Differentiating Franchise Location Names to better optimize locations

[Jeffvertus]

Hello All,

I am currently spear heading SEO for a national franchise. I am coming across locations in the same city and zip code. I'm definitely finding difficulties in naming the location in a way that will be specific to the franchise locations (locations are 1 mile away from each other). I am looking to apply geo specific location names for each center regardless of local city terms.  (e.g. Apexnetwork of north madronna, Apexnetwork of south madronna)

Also, building the website and location to read (apexnetwork.com/north-madronna….. apexnetwork.com/south-madronna)

While encouraging the client to continue using the geo specific terms while writing blogs.

Is this best practice? Any feedback would help.

[brettmandoes]

Hi Jeff, I think I can help you with this, but to clarify, it looks like you have three separate questions:

1. What is best practice for naming different locations to optimize for local SEO?
2. What is the best URL structure to optimize for local SEO?
3. Should geo specific terms be used in blogs?

Be sure to let me know if I'm missing the mark. I'm also going to go heavy on industry jargon and assume you know what it means, so feel free to ask questions if I go over your head at any point.

1. For local SEO, it's important to start with a good foundation. This means you have citations claimed for each location with consistent NAP information on your GMB profile, your listings, and the landing page on your website for that location. So if your name includes the geo on the website, it should also include the geo on your GMB profile and citations. It's preferably to use the specific city name they are in. For example, if you're in Flower Mound, TX, be sure to use Flower Mound, not Dallas. Some local SEOs get tripped by targeting the metro area they're in and that can tank results. If some of your locations are in the same city, dividing them up somehow as North/South, East/West, etc. is fine. Google typically picks one or both in those circumstances to display in search.

2.  For URL structure, using subpages the way you have laid out is fine. For enterprise local SEO my agency uses a proprietary, scalable CMS to build unique, local websites that rank very well, so I'm more familiar with that structure, but one of the tricks we use is to include a geo variable in the URL, which helps rank for some terms like "glass repair dallas tx", because we can get picked up on the exact match. Every little bit helps.

3. For blogs, I would recommend you completely ignore the geo unless your blog is very unique and specific to the location. You should really only target the location when it's a page that you're trying to rank for local queries and you typically don't have that in a blog. For example, a blog about "what to expect in a hundred year old house" will typically not rank for keywords that trigger the local algorithm, so there's no reason to add the geo. It just gets in the way of the content, and inferior content doesn't rank well. Now a blog like "what to plant in your [location] fall garden" just may have some localization to it, because what you plant in the fall in Des Moines is different than Atlanta. But I find these cases to be few and far between.

Hope that helps, let me know if you have questions.

[TucsonAZWebDesign]

Jeff,

If you have fewer than 10 locations, you’ll have to enter them individually.

Businesses with 10 or more eligible locations can add, verify, and manage them in bulk.

According to the Google partners test, if you end up listing less then 10 and want to differentiate them you use things like the street name or if it was like in a mall the malls name etc. IT indicates not to use store numbers. IF you're going to be doing web design or marketing that involves directory listings for entities like bing and Google, I highly suggest certifying for Google Partners, it's free and it will give you some versatility with the PPC bidding alongside SEO organic.

[MiriamEllis]

Hey Jeff!

Great topic. Let me number by responses for easier reading:

1. First of all, important to be clear here that regardless of how you think of the business location, their name on all their local business listings must simply be their real-world brand, as it appears on street signage. So, only Apexnetwork on all listings. Not Apexnetwork North Madronna, Apexnetwork South Madrona.

2. When franchises operate in cities where there are distinct, known districts (like San Francisco with North Beach, the Sunset District, Bernal Height, etc) this would be my favorite way to differentiate branches on the website, it terms of what I would put in the URL, the tags and the text. People actually search this way (pizza North Beach, pizza Sunset District). But, in other cases where the public doesn't strongly identify different neighborhoods of a city, I recommend following Taco Bell's lead and just going by street address. Here's a example: https://locations.tacobell.com/tx/dallas/3127-inwood-rd.html?utm_source=yext&utm_campaign=googlelistings&utm_medium=referral&utm_term=001331&utm_content=website

So, unless you have two franchise locations on the same street (unlikely), the above model can work. Just remember, this is for website use ... not for differentiating the names on the listings.

3. Finally, if you're needing to separate out a variety of locations for something like a spreadsheet, or Google My Business, or Moz Local, you can assign a store code to each of the locations.

Hope this helps!