Case Study - 87,500+ Page Views in 7 Months: Franchise SEO Strategy Boosts Local Search Traffic by 57.9%

Overview: Building a Franchise SEO Strategy to Drive Organic Traffic and Boost Brand Awareness

PizzaForno approached us seeking a custom website that would not only showcase their new branding but also boost brand awareness across their 70+ locations in North America. So, we did what we do best—developed a high-performance website using Next.js and created a franchise SEO strategy to drive organic traffic to each location.

Challenges We Faced

PizzaForno required a complete website overhaul that prioritized performance, user engagement, and strong location-based SEO strategies. The goal of the project was to create a custom website and a scalable solution for managing its content, while also helping each of their 70+ locations increase brand awareness through SEO. With PizzaForno opening new locations monthly, the system had to be simple enough for their team to manage independently if needed.

Additionally, we needed to develop an SEO strategy to increase awareness for each location across North America, which required treating each one as its own local business (which, technically, it is). However, since we were managing over 70 local "businesses" at once, our strategy had to account for this complexity.

The Solution: Custom Web Development with Advanced SEO Strategies

We began the project by developing a digital marketing strategy tailored to PizzaForno's business needs. The plan had three key components and was designed to enhance their SEO and strengthen their online presence.

Step 1: Website Development & Content Strategy

The first step of our strategy was to develop a custom website for PizzaForno using modern web technologies to simplify user navigation across all location pages. We optimized the website following search engine best practices to ensure strong technical and on-page SEO.

Step 2: Custom Dashboard & CMS Integration

To manage the locations on the site, we developed a custom dashboard to easily add, edit, or remove location pages, and integrated our "HyperSpeed CMS". This allowed both our team and PizzaForno's team to easily update content, improving the content strategy and on-page SEO.

Step 3: Off-Page, Local SEO, and NAP Optimization

Once the location pages were built, we focused on improving off-page and local SEO. This involved resolving PizzaForno's Google Business Profile verification issues and optimizing the GMB profiles for over 70 locations. We also developed a tool to export location data into a CSV file, simplifying citation updates across multiple platforms.

Custom Web Development and SEO Optimization with Next.js

We started this project off by building a completely new, custom website for PizzaForno. We opted to use Next.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS for a fast, responsive, and visually appealing site.

When it comes to SEO, there’s more to consider than just content and backlinks. Technical SEO was an essential component to our strategy and includes factors like page load speeds, website structure, mobile responsiveness, sitemaps, and accessibility. These elements help search engines find and index your content more easily.

Web Technologies Powering PizzaForno's Site

The website was built using the latest versions of modern web technologies, including:

Utilizing Next.js for Technical SEO

Next.js enables Server-Side Rendering (SSR), ensuring content is fully rendered before reaching the user. This makes it easier for search engine crawlers to scan and index web pages, detect metadata, and understand the site's content. Additionally, SSR improves loading speeds, optimizing the First Contentful Paint (FCP) and enhancing other Core Web Vitals that impact SEO.

By using Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) for PizzaForno's location pages, blogs, and frequently updated content, we can rebuild pages at set time intervals, ensuring the information is always up-to-date across the site. This improves page load performance by serving cached HTML files and reduces server load by regenerating HTML incrementally, minimizing the need for a full application redeployment. As a result, ISR helps search engines crawl and index our site more efficiently, boosting our SEO.

According to Google, the likelihood of a user bouncing, leaving before the webpage fully loads, increases by 32% as page load times increase from 1 second to 3 seconds.

Optimizing Site Structure and Enhancing the User Experience

One of our primary objectives was to optimize the site structure by streamlining navigation to the location pages, making it easier for users to find the nearest PizzaForno machine. To achieve this, we designed an intuitive location finder with an Airbnb-style interface, displaying all active locations on an interactive map.

This setup allows users to quickly find their nearest location with just a click of a button, or they can explore the map to choose a location they prefer. Upon choosing a location, a pop-up appears guiding users to that locations dedicated landing page.

When navigating to any of the location pages, we ensured the crawl depth was only two links deep—from the homepage to the location finder page, and then to the specific location landing page. This approach was designed to ensure each page received some "link juice", helping to boost their SEO.

By optimizing our site structure this way, we improve search engines' ability to access and index these pages, which in turn increases their potential to rank higher in search results.

Additional Technical SEO Enhancements with Internal Linking

To further improve our technical SEO, we added internal links to the location finder on key pages, including the homepage, our custom LinkTree, and throughout the navigation menu and footer. This internal linking strategy not only distributes link juice effectively to the location pages but also boosts SEO performance by improving their crawlability and indexability. By linking to key pages within the site (in this case, our location finder page), we're signaling to search engines that these pages are important, increasing the likelihood of them being indexed and ranked.

