An excellent restoration franchise website makes utilizing digital avenues more effective, meaning more leads and more customers!

Restoration entrepreneurs are great samaritans; they help homeowners restore their houses and get their lives back in order after a disaster strikes. When a new restoration owner starts their business, a part of their business considerations must include the design of their restoration franchise website. 

From hurricanes to fires, North America has seen it all in 2020. Due to the number of natural disasters, new restoration companies and their websites have emerged.

This article will review best practices for a restoration franchise website, giving you insights from the seven best as seen through the eyes of the restoration digital marketing professionals at Algorithmic Global. 

The Metrics

We looked through many restoration franchise websites in our search for the best. We chose these seven websites based on how well they’re designed. When analyzing the following restoration franchise websites, we will go over the following: 

Web design/Useability: 

We will see if the website is outdated and whether or not it is mobile-friendly. We also took a look at the page speed to ensure the website was loading quickly. 

Location-Specific Content:

Whether or not the franchisees are incorporating location-specific content for each restoration franchise location. 

NAP Consistency:

NAP (name, address, phone number) consistency is essential for search engines. We will check that each restoration franchise website includes the location’s hours, address, and phone number. The NAP on the franchise website needs to be consistent with their Google Business Page and throughout all online directories. 

Links:

We are going to be looking at the internal and external links on each franchise website. Links are a huge part of SEO–they help Google understand the website hierarchy. 

Site URL Structure: 

Let’s consider the web site’s URL structure before we start going over the top restoration franchise websites. There are three common types of franchise website structures:

1) Microsite: an auxiliary website with independent links and address that is accessed mainly from a larger site.

2) Subdomain: an internet domain that is part of a primary domain.

3) Subdirectory: a directory below another directory in a hierarchy.

Restoration Franchise Website Design 

When designing the perfect restoration franchise website, it is essential to consider the hierarchical website structure you want to use for the franchise locations and functionalities you’ll want for your websites.

Here is a breakdown of what each URL structure looks like; this example highlights why we prefer to build restoration franchise websites with a subdomain URL structure. 

Microsite

A microsite allows each franchise location to have its own domain. A great example of this kind of build will be the SERVPRO franchise websites.

Each SERVPRO location has its own website and a unique domain:

• http://www.servpoeastdaytonbeavercreek.com
• http://www.servpronorthfulton.com
• http://www.servprodowntownatlanta.com

Subdomain (Preferred URL Structure)

A subdomain is different from a microsite website build because the main corporate domain is still rooted in the URL, and all websites will be part of the main corporate network. When choosing the subdomain build, each restoration franchise location will have a subdomain for each location. A great example of this would be the Paul Davis website.

Paul Davis subdomain  

• http://www.wilmington-nc.pauldavis.com
• http://www.suburban-md-and-washington-dc.pauldavis.com
• http://www.mid-michigan.pauldavis.com

Subdirectory:

A restoration franchise that chooses to use the subdirectory setup will only use one main domain and then have separate location pages. An excellent example of a restoration franchise website like this would be Rainbow International Restoration. 

Rainbow International URL structure 

• http://www.rainbowintl.com/silver-spring
• http://www.rainbowintl.com/south-san-jose
• http://www.rainbowintl.com/windsor-ca

Restoration Franchise Website Rankings 

Here’s how the restoration marketing professionals ranked the best restoration franchise website, ranked from 7 to1.

7 – Duraclean

Duraclean was founded by Irl Marshall Sr. in Racine, Wisconsin, in 1930. They have come a long way from the early days as a fine rug cleaning company. 

Duraclean has allowed each restoration franchise website to have its own web design and unique content. The logo is the only thing that has stayed consistent throughout the sites. 

The design of the corporate website is basic and outdated. As the main face of all the franchisees, we think that the site should speak for their quality. When analyzing the SEO, the first thing we noticed is that the site is not secure. Google will penalize any franchise websites that are not secure. Duraclean could do better with fundamental tweaks. 

Web design: 2/10 

Location Specific Content: 10/10 

NAP Consistency: 10/10

Links: 2/10 

URL Structure type: Microsite

6 – Rainbow International Restoration

Rainbow International Restoration was founded in 1981 and started with the restoration franchise business model in mind. 

At first, we noticed a clean web design with company colors used throughout. One issue is that the website is noticeably lacking pictures. With their chosen URL structure, the NAP (name, address, phone number) will be inconsistent because multiple locations point to one website. The site also lacks location-specific content. 

Web design: 7/10 

Location Specific Content: 2/10 

NAP Consistency: 1/10

Links: 2/10 

URL Structure type: Subdirectory

5 – Service Master 

Service Master is a well-known restoration franchise competitor, similar to SERVPRO and Paul Davis. Marion E. Wade founded Service Master in 1947 when he was looking to build a mothproofing company. The company branched out in 1952 and started offering carpet cleaning and restoration services. 

Service Master has built out an online presence, unlike any other restoration franchise we have examined. The corporate site is very well done, although the franchises are all different. It seems that each Service Master franchisee can build their website in any way they please. Some of the websites are very well done and optimized for search, while others are elementary and unprofessional. We ranked them the lowest for web design due to a lack of brand consistency. 

