Franchise SEO - Luke Bastin Explains How To Beat Franchisee Competitors

**James Dooley:** Hi, today I’m joined with Luke Baston and today’s topic of conversation is how to beat your franchise competitors. So you’ve got a franchise website and one or two other franchises. Think of Starbucks beating Costa Coffee, a pizza shop beating another pizza franchise, or a gutter cleaning company beating another gutter cleaning franchise. How do you go about beating competition when you’ve got a franchise website? **Luke Baston:** Hey James. The example you gave with coffee shops is a great place to start because in virtually every industry where franchises exist, the algorithms treat you at Google Business Profile level as if you are a local coffee shop. Proximity and how close the searcher is to the business location is one of the biggest ranking factors. One of the first things you can do is focus all your SEO efforts on the immediate vicinity of where you are based. Typically a three to five mile radius in dense cities, sometimes even less. You want to dominate that local area first. The way to do that is to identify all competitors in that target zone and analyse what they are doing well, badly, and poorly. You often find competitors using Google Business Profile categories that you are not using but which are highly relevant. Adding secondary categories you may have overlooked can immediately help you match and then outperform them. Clarity and consistency also matter. I’ve worked on national franchise websites where opening hours were inconsistent or unclear. Google Business Profiles are influenced by opening hours and businesses shown as open are served more often than those shown as closed. If your website, schema, and Google Business Profile all clearly show extended or accurate opening hours, you can gain a simple but powerful advantage. Another key tactic is using more than one asset. Many franchises rely only on their website and Google Business Profile. That limits them to two assets. You can expand far beyond that. YouTube videos answering common questions, showcasing your business, or demonstrating services all become additional assets. Each video can target a different query. You can also use more than one website. A main brand website plus a partial or exact match domain can help divide and conquer territory. All these tactics allow you to cover more ground and beat competitors more consistently. **James Dooley:** That’s great advice. I’ve got some quickfire questions. You mentioned doing more than just the website and Google Business Profile, including secondary websites and videos. As a holistic marketer, are you a big believer in ranking images as well? **Luke Baston:** Yes, because different queries have different search intent. Some searches clearly imply a visual result, whether that’s images or video. You can cover image intent with standalone images, image galleries, or even videos that use image slideshows. If you have ten images showcasing your business, those images can rank individually in Google Images, appear in AI overviews, be surfaced in large language model results, and sit on your website. You can also turn them into a video, which becomes another asset. One set of images can easily give you ten or more pieces of search real estate. The key is matching the format to the intent of the query. **James Dooley:** I completely agree. Before and after photos, designs, and bespoke work perform incredibly well, especially in visual industries. When it comes to comparing against competition, are there any specific tools you prefer for keyword and competitor research? **Luke Baston:** I use tools like Ahrefs and Semrush mainly for ideation and understanding competitor strategies. You might discover competitors ranking comparison pages, infographics, or content formats you had not even considered. Seeing demand behind those ideas helps prioritise opportunities. Beyond that initial phase, I look at what information retrieval systems are saying about competitors. I search Google, ChatGPT, Grok, Perplexity, and other large language models using a consistent set of queries. I compare what they say about competitors, including reviews, pricing, themes in customer feedback, and content gaps. Often beating competitors is about identifying what they are not doing rather than copying what they are doing. **James Dooley:** I love that focus on information gain. What about algorithms like BM25 at a local level. Do you believe in reflecting the SER first, using correlation tools like Surfer SEO or similar, or are you doing something different now? **Luke Baston:** It depends on page type rather than site type. Franchise websites are complex. National pages often rely on more advanced algorithms, while local location pages behave differently. At local level, you do not need the same depth of content as national pages. You need comprehensive coverage of all relevant business attributes so any local query is answered clearly. I used to use tools like Surfer SEO and I still think they are good. What I do now is a manual technique I call sharding. If I find an excellent local SEO page set for a service and location, I collect that content and feed it into a large language model. I then ask it to recreate the same structure and attributes for a different service and location. For example, plumbing in Chicago becomes roofing in Denver. Large language models are excellent at this. They understand attributes better than most tools. You then refine for local regulations or nuances. Done properly, you often do not need correlation tools for local pages. **James Dooley:** That makes sense, although that level of experience is not easy for in-house teams. If someone wants to hire you to reverse engineer competitors or get access to your franchise templates, how can they get in touch? **Luke Baston:** The easiest way is through my website at lukebaston.com. I’m also active on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Any of those channels work. **James Dooley:** Anyone watching this, Luke Baston is an absolute legend when it comes to franchise SEO. Reflect the SER, then move beyond it with information gain. If you want to beat franchise competition properly, make sure you reach out.