Author Archives: Tarla

Why Corporate Should Regulate SEO for Franchise Owners

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By now, the term local search engine optimization has entered the vocabulary of most franchise or multi-unit marketing departments. More than 20 percent of all searches are localized, and this number is quickly increasing. This means ensuring that paid and organic search campaigns reflect this trend is vital to any brick and mortar business.

Local SEO means different things to different businesses and industries, but with a franchise company it is a whole new ball game. If anyone has been on a corporate marketing team for a franchise business or has maintained an agency relationship with one, you know that there are often hundreds to thousands of people to please. Not every franchise owner is going to be aware of their online presence, however there will be those that watch it like a hawk and will know when they are not showing up. Even in a highly successful SEO campaign where 90 percent of the locations are showing excellent results, 10 percent are not going to be very happy. This is their business, their blood sweat and tears and if they are not showing up in Google, you’re probably going to hear about it.

You will encounter various levels of involvement working with franchise owners. There are those that will want to change their webpages, run their own PPC campaign, or manage their own Google Places account. There are also those that won’t know what any of those things are, and many that are in between. When it comes to SEO, some amount of corporate regulation is necessary to get the best results. Here are some of the common problems we see when there is no consistent guidance:

INCONSISTENT BRANDING

Corporate should always control the important branded elements of the local webpages. The last thing you need is someone who really loves beveling and shadows to get a hold of the logo. Avoid this by creating a master template for all franchisee pages that includes the branded header, location and hour information, calls to action, and any other element that needs to be consistent across all pages.

SLOPPY DESIGN

It is rare for a franchise owner to have a graphic design background, but there is SEO value in an owner customizing their page. A great solution is compromising within a franchise CMS solution. This way corporate can designate certain elements and areas within the franchisees webpage that they can make personalized additions.  Be aware though that in the case that you offer open areas for custom HTML, you may run into some interesting design. The placement may work well with the page, but anything goes with what the look and feel of that box is going to be. The best solution is to offer template boxes where they may be able to include personalized text or an image, an environment that is more controlled. Also offering fully developed items that the franchishees can choose between, such as photo galleries (fully SEO optimized) and testimonials, helps personalize the page while keeping it on-brand.

KEYWORD COMPETITION

One of the most difficult topics for a franchise company is local keyword competition. What do you do when you have multiple stores located in the same area that all want to rank for the same city keyword? The first recommendation would be to create “city” pages that provide information and links to all the stores within that city so that they rank well and get equal exposure. However, when it comes to the optimizations that go on the local webpages, it is important that the local keyword be regulated to best minimize competition. Corporate should designate an approved location keyword for each store, which would then be used in the URL, title tag, META, header, and copy. For example, a Chicago area pizza place might designate by neighborhood: “Logan Square pizza,” “Evanston pizza,” “Wicker Park pizza,” etc.

UNETHICAL LINKING

A local store from a company I worked with decided to hire their own SEO agency. What they did was submit the location to a bunch of spammy online directories. Despite my wish that sites like these would have lost their effectiveness, in this case the tactic worked. Here’s the catch: the franchisee told his agency to target a different location keyword, let’s say “San Diego” when they were actually located in Temecula. Now the Temecula page has bumped the legitimate San Diego page out of the rankings, which as you can imagine did not make the store owner in San Diego very happy.

Regulating hundreds or thousands of individual business owners is no easy task, but it is a necessary one when it comes to keeping a strong brand image and managing your franchisee relationships. There are many scenarios to consider, and certainly not just when it comes to SEO, but these are a few I’ve experienced in most every franchise situation.

Ranking Fresh Content – Google Algorithm Update

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Old vs New - Fresh Content Ranking in Google

In Google’s newest Ten recent algorithm changes post, they announced “significant improvements to how they rank fresh content”. For those that do research in Google, particularly around topics that change rapidly (ahem…SEO) it’s really important to find the most recent content possible, since a post from even a year ago might no longer be relevant. I run into this time and time again when looking for specific industry information. Top ranking posts dating back several years, and while the pages are very related to my search query, with the way this industry moves I rarely trust the information I get.

