James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley:
Franchise SEO tips to fix weak performance of franchisee locations. Today I’m joined by Luke Baston, an absolute legend when it comes to franchise SEO. Luke, this is about fixing existing franchise websites. Every week you see large franchise sites getting things wrong. Let’s be brutally honest. What are the first things you fix that usually deliver quick results?

Luke Baston:
Hi James. One of the biggest issues I see is either technical problems on the website or mistakes with Google Business Profiles and geographic targeting. Often it is both. On the technical side, the structure matters. Some franchises use subfolders, others use subdomains, but usually there is one core issue that gets replicated across every location.

One common problem is creating pages that are not needed. If a franchise has 50 locations, those locations often provide the same service. Creating 50 near identical service pages does not help. In many cases, one strong service page that references all locations is enough. At the same time, there are pages that absolutely should be unique per location, such as meet the team pages, about pages, and service area pages. Franchises often get this balance wrong.

Another issue is templated content. Franchise sites are templated by nature, but many locations rely entirely on generic content that does not reflect their local reality. For example, a lawn care franchise may talk about grass types or seasonal services that do not apply to that specific region. That lack of local relevance weakens performance and conversions.

A third major issue is trying to cover too large an area too quickly. New franchisees often attempt to rank across huge territories immediately. Google Business Profiles are hyper local. In competitive areas, success usually starts within a three to five mile radius. Expanding too broadly too early limits visibility rather than increasing it.

James Dooley:
I agree completely. One thing I liked in your past work was how you helped franchisees make location pages more unique over time. You encouraged them to add local case studies, testimonials, and real projects. Can you expand on how you approach that?

Luke Baston:
This is evolving quickly because of large language models. Right now, I see three levels of location content. The weakest is generic information that AI already knows. Writing generic facts about a city adds little value. The second level includes partially unique content, such as listing neighbourhoods served. That helps relevance but does little for conversions.

The strongest approach is detailed, real case studies. These describe specific jobs, real problems, materials used, locations, regulations, and outcomes. This content cannot be faked or generated convincingly by AI. Once you have multiple case studies, you can reference them within service pages and link out to them. This creates real differentiation and strong signals for both search engines and LLMs.

James Dooley:
That makes sense. Real work beats generic content every time. Moving on to technical SEO, how important is a full technical audit for franchise sites and what tools do you rely on?

Luke Baston:
Technical audits are critical at scale. I use Screaming Frog as a baseline, but no tool is perfect. Every tool reflects someone else’s idea of what matters. I supplement this with custom Python scripts that analyse exports in more detail. This gives better granularity.

I also manually compare three versions of a page. The raw HTML source, the rendered Chrome version, and the Google rendered version in Search Console. This reveals JavaScript issues where content is visible to users but invisible to search engines and LLMs. I recently saw a franchise using a third party case study widget that looked great but was invisible to Google. That kind of issue completely undermines SEO efforts.

James Dooley:
That’s a big problem many people miss. Finally, if someone wants a franchise SEO audit, how can they contact you?

Luke Baston:
The easiest way is via my website, lukebaston.com. I’m also active on LinkedIn and Facebook, but the website is the simplest starting point.

James Dooley:
If you’re running a franchise and struggling with SEO performance, Luke Baston is one of the strongest specialists out there. Make sure you reach out.