Business

Your link profile is a big deal to your search engine optimization campaign. The likes of Google and Yahoo view the number and quality of links that your web pages receive as being an indication of whether or not those pages provide genuine benefit to the visitor. Building links over a long period of time will help you to enjoy the benefits of search optimization for years to come. Link building should, therefore, be considered a part of your monthly marketing campaign.

Link building can take many forms and they all offer different benefits to other techniques. Article marketing is a widely used technique and it offers the benefits of being scalable and sustainable. What’s more a single article can generate literally hundreds of links, many from directories that are crawled very frequently too.

Social bookmarking is another useful form of link building and it incorporates elements of social media optimization which is becoming an increasingly popular and beneficial means building your visitor base. It is a quick and simple process and there are hundreds of well established bookmarking websites – you can also submit a number, or even all, of your pages to each of the bookmarking sites to help drive traffic to every page.

All franchisors must address issues of national account pricing and service. The renegade franchisee who does not wish to follow the pricing guidelines for the demands of the customer can in fact cause the entire franchise system to lose a major national or international account. How do all you know this, you ask? Well, because this became a serious issue in our company, where we had many regional accounts with nationally known companies who wished to use our services in each market we expanded into. In some cases they wished us to travel to faraway markets just so we could serve their entire fleet. It is for this reason that I added this clause below to our franchise agreements; 4.8 National and International Accounts To the extent that Franchisor enters into an agreement to provide The Company to any National or International Account which has a location within the Marketing Area, Franchisor may offer Franchisee the right to service such account at such location at the terms upon which Franchisor and the National or International Account have agreed. In the event that there is more than one Franchisee licensed by Franchisor in the Marketing Area, Franchisor may allocate opportunities to service National or International Accounts between such Franchisees, as Franchisor in its sole discretion deems appropriate. If, for any reason, Franchisee elects not to service a National or International Account that is offered to Franchisee, Franchisor may, in its sole discretion, service such account or appoint any other party to service such account.

In order to maintain the quality and consistency of a franchised outlet it becomes necessary to inspect the facilities and franchise operations to make sure they are in compliance with confidential operations manual at all times. Franchisors must therefore have the right of inspection to check the books, audit the company and insure that image is maintained. In our franchise company I inserted a special clause into the franchise agreements, which address this issue, you will find it below;

3.17.2 Right of Inspection

Franchisor has the right, upon a minimum of forty-eight (48) hours notice, to inspect and audit Franchisee’s books, records, ledgers, journals, bank statements, sales tax reports, income tax returns, cash control systems and other accounting records pertaining to the Franchised Business. If any audit shows that the Franchisee has underpaid any royalties or other amounts due to Franchisor, Franchisee must immediately make payment to Franchisor to correct the underpayment. If the underpayment exceeds two percent (2%) of the total royalties, Promotional Fund contributions or other amounts due in any twelve (12) month period, which includes the date when the underpayment occurred, Franchisee must also pay or reimburse Franchisor for the costs of conducting the audit, in addition to any Late Payment owed to Franchisor.