SEO, PPC & Adwords Marketing Tips | The Forge

A wise man once said: “building incoming links to a page are an important component to SEO and Page Rank.”  Actually, it was probably some SEO guy that said that.  Anyways – getting links to your local franchise landing page is an important strategy for pushing your site up in search engine rankings so your customers can find you – if you go about it the right way.

There is a right way and wrong way to link building.  Let me elaborate:

The Wrong Way to Link Building: Pay some link building service to submit your site to hundreds of random directories.  Although this would seem to be a cost efficient and fast way to get a ton of incoming links to your site, it won’t have the long term effect you’d like.  You want the sites linking to you to be relevant to your content, not some random directory that clearly is a paid service.

The Right Way to Link Building: Think about other websites that have to do with your town, state and service sector.  These are the sites you want to link to you.  You can try ‘reciprocal linking’ by contacting the site’s webmaster and saying “I’ll link to your site if you link to mine,” although it’s pretty hard to get some of those micro-deals going.   There are also pay-for directories that have specifically to do with your location or service sector that would be valuable for you to get listed on.  Keep the price in mind, as some of them are known to overcharge.

The ‘best way’ to get links to your site though is by creating content that people genuinely want to link to, because it has some value to them.   This is why it’s so important to keep putting out fresh and relevant content on your franchise page.  Hopefully, if your content is interesting or entertaining in some way, shape or form- somebody out there will link to it.

For inquiries on our franchise marketing services, feel free to contact us at contact@insightforge.com

Google has added a new feature that lets local business owners respond to reviews in their Places accounts.  This feature-add continues a trend with Google Places matching / competing with Yelp  as a major player in the user-generated business review sector.

For both Yelp and Google Places, the ability for a local business owner to respond to a good or bad review is a very powerful tool.   In a world where many potential customers look to other people’s reviews before purchasing goods or services, it is important the local businesses have some control of their brand identity.

Although the age old advice of simply providing good service to bring in the good reviews holds some water, there is always the case of the disgruntled ex-employee who posts a bad review just for the hell of it.   This would be a case where the business owner could take time to respond and let the rest of the community know the reasoning behind such a review.

It’s a sure thing that the local business owners in San Francisco, who are attuned to the ongoings of the large internet companies around them, will be the first to take advantage of this feature.   Google – we’re looking forward to seeing more improvements with Google Places (i.e. a version of Adwords MCC for Places to manage multiple client accounts).

Opening a franchise has always been a great way for an entrepreneur to start a business. While it doesn’t have the same romantic ‘allure’ of building a company from the ground up, starting a franchise also doesn’t have the same level of risk involved with a traditional  start up. Franchise organizations often provide their franchisees with a number of services to ensure they get off the ground successfully, including benefits such as brand name recognition, operational blueprints, centralized customer service as well as marketing campaigns. The Insight Forge team has experience in helping franchise organizations blueprint and execute their online marketing strategy across multiple locations – primarily in the realm of PPC advertising and Search Engine Optimization.

The online marketing strategy for a franchise organization differs from promoting a standalone local business. Every task needs to be multiplied by the number of franchisees involved. There are some marketing ‘themes’ that must be carried across all franchise locations, while other details need to be caressed to an individual geographic level.

To date, there are a number of guides on PPC advertising and SEO strategies for local businesses. Local business owners have the benefit of a ton of resources to help them promote their shops, including websites, yelp reviews, search engine listings and more. Franchise Organizations, which essentially are a conglomerate of multiple local business, don’t have nearly as many online marketing resources. I’d like to turn this trend around by provide a short guide to online marketing for franchises specifically, including details on PPC advertising and SEO strategies.

Franchise PPC Marketing

When we talk about PPC marketing, we are primarily referring to Adwords marketing, given Google’s dominance of the search engine market.  However, Bing and Yahoo are making some headwind, so we don’t like to totally disregard other search engines.  The primary difference between an Adwords campaign for a single business and multiple franchises territories comes from a management perspective; maintaining multiple franchise territories in different locations requires honing in on distinct geographic permeations, while also maintain an cohesive  brand association.

Landing Pages: Anyone familiar with Adwords knows that landing pages are a big deal – they figure into quality score as well as your end goal of getting a conversion.  In other words,  a good or bad landing page can make all the difference.  The big issue with franchise landing pages is the constant battle to maintain brand continuity across multiple franchisees while at the same time providing adequate keyword differentiation for each  location.   This is equally as important for Franchise SEO, which we will discuss in the next post.   We recommend making a template of a landing page and segmenting each section into dynamic or static – which parts simply cannot change and which have flexibility from location to location.  Try to push for as much ‘dynamic’ material as possible, as this will give each landing page the chance to stand out and ’sync’ with your campaign’s keywords and ads.

Keywords: Although you will have standard keywords across all of your franchisees because you perform one type of service, you need to make sure that every keyword fits specifically into each geographic location.  For example, although ‘rubbish removal’ and ‘junk removal’ are synonymous phrases – ‘rubbish’ is primarily used in Europe whereas ‘Junk’ is used in the U.S.   These types of distinctions need to be made on an individual keyword level – don’t simply import a standardized list of keywords from franchise to franchise and expect them to perform.