Custom Dashboard & Location Page Management Tool

We developed a custom admin dashboard for the PizzaForno team, which simplifies the process of adding and updating PizzaForno location data. This dashboard is used internally to monitor and manage all data related to the PizzaForno fleet. It also assists in generating some of the information displayed on the location pages, ensuring that the content visitors see is up-to-date and accurate.

In the image above, you can see options for editing each location page, including business hours, address, status (open, closed, or temporarily closed), the Google review link, and other features.

The Google My Business review URL is an important part of our local SEO strategy. Once added, it triggers a pop-up on the website's location page, encouraging users to leave a review on the corresponding Google Business Profile. By acquiring more positive Google reviews, it can significantly boost your local search ranking, making this feature particularly valuable for this campaign.

HyperSpeed CMS Integration

We developed our own content management system (CMS), which we call "HyperSpeed CMS". We use it alongside the custom websites we develop. For this project, we integrated HyperSpeed CMS to streamline the addition of images, meta tags, and content on each location page. This integration provides both our team and PizzaForno's team the ability to dynamically insert additional content when needed.

By implementing Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR) on the location pages, we can automatically refresh them at set intervals. This keeps the pages up-to-date without needing to redeploy the application each time we make changes or add new information. By being able to easily add keyword-rich content to these pages, it helps us optimize them for the search queries we are targeting.

Thanks to our strategy, every active PizzaForno location across North America has its own dedicated landing page on the website. Our custom integrations provide a scalable solution that allows for easy updates, additions, or removals of pages and content as the business evolves.

Off-Page SEO: NAP Consistency and Local Citations

To improve our SEO, we secured local citations for each of the 70+ location pages. When choosing platforms for these citations, we opted for those that are both free and support bulk CSV imports to help us maintain accurate and consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone number) information.

There are services that simplify multi-location business listings for companies like PizzaForno. However, we chose to bypass expensive options like Yext, which can cost up to $50 per location each month. Considering PizzaForno's vast network, using these services would have resulted in thousands of dollars in monthly expenses. Instead, we opted to create our own tool to manage citations more affordably.

Our custom tool exports active location data into a platform-specific CSV file, giving us the ability to update all citations simultaneously, rather than update each listing manually. This method ensures accuracy and uniformity of NAP data, which is essential for local SEO as Google values consistency across listings.

Google Business Profile Bulk Verification

When we began working with PizzaForno, only 66% of their Google Business Profiles were verified, which negatively affected the brand's overall search visibility. To address this issue, we secured "bulk verification" for all locations. This action immediately enhanced their local search presence, with 33% more profiles now visible online.

Google Business Profile Optimization

To enhance their off-page SEO and ensure NAP consistency for PizzaForno, we optimized all 70+ locations by integrating SEO-optimized local keywords into their descriptions. Each profile was enhanced with detailed information, such as menus and relevant photos, following Google's recommendations for local SEO.

We also linked each Google Business Profile to its corresponding location page on the website. By adding the matching website URL to each GMB profile, it improves local citation accuracy and prominence, which helps these pages rank higher in local search results.

Writing Documentation to Boost SEO

To further our content strategy we added a "Documentation" section on our website, filled with targeted keywords. This section helps us establish topical authority, which in turn improves the search performance of our location pages by ranking for related keywords. The content is similar to a blog but set up as a guide. You can check out the documentation here.

Publishing SEO-Optimized Blogs

Our strategy also focused on using blogging to strengthen our topical authority and enhance the ranking of our location pages. By conducting keyword research, analyzing competitors, and performing content audits, we have developed a targeted list of blog topics planned for release in the upcoming months. Although only several posts have been published so far, they are already showing promising results.

Client Testimonial

The Results: A Powerful Franchise SEO Strategy with Measurable Success

The custom web development and SEO strategies we implemented have significantly boosted PizzaForno's online presence. By creating SEO-optimized location pages for each machine across North America, we effectively targeted local search queries and high-intent users. Now, when people search for terms like "Pizza near me" or "Pizza restaurant," these pages rank in the search results.

Looking at the Google Analytics metrics from December 1st, 2023 to July 6th, 2024, we see that the location pages now make up more than 25% of the site's total organic search traffic!

As a result of our campaign, these pages experienced a 57.9% increase in clicks and 87.9% more impressions within the first seven months. During this period, they generated over 14,500 organic clicks and amassed more than 615,000 organic impressions.