Blog, Orangetheory

Blogging for Franchisees: SEO Means More than Just Keywords

February 27, 2017 - Blog, Orangetheory

A blog that promotes your franchise location should focus on consumer readability in order to boost search engine optimization and enhance overall digital marketing success. Your brand’s complete digital marketing campaign should include a blogging and content marketing component for your individual franchise location. One of the biggest boosts blogs can have on brand growth is that they help maximize SEO, or search engine optimization, meaning that the brand’s website and your individual franchise location’s microsite appear higher in Google’s search results. This is vital when you take into account the statistic that most consumers will never even click or tap past the first results page. These are two common tricks utilized for blog SEO:

• Keywords likely to be searched in Google by target consumers
• More than 300 words in length

While these techniques are useful, they aren’t and shouldn’t be the only ones used or you’ll end up with a blog post that people don’t want to read. Your franchise’s blog needs to focus on more than just keyword density. Search engine optimization involves factors beyond simply keywords and word count. Google and other search engines have evolved to a complex algorithm that assesses a number of components in order to determine SEO and page rankings. Your blog’s SEO depends on readability. Keep these tips in mind when writing a blog:

• Grammar and spelling should be flawless.
• For ease of reading, use short words, sentences, and paragraphs. Try to write in a conversational tone. Consider testing for a Flesch-Kincaid readability score.
• The design, format, and typography (font, size, spacing, header structure, bullets, etc.) of your page can increase readability.
• Break up text with interesting images for content that is readable and shareable.
• Be interesting and relevant to your target consumers.

Search engines take the length of time spent on a blog page into consideration when assessing readability and determining whether people actually want to read your blog and are easily able to do so. Someone who is frustrated by a hard-to-read font, overly complex sentences full of typos and grammatical errors, and keyword-heavy content that’s not interesting to read will likely leave your page pretty quickly. In addition to improving your franchise’s search ranking results, you really do want consumers and prospects to read your blog. Position your franchise as the leader in your market by providing interesting, relevant, readable content. Appeal to your target audience on a human level and they’ll be more receptive to become loyal, long-term customers or members. Written right, a good blog will ultimately increase your sales.