KFC is the world’s second-largest restaurant chain with 24,000 restaurants in over 145 countries and territories around the globe! Despite enjoying phenomenal success worldwide, they have always seen the value in a well-executed SEO strategy to help them achieve maximum visibility at a local level – something that is key for chain restaurants.
KFC is a great example of an enterprise-level company recognising the importance of on-going SEO services, despite achieving worldwide fame. We have been working with them to create a solid and future-proofed SEO foundation whilst also testing new and innovative ideas across their range of assets.
When KFC first came on board in 2020, our main focus was to improve their local SEO. This included continuous optimisation of their 900+ Google Business Profiles alongside their near-me landing pages for each location which work hand in hand with the Google Business Profiles. This proved to be critical throughout COVID when demand for takeaways and collections was heightened and they needed to ensure they were at the forefront of people’s minds.
The other priority was to improve the technical health of the website, addressing a range of issues from sitemap problems through to meta data which were preventing the site from achieving maximum visibility in the search engines. Once these issues were sorted and being monitored 24/7 by our intelligent automation software Apollo Insights, we could then focus on other areas such as content.
Content marketing has been a big part of the project for KFC. There wasn’t a blog on the site so we put together recommendations for blog content following extensive keyword research, looking at competitors such as McDonalds to give examples. We put together recommendations for local landing pages, providing competitor insights for Dominos, Pizza Hut, Burger King etc, to demonstrate where KFC was missing out and where pages could be better optimised to capture valuable search traffic. We also focused on creating FAQ content for the site and Google Business Profiles to help put KFC at the forefront when these questions were being asked in search engines.
We’ve also been working within the KFC digital technology team and alongside other companies in our group to help develop and improve the user experience of the internal Content Management System as well as the customer-facing mobile ordering and loyalty app.
Together, we have formulated user stories and customer journey maps, all of which provided the foundations for the design phase. The aim has been to create an enterprise grade CMS with an enhanced user interface and streamlined user journey to improve productivity across the business.
Learn more about our experience of working with restaurants by visiting our restaurant marketing page.