution can provide the necessary location analytics, Franchisors could quickly see which areas are performing well and which are underperforming. This lets Franchises and multi-location businesses work with real, valuable insight data to build on their marketing strategies.

Additionally, the location analytics offered by an SEO tool can help balance national brand unity with local community engagement. Franchisors, who now know how their local community is engaging with their content, can effectively edit their location web pages to reflect their audience better, making it easier to boost traffic and conversion.

For example, the national-facing side of the brand runs a promotion. Specific locations can also run unique promotions and events while being consistent with the national brand, boosting local presence, and improving performance.

Local SEO is Gold  

95% of franchises are optimized for mobile, and 93% use an analytic tool. These stats demonstrate how Franchises have incorporated the tools they need to build their brand nationally. Now, however, they also need to include the tools that will help them do the same on the local level by enhancing their local SEO.

Local SEO is worth its weight in gold to any franchise, helping them optimize their SERP ranking on local searches. Inquiries about local information make up an estimated 46% of all Google searches. While most franchises use an analytic tool, only 61% of franchises have a proper schema.org setup. Franchisors may still have a way to go before their franchises can realize a true, local presence. Tools like the local business schema markup and proper SEO Location analytics can boost local SEO and, in turn, boost traffic, conversions, and revenue in a local market.

Establishing a TruPresence

Franchisors understand that to be successful; they need to wear more than just one hat, meaning they must be able to do two things simultaneously. Ensuring each location web page received the same level of reporting and analytics at the same time would have been impossible, even just a couple of years ago. Franchisors now can do it all and be everywhere equally at once.

By equally prioritizing local SEO and organic SEO, franchises can establish a local and a national presence. Franchisors must discover and utilize powerful tools like location analytics to enhance their local SEO. They can unify their brand on each level, measure and improve performance, establish and meet KPIs (key performance indicators) at every franchisee location, and engage with the community while boosting revenue.

Discover how Location analytics can improve location page performance and aid local SEO in boosting traffic, conversions, and revenue here.