Web design: 1/10 

Location Specific Content: 10/10 

NAP Consistency: 10/10

Links: 3/10 

URL Structure type: Microsite

4 – 911 Restoration

911 Restoration was founded by Idan Shpizear and Peleg Lindenberg in Los Angeles, California, in 2003. In 2007 they began franchising. 

One of the main issues we noticed is that the text is hard to read. 

The restoration franchise website structure: each restoration franchise gets its own domain. 

One of the more disturbing things we found was the below blog post on the main corporate site: The 5 Top-Ranked Restoration Franchises You Can Start. They ranked themselves as #2. We can respect the honesty, but why would anyone want to open a franchise with them or hire them when they already ranked SERVPRO as #1? 

Lastly, they seem not to be consistent with blog posting. The last post was in May 2020. 

Our verdict: Not the best but not the worst. 911 restoration has a basic web design with the use of company colors throughout all franchise locations. 

Web design: 5/10 

Location Specific Content: 10/10 

NAP Consistency: 10/10

Links: 2/10 

URL Structure type: Microsite

3 – Roto-Rooter 

Roto-Rooter has recently made a name for itself in the water damage restoration field. Samuel Oscar Blanc started the company in the 1930s as a sewer cleaning company after inventing the Roto-Rooter cleaning machine. Later they developed into a plumbing company. Plumbers are great lead generators in the restoration industry because they typically are the first to get the call when piping brakes or a sewage line breaks in a home. 

Roto-Rooter picked this service up and started a water damage repair division. Note: not all franchises offer water damage restoration services, but many do.

We like the basic design of the Roto-Rooter franchise website. One thing that we don’t like is the URL structure. They have built a URL structure similar to Rainbow International Restoration (#6), where each location page is on the main website directory.

Web design: 8/10 

Location Specific Content: 10/10 

NAP Consistency: 10/10

Links: 4/10 

URL Structure type: Subdirectory

2 – SERVPRO

Servpro is a leading restoration franchise in North America. SERVPRO has come a long way from initially starting as a painting business in Sacramento, California, in 1967. They now offer a wide range of restoration and cleaning services to both residential and commercial customers. 

One thing that stood out was that all the franchise websites had similar content. Also, each SERVPRO franchise blog had URLs that were too long.  

As a preferred vendor for many local and national insurance companies, we believe that the website gets the point across for the offered services but is not the best for usability and SEO. 

Web design: 6/10 

Location Specific Content: 10/10 

NAP Consistency: 10/10

Links: 7/10 

URL Structure type: Microsite

1 – Paul Davis Restoration

The winner of the best restoration franchise website!

Paul Davis Restoration was founded by Paul Woodall Davis in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1966. They always were in the restoration niche. In 1970 they started to franchise. Each franchise is independently owned and operated. 

We have ranked the Paul Davis restoration franchise website as the number one best. The site looks professional and clean.

One of the main reasons Paul Davis won the best restoration franchise website is its URL structure. They utilized the subdomain structure, the preferred version.

Analyzing the content of Paul Davis, they seem to be performing well with quick load times. One thing that stood out was that the Paul Davis location franchise websites do not have a blog page. They would have received a 10/10 for links if they included a blog page where they could rank long-tail keywords and interlink blog posts. 

Web design: 9/10 

Location Specific Content: 10/10 

NAP Consistency: 10/10

Links: 2/10 

URL Structure type: Subdomain 

What is the best URL structure for a restoration franchise?

The best choice in building a restoration franchise website is to go with subdomains. We prefer going with subdomains because it gives the corporate company the most control and ownership. If constructed correctly, each franchise location will have full control of the content uploaded to their site. 

The next best option is the microsite builds. A microsite is excellent in allowing each franchise location to have complete control over the site (even when hosted by a corporate entity). As mentioned, SERVPRO has this type of build. The only downfall is that all the SERVPRO sites look the same. Each franchise can add 250 words to each unique page and add any blog content as long as it is in corporate guidelines. One of the SERVPRO corporate guidelines is that they will not allow any content that discusses health effects to be published. 

We believe that franchisees should control their web presence; that’s why a subdomain or microsite is a better option over a subdirectory setup. A subdirectory setup will force long URLs, which are not preferred for search optimization. 

In the above video, a Google search professional mentions that they know how to crawl both, but at the same time, we think that each restoration franchise location should be able to manage their own SEO and rank their keywords accordingly. We will continue to argue that the best way to build a restoration franchise website is through subdomains.

Looking to get a new franchise website? 

The team at Algorithmic Global can help you achieve all your franchise website goals. When you choose to work with restoration marketing professionals, you will receive a unique solution that will grow with your business and bring in more restoration leads. 

When building a restoration franchise website, we believe in giving complete corporate control over the brand and design. Brand and design consistency is essential for all restoration franchises, but so is giving franchise owners control over their individual websites. Our restoration franchise website solutions allow both brand consistency and franchise location control over content like blogs and about pages. 

The skilled designers at Algorithmic Global will create the perfect restoration franchise website template for your business. Our designed team works closely with the SEO team to ensure that every restoration franchise website we build includes the most profitable water damage restoration keywords. Contact us today for a free consultation. Your franchise websites deserve to grow with your business.