Article by Louise Harris, Franchise Director, Wilkins Chimney Sweep

Web presence audit finds PR articles
boost franchisee's Google rankings

A web audit
Being a relatively new franchise, we felt it was important to audit our web presence for our franchisees; after all, part of their package is an on-going national marketing campaign by us, so we wanted to show them what our website was achieving for them.

Start-up package
As part of our start-up package for franchisees we set up pages for them on our main website and we also provide a PR launch through Louise Bruce of Big Red Box PR.  Louise, who has been handling our PR since August 2011, interviews the franchisee then writes a launch release which she sends to the franchisee’s local newspaper.   Typically the press release will appear in the newspaper but with all papers now having a full online presence, the story usually ends up on the internet as well. Louise also writes case studies on each franchisee which she then sends to a variety of franchise related websites.

PR Boost
During the audit we noticed that those with the highest ranking in Google appeared to have a PR led story boosting their placement; in other words, one of the papers or case studies was coming up in the searches for the business.

Beating the competition
We’d love to set up a franchisee with no competition but there’s plenty about so the more we can do to raise our profile, the better.  To our surprise the PR benefits, which we were very aware of from the ‘paper’ coverage have an added benefit in the online world, making our dollar go much further, and us happier franchisors! Carry on the good PR work Louise!

Louise Harris
Franchise Director
Wilkins Chimney Sweep
August 2013