-   In regards to having multiple businesses in various locations, you will also have to consider two types of keywords – those with ‘geographic modifiers’ and those without.  For example, if your pizza delivery franchise has a location in Memphis, two variations of keywords could be ‘Pizza Delivery’ or ‘Memphis Pizza Delivery’.   Each of these types of keywords should be separated into different campaigns and targeted  on different geographic levels.

-  Competitor Keywords are another option to consider.  Although not often condoned, bidding on a competitor’s name has become a standard practice in the world of Adwords marketing.  For franchise PPC marketing, you need to consider ‘big’ competitors that are national and have locations across the board, as well as ‘mom and pop’ shops that will be dynamic per location.

Ads: For franchise Adwords marketing, you’ll want to make sure each of your different campaigns has ads that are as specific as possible to the franchise location.  This includes using geographic modifier keywords within ad titles and copy as well as in the display url.

- Ad Extensions: Extensions are a great way to highlight your franchise location as a local business that will attract customers in the area.  In your campaign settings under ‘ad extensions’ you can add an address extension to your ads either through a connected Google Places account or by entering each address manually.  When your ad pops, it will have an address under it, which can help boost your CTR and quality score.

Geographic Targeting: Just as with a standalone local business, geographic targeting in your Adwords campaign will be an essential tool in adverting for multiple franchise locations.   You need to consider the service range of each individual franchise – literally how many miles away from their storefront can they adequately provide services to customers?   You also need to consider potential overlap between franchises.  For example, if you use broad match keywords for ‘Memphis Pizza Delivery’ and target the campaign to a national level, these ads have the potential of serving for another franchisee out of Boston with someone simply searching for ‘Pizza Delivery.’  You don’t want your franchisees bidding against one another.  Try to use exact and phrase match keywords to prevent this from happening, and if you need to use broad match to pull in more clicks in a smaller traffic area, try to use as many negative keywords as possible.

Although there are general themes you can import from one franchise campaign to another, in the end you’ll want to become an expert on each of your franchise locations.  How far reaching is their service area? What kind of words do the locals search for to find your service?  Who are the nearby competitors?

NEXT:  Franchise SEO Strategy, Franchise Google Local Listings, Franchise Social Media and more.

Insight Forge is your premiere San Francisco SEO, Adwords and Development shop.  For inquiries on franchise marketing campaigns or any general questions contact us:  contact@insightforge.com

Insight Forge has expertise in Search Engine Optimization for Resorts and the vacation industry in general.   While many of the basics of SEO apply to driving organic traffic towards resort websites, there also are several specific details to hone in on.

I’d like to take a minute to highlight some of these tips for Resort Marketing.

1.  Location is Key Your target keywords should definitely be relevant to your resort’s location.  Potential visitors will be typing things like ‘New Hampshire Resort‘ into Google.  You can even afford to get more specific with the keywords, such as honing in on a specific town in New Hampshire.  Even if the traffic is trimmer as you get more targeted, it also will be more relevant to a person’s search and is likely to convert into a booking.

2. A Hosted Blog is Integral In a travel industry full of big players, differentiating your resort with a hosted blog is a very big deal to getting ranked.  This is where you will have the opportunity to expound on the various amenities, seasonal deals, mini-vacation specials, activities and other great things that make your resort unique.  This super targeted content will contribute to making Google see why your resort is relevant for those location specific keywords.  We recommend at least two posts a week using a hosted Wordpress solution (www.myresort.com/blog).

3.  Targeted Social Media Instead of trying to reach as many people as possible with your social media efforts, try and target them towards your resort’s location and specialties.  If you are a ski resort, hop on the #ski Twitter hash, and blast out some of your blog posts mixed with other intresting ski-related articles.  Visit some location relevant forums and begin to create a repetoir with users, before letting them know why your resort rocks.

We have some other tricks up our sleeve… If you own or market for a resort feel free to contact us and we’d be glad to give your resort site a review, free of charge.

Our SEO and Marketing firm is based out of San Francisco’s Inner Sunset District.  Around The Forge ‘HQ’  is a plethora of tasty restaurants (Bistro 9, Park Chow, La Fonda), welcoming bars (Yancy’s Saloon), Dentists, Gyms, Hair Salons, Supplement Shops, Magic Stores  - you name it, the Inner Sunset has it.

Lately, walking around the neighborhood, I’ve seen many local business owners placing ads on buses, billboards, benches, newspapers, and magazines.   On the local TV stations I often find myself watching an infomercial or ‘paid-for’ segment to advertise for a local business.

Most of these local businesses have a web presences to some extent. They also have Yelp reviews that they have almost no control over which often appear higher in the search results than their own website (which they do have control over).

These small businesses need to realize that if they put a small portion of their local advertising budgets into basic SEO for their websites, it would be well worth the while.  Especially in a web-savvy city like San Francisco, where many potential customers are Googling terms like ‘Inner Sunset Bakery’ or ‘San Francisco Magic Store,’ the benefit to the business would be visible and immediate.

Going forward, I’d like to continue to analyze the cost/benefit ratio of traditional forms of ‘real-world’ local advertising vs.  local SEO projects.