Franchise SEO · Multi-Location SEO
Franchise SEO that wins every location's map pack, not just the one near headquarters.
Twenty locations is twenty markets, twenty profiles and twenty competitors' packs. Most multi-location programs manage it as one website with a city name swapped in. We run it as twenty local campaigns under one brand playbook, and we report every address on its own line.
Every pin is its own market with its own competitors. One brand-wide rank number hides which locations are winning and which are invisible. The spread above is illustrative of a typical first report.
The brand site ranks. Location fourteen is invisible. Nobody has noticed.
That is the normal state of a multi-location brand's search presence, and it stays that way because the reporting hides it. One organic traffic number for the whole domain goes up and to the right while half the locations never appear in their own map pack. Headquarters sees growth. The franchisee in a suburb forty minutes away sees a quiet phone and cannot explain it.
The structural problem is simple to describe and tedious to fix. A location page template filled in with a city name is, to Google, the same page twenty times. Google's own guidance on doorway pages describes exactly this pattern. Meanwhile each location's Google Business Profile was claimed by whoever was there at the time, with whatever category they picked, and nobody has logged in since. Reviews land unevenly: three locations have hundreds, nine have a dozen.
We fix it the way a multi-location operator would want it fixed: one playbook, applied location by location, with the locations that have the most revenue at stake done first.
How most multi-location SEO is run
- One template page per location, city name swapped
- Profiles owned by whoever set them up, managed by nobody
- Reviews left to chance, replies left to the franchisee
- One traffic chart for the whole brand
- Locations near HQ get the attention; the rest get the template
How we run it
- A real page per location: its own team, services, photos, areas and questions
- Brand holds profile ownership; every location managed to one playbook
- A review system every location follows, with replies in brand voice
- One report, one row per address, sorted by what needs attention
- Rollout by revenue at stake, so the money locations move first
Multi-Location Planner
Enter what you know about your locations. The planner tells you how many are structurally invisible, what to fix first, and what the gap is worth. It runs in your browser; nothing is stored.
Your locations today
Estimates are fine. The point is the order of operations, not the decimal.
"Structurally invisible" counts locations missing at least two of the four foundations. The planner cannot see actual rankings; the per-location grid report we run first does.
The multi-location playbook, in the order we run it
Everything below is done per location, but it is governed by one set of rules so the brand stays consistent and no two locations end up competing for the same search. The order matters: profiles move fastest, pages carry the most weight, reviews keep you there.
Audit every address and rank it by revenue at stake
We pull every location's profile status, page status, review count and current map rank across its own grid. Then we sort by revenue, so the rollout starts where a win is worth the most.
Take ownership of every profile and set the playbook
The brand becomes primary owner; each location gets a manager seat. Naming, categories, services, reply tone and photo standards are written down once so a franchisee can help without breaking anything.
Rebuild each Google Business Profile to the standard
The full Google Business Profile management program, per location: categories, services, description, photos, posts, Q&A, UTM links and spam reports. This is the fastest-moving piece and it starts the week we begin.
Replace template location pages with real ones
Each page gets its own team, its own services emphasis, its own photos, its own neighborhood coverage and its own questions. Structured data ties the page to its profile. Twenty pages that could only have been written about twenty places.
Install one review system across every location
The ask, the timing, the link and the reply, standardized. Reviews are the prominence signal that keeps a location in the pack, and the one most often left to whichever manager happens to care.
Build brand-level authority that every location inherits
Content, citations and links at the brand level lift every location at once. This is the shared cost that makes the per-location rate drop as the count rises, and it is the part single-location campaigns cannot share.
Report every address on its own row, every month
Map rank in its own area, organic rank for its page, reviews gained, calls and direction requests. Sorted by what needs attention. Readable in five minutes by an operator who has fifty other things to do.
Pricing that gets cheaper per location as the count rises
What a location normally costs on its own
Industry surveys put a single-location SEO retainer around $3,200 a month: Ahrefs polled 439 providers and found an average of $3,209, and Clutch reports an average of $3,199. Twenty locations at that rate is a number nobody signs.
Multi-location SEO does not cost twenty times a single campaign, because the brand-level work is shared. We price per location on a sliding scale, quoted after the planner above and a call about which locations matter most. Every quote includes profile management, the location page work and the per-location report; nothing is bolted on later.
Sources: Ahrefs SEO pricing survey of 439 providers; Clutch SEO pricing data. Figures are industry averages, not Eye To Ad Media rates.
Where this fits with the rest of what we do
Franchise SEO sits on top of the same foundation as everything else here: SEO services built for small and mid-size businesses, local SEO and Google Maps, and the AI search optimization that gets a brand named when a customer asks an assistant for a recommendation in a city. For brands that need their location pages rebuilt from scratch, our custom website design team builds them to the structure above. If you are comparing agencies, our guide to choosing an SEO company gives you seven tests to run on any of them, including us.
Our own multi-location proof is on the case studies page: one of our own home-services businesses holding the map pack, the first organic result and additional listings on a single Google page for competitive searches, built with exactly this playbook. We tested it on ourselves before we offered it, which is how we do everything, including our Denver SEO work for our own companies.
Read more before you call
Franchise SEO questions, answered straight
Franchise SEO is search engine optimization for a brand with many locations, done so that each location ranks in its own city and map pack without the locations competing with each other or with the brand's main site. It combines a brand-level content and authority strategy with a per-location playbook: a unique page, a managed Google Business Profile, a review system and a rank report for every address.
The mechanics are the same. The difference is governance: a franchise usually has a franchisor who controls the brand site and franchisees who control their own profiles and reviews, so the program has to be built so both sides can do their part without breaking the other's. We set that up as rules of the road on day one.
Because they look identical to Google. Twenty location pages with the same copy and a city name swapped are the exact pattern Google's documentation describes as doorway pages. The fix is real, different content per location and a profile per location that actually reflects that address.
Three. At three locations the brand site is already competing with its own location pages, and the profiles are already being managed by three different people three different ways. The cost of getting the structure right is lowest before location ten.
Yes. Every location gets the full management program: categories, services, photos, posts, reviews, replies, Q&A, spam reports and a grid rank report. The work follows one brand playbook but every profile is handled as its own listing, because Google ranks it as one.
Yes, within the playbook. We recommend a shared-management model: the brand holds ownership, each location has a manager seat, and the rules cover naming, categories and reply tone so a franchisee cannot accidentally undo the brand's work. Local photos and local posts from the franchisee are a plus, not a problem.
One report, one row per location: map rank in its own area, organic rank for its page, reviews gained, calls and direction requests from the profile. Locations are sorted by what needs attention, so an operator can read it in five minutes and know where to look.
It is priced per location on a sliding scale, so the per-location rate drops as the count rises. Industry averages for a single-location SEO retainer sit around $3,200 a month; multi-location programs run on a fraction of that per location because the brand-level work is shared. We quote after the free planner below and one call.
Yes. We are headquartered in Denver and run multi-location programs across the United States, Canada and Australia. Every location is measured in its own market, which is the only way multi-location SEO can be done honestly.
Profile fixes typically move map rankings within 30 to 60 days. Location pages and the review system compound over the following quarters. We stage the rollout by priority, so the locations with the most revenue at stake are fixed first and start moving first.
Tell us how many locations. We will tell you which three to fix first.
Free multi-location review
Give us the brand site and roughly how many locations. Within one business day you get the three locations we would start with and why.