Franchises Missing Out on SEO
Most marketers I talk to are dealing with increased competition for organic search placement and increased cost for PPC campaigns. So, it was interesting to hear about one industry where the biggest brands seem to be missing in action when it comes to search marketing.
The world’s top franchise businesses — including brands like McDonald’s, Subway, Pizza Hut and 7-Eleven — are barely using SEO techniques to command top placement in online searches, according to a new study by the online marketing firm OneUpWeb.
By analyzing the websites of the top 100 franchises listed in Entrepreneur’s “Franchise 500” list, OneUpWeb discovered that:
o 52% of the top franchise websites were insufficiently optimized or not optimized at all
o 13% were well-optimized
o 46% of the well-optimized sites were doing on-site local search optimization
o 8% of the non-optimized sites were doing any local search optimization
The results are bad news for the franchise businesses and their franchisees. Poorly optimized sites make it more difficult for these brands to attract new franchisors. And existing franchisees aren’t getting the online support they need, particularly in local search results, to drive business to their stores.
Categories: Search Marketing Franchises, local search, SEO
