Buyers want to interact with local businesses. Moreover, as a business owner, getting more visitors to your website is crucial for your company’s growth. But if you want to reach local customers, you must ensure they can locate your business online. And one effective way to bolster your local search rankings is through local link-building.
What is a local link?
A local link is a connection between your website and another online entity that is location specific.
They create proximity and relevance signals to a specific geographic location or area.
What Is Local Link-Building?
Local link building is the strategy to acquire relevant local links to your business’ website. It’s the practice of earning links from other websites back to yours. The goal of link building is to drive traffic to your website and help your site rank high for local searches.
Why Is Local Link-Building Important?
How important are links for local SEO?
Local link-building is critical for many reasons.
Google reports that ‘near me’ searches have increased above 500% in the previous years. Thus, your business’s location plays a crucial role for search users.
Also, 81% of consumers searched for information on local businesses via Google in 2021. When the number of local searches increases, your local SEO strategy also boosts.
Google and other search engines consider backlinks a key factor in determining page rank. The more quality backlinks you have, the higher your chances of getting a page-one ranking.
In a recent survey, Local SEO experts across the board regard local link-building as a critical component of a comprehensive and effective local SEO strategy.
Building local links is an effective way to boost your brand’s visibility. Getting backlinks from well-known local websites increases your brand awareness in your area and helps people trust your business.
Local link-building also enables you to drive specific and highly targeted traffic to your website. Focusing on the right traffic helps you attract consumers that may buy your product, bringing more revenue.
Practical Ways to Build Local Links
Now that you know what local link-building means and why it matters, how do you get local links? One key factor of local link-building is that it should be location-specific and come from a site with a similar local audience as yours. This can be local websites like news sites, directories, or other local businesses.
Let’s look at ten important local link-building strategies and tips for your local SEO.
Get Listed on Business Directories
Adding your business to local business directories is the first local link-building strategy to get local backlinks.
Business directories list businesses within a specific geographic industry or location. Many people usually use business directories to shop for a company.
To get local links from these sites:
- Search some of your relevant terms in Google, such as “(your area) (business type) directory, ‘(your area) small business directory.
- Consider directories that appear on the top search results.
- Sign up and add your business to the site to get listed.
Some popular business directories include Yelp, Google, Facebook, and Bing.
Garner Local Citations
Besides directories, there are location data aggregator sites and top-level business listing sites you should definitely be listed on. Most feed their data to various websites and are considered the most crucial citations.
They include Foursquare, Yellow Pages, Data Axle, Apple maps, Google Business Profile, Yelp, etc.
You can try many citation services to do the tedious work of manually uploading your location data for you.
Find and Get Competitor Backlinks
Getting competitor backlinks is a great way to showcase your business to your audience.
To get started, search for terms that are valuable to your business. Identify businesses that appear on the first page in the SERPs and collect the list of the websites to see what links they’ve got in the past.
You’ll discover many relevant local link opportunities when you look at the links’ overlap with your competitor’s sites. Since these are your direct competitors, many links will be related to your industry. You can use tools like Majestic and Ahrefs for link research. Being able to garner your competitors’ links helps you to find prospects.
Create Helpful Content for Your Local Audience
Showcase your knowledge and expertise by creating locally relevant content for your target audience. The content you create can bolster organic links from local websites.
Let’s say you own a bakery shop. You can create blogs on topics like ‘tips for baking cookies, ‘how to bake a red velvet cake,’ or ‘how to prep your oven for baking.
Publishing valuable content like this can get you backlinks from local bloggers or websites.
Find Unlinked Mentions and Request Links
An unlinked brand mention is when a site talks about your company or workers without linking it to your site. It can be a great opportunity to secure backlinks from authoritative, high-quality websites.
You can use Google Alerts to search the internet for unlinked brand mentions and use the relevant contact to send an outreach mail. Rather than neglect unlinked brand mentions, seek them out, build meaningful relationships with the website owners, and turn them into relevant backlinks.
Guest Blogging on Local Blogs
Another way to get local backlinks is through guest posts on local blogs from local businesses and influencers.
As a business owner, you may have specific expertise that may interest others. If you know local websites that rank well, you can contact them and ask if you can write a guest post. Ensure you create helpful content related to your business and the page where you guest blog.
When you guest blog, strive to make it a linking opportunity.
Reach Out to Local and Valuable Websites
Elevate your website’s and content’s usefulness by sharing it with other local entities on their websites.
Create an outreach email to bloggers, influencers, and journalists who may repurpose and share your topic, providing a link back to your site.
Link Swap with Local Brands
Another way to get local links to your website is to swap links with local businesses in your area. Most of them may link to you if you link to them. Doing this can help you build local backlinks fast. These brands should not be competitors but complementary areas of business.
Locate Other Local Link Opportunities
Local link-building includes links from other websites focused on your area.
Some fantastic opportunities you can leverage include:
- Local sponsorships like races, meetups, sports leagues, or charity
- Existing local events on community groups like Facebook groups, Nextdoor and Reddit
- Universities or Colleges, e.g., scholarships, job postings, and club sponsorship
- Community sites like local not-for-profit sites and community groups
- Local businesses with websites that want to have a “Business We Love” page or “Local Partners” page.
- Local magazines, news, and podcasts
- City-specific sites and directories
You can also speak at local events or create local case studies and testimonials for affiliations or suppliers.
Include Internal Links
One of the most overlooked local link building tips and tactics is having your website internally linked properly.
An internal link is a link from one page on your website to another. Using internal links is an effective link-building tactic that can be applied to your local strategy.
Ensure your local landing pages and localized content are properly linked internally (both to and from) to your general service or product offering pages.
Additionally, it’s important to have your local landing pages linked to high-level menus, such as in the header or footer menus.
We’re Here to Help
As part of a comprehensive local SEO strategy, local link-building is a powerful way to improve your SEO, increase search engine visibility, and attract valuable traffic to your website.
However, building local links can be challenging. It needs hard work, research, creativity, and patience.
Getting your business in front of consumers can be tough for a business owner.
You already have many responsibilities, and we can help out. LocalBizGuru is a full-service digital marketing agency that can help create and execute an effective local marketing strategy for your business.
Please feel free to contact us if you’re looking for assistance executing local link building or any other aspect of your Local SEO strategy.
