Like any other digital marketing technique that helps to grow a business, link-building effectively improves franchise marketing.
Link-building, in simple terms, is adding hyperlinks to your website from other websites. This article will help you understand the benefits of link-building for franchise businesses and six link-building strategies for effective franchise marketing.
How Does Link-building Benefit Franchise Businesses?
When you start link-building, it allows users to learn more about your brand. Here’s an example to understand how: Let’s say you acquired a link from your senior franchise website or a fellow franchise website. This way, their users are encouraged to learn more about your brand and trust it as a credible one.
In addition to the visibility of potential users, link-building helps search engines, like Google, crawl through your website and index it as a safe, secure, and qualified website for its users. As a matter of fact, Google has a list of ranking factors in its algorithm to help your site rank higher, but having quality backlinks in your website can help you change things in the ranking game.
Link-Building Strategies for Better Franchise Marketing
Franchise marketing benefits are quite something no business should avoid. The following are six link-building strategies you can use for franchise marketing:
- Use the No Follow Attribute in Your Website
- Swap Links with Other Website’s Guest Blog Posts
- Produce Content that Earns Links Naturally
- Round-Up Post Link-Building
- Reach Out to Influencers
- Optimize Your NAP
#1 Use the Nofollow Attribute in Your Website
Now, you are aware that Google also considers backlinks in its ranking criteria. Since backlinking is a ranking factor, how many backlinks should you add to your website for it to rank higher? Is it the quantity or quality of backlinks that matters most? Of course, it is the quality of the backlinks that matters. Let’s learn how “nofollow” links relate to backlinks.
Nofollow is a reminder to the search engines not to consider a certain link for ranking. Here’s what a nofollow HTML format would look like:
<a href=”http://www.yourfranchisewebsite.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Link Text</a>
There was a time when websites used to rank higher in search engine results with stuffed links. Now, Google considers stuffing low-quality links to rank better a black hat method, and your website will be penalized for using such shortcuts to rank.
For franchise marketing, it is better to add nofollow links to your website. In any case, you are left with no choice but to add a few links. The nofollow attribute reminds search engines not to consider your website’s ranking based on those links.
WordPress and other content management systems have this nofollow feature built into them. You can make use of it when using your franchise website.
#2 Swap Links with Other Website’s Guest Blog Posts
Guest blogging is collaborating with websites of a similar industry to post your content on their websites. Guest posts help you widen your audience’s interest in your services, (i.e.) since they are already interested in your competitors, the chances of them preferring your services are high.
Also, getting a guest post on their website proves your franchise website’s credibility and can encourage trust among the users.
In exchange for the high quality content you produce for your fellow websites, you will earn a high quality backlink from them.
#3 Produce Content that Earns Links Naturally
To gain more followers to your website and build links naturally, it is imperative that you produce content that is informational and beneficial to the readers. You can create a content strategy to support your content creation and release schedule. However, you can approach a digital marketing agency specializing in content strategy to produce content for your company’s franchise marketing tasks.
The following are the types of content you can produce to earn quality links for your website:
- How-to guides.
- FAQs.
- Benefits of your products and services.
- Testimonials from clients.
- Influencer or blogger reviews of your products and services.
Being a franchise owner, you have the privilege to share your content on social media platforms to get more readership (your brand name will automatically drive traffic if your franchise business is available on all platforms). You should even add email marketing to your tabs of digital marketing.
#4 Round-Up Post Link-Building
Round up posts are websites that post collective information about businesses or services, like “Top 10 salons in Virginia” and “Best pizza places in Washington.” If you can find such websites, you can add your franchise information to their upcoming blogs, and your link-building game can get even more potent.
With this kind of SEO effort, your franchise’s visibility will peak at the local level, leading to more traffic and sales.
#5 Reach Out to Influencers
A big step in your franchise marketing would be having industry influencers on board. Your franchise development could reach the next level if an industry influencer collaborated with you.
Naturally, their followers will trust your franchise business. Before approaching an influencer, be sure to list the benefits the influencers get out of this collaboration and, of course, your expectations as well. Your expectations in terms of more traffic and sales that is. In comparison, benefits to the influencers are influencer payment, exposure in collaborating with a franchise, or complementary products (if any).
Eventually, your business will be exposed to other industry influencers, leading to options to collaborate with many others in the future. You can search for influencers on social media platforms, like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
When influencers get into content creation for your franchise business and share them on their social media platform, your website can get more traffic and backlinks.
#6 Optimize Your NAP
NAP refers to your business name, address, and contact information, like your phone number or email. Though this tactic feels the least important, it is worth optimizing for search engine optimization (SEO).
Figure out your NAP and update the same information on every social media platform on which your business is available. Have a thorough look at your website and see if the contact us page has the updated information of your NAP. If not, update them as well.
Once your website is updated, add or claim your business in Google My Business, Bing Places for Business, and Yahoo Local. This is the section where your customers can leave a review of your services. Hence it is crucial to have your information updated. Also, don’t forget to claim your business on listing websites like TripAdvisor or Yelp to update your business info.
You should update your info in online directories and small business communities (if not enrolled yet, you should enroll now.)
Conclusion
Initially, building links for your website might feel like a difficult nut to crack, but it isn’t. Follow these 6 tactics mentioned above to make your link-building stronger, get more visitors to your website, and boost your ranking in search engines.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is link-building for franchisees?
Link-building is an SEO technique to acquire inbound links for a website. Franchisees use this tactic as a part of their franchise marketing strategy to increase traffic and boost their ranking in search engine results.
Do backlinks help with SEO?
Of course, it does. Backlinks in your website signal Google and other search engines that your site is credible enough to be linked to other websites. Backlinks help search engines rank your website in search results.
Do Social media posts count as backlinks?
Be it any social media platform, the platform itself a website. By definition, backlinks are any link that links back to your website. Hence, any posts related to your business on social media platforms are considered backlinks.
