National SEO for brands that sell everywhere.

National SEO is a different discipline than local SEO. Local is won on Google Business Profile, reviews and citations inside a 30-mile radius. National is won on topical authority, technical scale across hundreds or thousands of URLs, and, in 2026, on being cited inside AI answers. Bonsai Marketing runs national SEO programs for multi-location companies, franchise systems, SaaS and e-commerce brands, and directories, from a Santa Rosa, California studio that also built and ranks its own 150-metro product site.

What a national SEO engagement looks like

Every national program we run has the same four layers. The scope changes with your location count and page count; the layers do not.

1. Topical map. The full subject area your buyers search, not just the pages you have today. This becomes the build order for content, location pages and product pages.
2. Technical foundation at scale. Core Web Vitals, schema coverage, crawl budget, internal-link graph and index hygiene across every URL. At national scale a "content-only" agency leaves compounding problems on the site.
3. Authority and citations. Links earned through useful content, original data and tools, plus the directory, review and publication citations that both Google and the AI engines actually retrieve from.
4. AI search optimization. Entity work, llms.txt, structured data and citation tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Mode, measured monthly with BonsaiX.

Who this is for

• Multi-location companies with 5 to 500 locations that need every market to rank without diluting the brand. See Multi-Location SEO.
• Franchise systems and franchisees where corporate owns the brand site and operators own the local demand. See Franchise SEO.
• SaaS, e-commerce and directories that sell to the whole country and need topical authority to compound.
• Regional brands going national that have outgrown a local agency and are not yet ready for a 40-person enterprise shop.

Scope tiers

We price national work by surface area and competitive density, never by hours. The tiers below are how we frame the conversation; the number comes after a Foundation Assessment.

Tier 1 — Regional

2 to 10 markets, up to ~150 URLs in scope. Topical map, technical foundation, per-market pages, monthly authority work, AI visibility baseline and tracking. Typical first measurable movement: 90 days.

Tier 2 — National

10 to 100 markets or a single national footprint, 150 to 1,500 URLs. Everything in Regional plus content velocity tied to the topical map, citation campaigns in the sources AI engines quote, quarterly technical re-audits and executive reporting.

Tier 3 — Enterprise / Multi-location

100+ locations or 1,500+ URLs. Governance model for corporate and local operators, location-page templating with real local content, multi-market rank and AI-citation tracking, and a Win Report for every stakeholder every month.

What we measure

• Rankings on the topical map, by market, tracked weekly.
• AI visibility score: whether you are cited, where in the citation order, and whether you are recommended or merely listed, across five AI platforms.
• Qualified leads and pipeline, not sessions. Every program is wired to call tracking, GA4 and your CRM on day one.

Proof we run this playbook on ourselves

Voice Bonsai, our own AI receptionist product, ranks for "AI receptionist near me" across 150 major metros because we built 150 DMA-targeted city pages, industry-vertical landing pages and a real content calendar. Wandering Nurses shipped as a 138-page national build with a full technical audit. MFTFinder is a national directory built on the same architecture. Same playbook, larger surface area.

Red flags when hiring a national SEO company

• "We'll write 50 blog posts a month." Volume is not the strategy. Topical authority is.
• "Our secret sauce is private blog networks." That is how you get penalized.
• "Here's a monthly PDF, call us with questions." You need a strategist on the call, not a report generator.
• "12-month minimum." Good work retains itself.
• No plan for AI search. If the proposal never mentions ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Overviews, it was written for 2019.

Frequently asked questions

Do you only work with Sonoma County businesses?

No. Local service businesses in Sonoma County are one of our two front doors. The other is multi-location, franchise and national brands anywhere in the United States. Both run on the same BonsaiX platform and the same team.

How long until a national program shows results?

Technical fixes and schema land in the first 60 days. First measurable ranking movement on the topical map is usually 90 to 120 days. AI citations typically follow rankings by a quarter. We tell you the real timeline after the assessment, not before.

Can you work alongside our in-house team or another agency?

Yes. On enterprise programs we often own strategy, technical SEO and AI visibility while an in-house team or content vendor produces at volume against our topical map.

What does it cost?

National programs are scoped by markets, URLs and competitive density after a Foundation Assessment. The assessment is free and you keep the findings whether or not you hire us.

National SEO done right is not about "ranking." It is about building a content and entity asset that compounds every month and becomes a defensible moat, in Google and in the AI engines that now answer for it.