Google says this change is affecting roughly 35% of total searches, and I hope they are right. What does this mean for you? An even stronger emphasis on fresh content to stay relevant in your vertical. Don’t rest your SEO success on old content, keep the creative juices flowing with updated old pages and relevant new pages. But don’t forget about our old friend the Panda, keep the quality high or time and money spent on new content may be for nothing.

How Advanced Segments Improve Analytics Data

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Since October is Analytics month at Location3 I thought I’d share one of my favorite features in Google Analytics: advanced segments.

About a year ago the entire account services team had a half day training of the GA interface and how to use some of the advanced reporting features. Now who decided to schedule this the day after our open house party, and a Friday to boot, I don’t know (actually I do, but I won’t name names). So here we are, a room full of people worse for the wear, trying to absorb intricate details about reports. So imagine my surprise when I actually walked out of that meeting and instantly started setting up my own advanced segments, wondering how I ever effectively looked at data without them.

Using advanced segments allows you to create what I think of as a portable filter, a filter that can easily be used with any report across any project. Say you want to look at the organic keyword report, but only for local pages. You can create an advanced segment to include only landing pages with whatever common denominator that only your local pages share (insert Regular Expression here), which for most sites is a pretty easy thing to do.

Advanced Segments Google Analytics

Then not only can you look at the organic keywords for those local pages, you can instantly jump over to the traffic report to see the average bounce rate, or to the goals report to find the volume of conversions. We have a franchise client that needs individual store analysis to pinpoint problems in their various online efforts. A quick 30 second advanced segment set-up to snag the data for that location, and we’re off and running.

For all you other analytics fans out there, what’s your favorite GA feature?

Google Sitelink 12 Pack

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On August 16th, Google rolled out its newest update to the organic search results, the sitelink 12 pack. This is one of the most dramatic changes to the look of the results page since the Google Places change that occurred in late 2010. This new 12 pack is seen mostly just on branded searches, so great news for anyone that has negative results populating the first page of their results. While the negative listings will remain in their same placement, the 12 pack is now dominating the real estate above the fold so it is less likely that searchers will see the negative listings. How’s that for some instant reputation management!

I recommend that everyone take a look at the sitelinks populating your various branded search phrases to make sure the URLs included in the links are on the up and up. We’ve already seen a handful that made very little sense to be there, one even directed to a 404 error page. If you see links that you’d prefer were not there, you can “demote” them through Google Webmaster Tools under the Site Configuration section. Google states that it does not guarantee to comply with these requests, but it is the only known way to influence these sitelinks, so it’s definitely worth a try. After all, it’s in Google’s best interest to supply the best sitelinks possible for the users.

Google Sitelink 12 Pack

Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors

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Since infographics are all the rage right now, I wanted to share my new favorite from Search Engine Land. It’s the periodic table of SEO Ranking Factors, and I have to say it’s pretty much dead on. It is interesting to note how things have changed over even the last few years, where you now see the emphasis on quality, reputation and authority as opposed to quantity and saturation. Notice page speed making its way up the food chain as load time plays an increasingly important role in the user experience. Also, the growing importance of social media influence in organic rankings. Not only how many people have liked, engaged with or maybe even +1’ed your website/page, but counting the authority and reputation of these users within their own social space.Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors

Nice work Search Engine Land and Column Five!

Google Recipe Search: It Works!

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I wanted to take a moment and show a little love towards everyone’s favorite search engine. As someone who spends much my professional life frustrated with Google’s whims, and who has expressed said frustration in a blog post or two, I felt it was time to throw a little kudos their way.

