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Aug 1, 2022
Franchisors who want to build a strong online presence for each of their branches face various challenges. One of them is maintaining brand consistency while avoiding duplicate content.
Each of your locations will need to have a website of its own with identical web design in West Palm Beach and content. The problem, however, is that Google penalizes similar pages for duplicate content even though you own both websites the content is on.
So, how do you differentiate the content of these sites and avoid being penalized? Do you localize the content of every website? How do you boost your local franchise SEO?
In this article, we’ll discuss why duplicate content is a problem and how to avoid it for franchise businesses.
Duplicate content is when the same content appears on the web in more than one location, specifically on two or more unique URLs.
Many franchises or multi-location businesses struggle with duplicate content. Although each location has its own website, they need to have the same web design in West Palm Beach and content to maintain brand consistency and preserve brand value.
This compromises their franchise SEO. It affects their ranking and brand visibility, making it difficult for customers to find branches near them.
But why does Google penalize duplicate content even though you own the sites both duplicated content is on?
Google wants to provide its users with unique, diversified results in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Aside from this, duplicate content also confuses search engines, so they omit identical results that they think don't add any value for searchers.
If search engines see multiple websites containing the same content on them, they will pick only one to display and conceal the others. Your local websites might not get any visibility or even get blocked in the search results.
Regardless of which industry you belong to or what product you sell, following these tips will help you rank high for your target search queries, avoid duplicate content, and drive organic traffic.
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When people visit various branches of your business, they expect to see a similar layout, the same customer service, and an identical store façade. The same is true for each website for different branches.
They also expect every web design in West Palm Beach, navigation, tone, and voice to be similar.
Your first concern is to remain on brand across all individual websites of your business. The goal is to provide the same user experience at different locations.
If people expect your site to have a particular design and land on a page that looks completely different from the one they had in mind, they might think they landed on the wrong website and exit your page.
To maintain brand consistency across all individual websites, it’s helpful to create customizable content templates ready for your franchisees to use.
Franchisors should provide franchisees with detailed guidelines on what they should be publishing on their website, and grant them access to update the content of their local site.
The guideline should also include the following:
Aside from these guidelines, the franchisee’s websites should also contain the following:
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To make every branch unique, you must incorporate branch-specific information in your website copy.
Doing this will help boost your franchise business’ SEO and usability, as well as provide additional value that helps potential customers find what they’re looking for.
Here’s what you need to do with the local pages:
Keyword research is the process of finding competitive keywords that potential customers use to search for your products and services online.
It can guide your overall content marketing plan and help you target the right keywords to increase your branch’s organic visibility and drive traffic to your location.
Make sure you research the most appropriate keywords to target to rank well in the search results for relevant queries and topics.
You can use branded keywords or your franchise’s main keywords and then just add the branch’s specific location, neighborhood, or landmark to localize it.
For example, instead of using just Buckstar coffee, you can use Buckstar West Palm Beach.
If you’re not the only Buckstar Coffee in your local area, you can further refine your keywords by adding your neighborhood, like Buckstar Coffee Palm Beach Lakes Blvd.
Using location-based keywords in your content, website copy, metadata, titles, descriptions, and many more helps search engine bots understand your specific location and helps you rank better in the local search results.
NAP stands for your business’ name, address, and phone number. To help your local franchise rank well, ensure that your branch's NAP matches all the other NAPs you've listed online.
But before this, you need to ensure that each of your local web pages contains the respective branch's NAP.
You want to provide consistent information because this can help potential customers reach out or locate you easily.
Unfortunately, not all multiple-location businesses or franchises optimize their NAP, which leads to losing potential new customers.
Here are some best practices to follow for maintaining a consistent NAP for every branch:
Managing your NAP so that it’s consistent across local listings allows you to build local citations that boost your franchise SEO.
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Aside from following the overall marketing plan implemented by the main branch, it’s also important to create your own localized marketing strategy.
To have a successful digital marketing campaign on a local level, you can’t just use the generic marketing materials the head office provides you. You also need to whip something up specific to your branch.
Instead of creating blog posts or video content about general topics related to your products or niche, create more meaningful content that resonates with your target audience by discussing topics that are close to the hearts of the people in your neighborhood.
This can be in the form of local news and events. For example, if you have a coffee shop franchise in Florida, you can blog about the upcoming holidays and then offer promos, coupons, and product bundles that people can utilize during the celebration.
Another example is if you have a flooring contracting franchise, you can talk about the different weather patterns specific to your area and how certain floorings are best suited for this condition.
If your franchise isn’t well-recognized across the country, it’s important to work on improving brand awareness by providing localized content for each stage of the customer journey.
This is a great way to establish your authority and build local backlinks that boost your franchise SEO.
Aside from listing your business on Google My Business, Maps, Yelp, and other local directories, it’s also crucial to get citations and links from the local press, bloggers, local magazines and newspapers, and many more.
Prepare a PR kit you can hand out to the media and build relationships so that they are willing to feature you regularly in their articles. The local press is always looking for something new to write about.
Every time you have something new in your store, whether it’s a specific offering or something like a charity event, let the press know ahead of time so they can write about it and help drive traffic to your branch.
If your business has various branches or franchises, it’s crucial to adopt a local franchise SEO strategy to attract customers from the neighborhood and prevent duplicate content.
Localizing your content strategy for every branch is a great way to ensure that each website has unique, useful content that resonates with its target audience.
At Digital Resource, our digital marketing specialists and website designers in West Palm Beach will work with you to create a custom content marketing plan to boost the visibility of each branch, drive traffic, and generate more leads.
Contact us today to boost your franchise SEO and start getting more sales for every branch!
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