Last summer I found a recipe for a zucchini salad in a magazine that I absolutely loved, and have thought about making again ever since. Of course, I have no idea where I put the recipe, nor could I remember what magazine I got it from. I was having some people over for a BBQ last Saturday (yes, in the rain) and was determined to make that salad. Queue Google’s new recipe search which launched a few weeks ago. I remembered reading about the new Google feature and figured I’d give it a try. I typed in “zucchini salad recipe” (actually, “zuccini” because I didn’t know how to spell it) but none of the results on the first page looked like the one I was looking for. Since the new recipe search provides a list of ingredients on the left hand side to help narrow down my search, I unchecked anchovies, quinoa and sparking wine because I knew those weren’t in the salad, and checked pine nuts. Voila, there was my recipe! About 15 seconds into starting my search, I had exactly what I was looking for. So thank you Google for making my Sunday BBQ that much better.

Google Recipe Search

Google Recipe Search

And just in case anyone is interested in trying the salad, it really is amazing:  Zucchini salad recipe

Black Hat Link Building – Why Cheaters Never Prosper

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Link building made front page news this week, or at least front page of the business section of the NYTimes. J.C. Penney was caught red-handed engaging in what is considered black hat link building techniques. Although they claim to know nothing about it, someone on their behalf was littering the web with anchor text links having in most cases no relevancy to the site it’s living on. For example, a sidebar link for cocktail dresses found on an auto repair blog. The most disappointing part to this story is that it was working. They were outranking the competition on a number high volume keywords such as “skinny jeans,” “area rugs” and “furniture” because of these low blow techniques.

It’s tactics like these that make SEO success for the rest of us more difficult. The reason so many companies, both agency and in-house, engage in these shady linking practices is because they are cheaper, easier and faster than doing things the right way. We know that as well as anyone. It takes a lot of time and effort to acquire the right kind of links, and many companies are not equipped with the staff to make that happen. It’s just an effortless solution to pay a vendor or off-shore link supplier and, voila!, SEO problem solved.

This then begs the question, why shouldn’t everyone do it? If so many companies are in on it, and the results appear to be there, why not just join the party?  The reason to stay with the light is that times are a’changing and cheaters are going to feel the wrath of Google. Google really does want to create the best user experience, which is why they are constantly updating both the algorithm and the search results, trying to deliver the best possible results in the best possible way. It’s black hat tactics like this that threaten the very quality of Google’s service, and they won’t stand for it. Google continues to work to find these less than kosher links and penalize the sites that use them, and has made great strides. J.C. Penney can account for that, although many would say that they weren’t penalized enough in the SERPs for their offense. It is for this reason amongst several others that we choose to follow the rules.

Reading the NY Times article made me feel pretty great about the kind of SEO service we provide for our clients. I’m always stressing the importance of the way we conduct link building: a manual, personalized approach of building ongoing relationships with each individual webmaster. Of course this is a time consuming project and takes a good number of people to accomplish it, but at the end of the day the quality over quantity approach will win out.

Measuring Link Building ROI

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My colleagues often tease me for my slight obsession with reporting. Probably annoyed because every month I make them revise their SEO reports with some new piece of data or chart. And while I do feel bad for causing everyone the extra work, I know that every little change will help provide better insight into our campaign performance. I’ve seen many SEO reports from various sources, and most of them fall short in really providing a comprehensive picture.

One key feature that I have yet to see anyone provide is referral traffic from links acquired. If your team is spending time developing a high quality backlink profile from relevant sites, then not only should those links be increasing the organic ranking, but they should also be driving traffic and maybe even conversions. Just last month we contacted a local blogger who was more than happy to write a post about our client, whom she was already a fan of. In a matter of days we saw a significant increase in traffic to the site, visitors who also spent an average of 6:51 minutes on the site (more than the average of 4:12) and viewed 12.51 pages (6.5 pages more than the average).

Link Referral Traffic

Another client that we’ve been working with for the past 2 years, and therefore have acquired a good number of links, obtained 10 leads this month just from those links. These are of course ideal scenarios and will not always be the case, but with 5 visits here and 10 visits there from multiple link sources, it can still be traffic worth counting.