Shoppers want to engage with local businesses. Also, as a business owner, getting more visitors to your website is crucial to the growth of your business. But if you want to reach local customers, you need to make sure they can locate your business online. And one effective way to boost 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 location-specific online entity.
They create cues of proximity and relevance to a specific geographic location or area.
What is Local Link Building?
Local link building is the strategy of acquiring relevant local links to your business website. It is the practice of gaining links from other websites 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?
Building local links is crucial for many reasons.
Google reports that “near me” searches have increased more than 500% in previous years. Therefore, the location of your business plays a crucial role for search users.
Additionally, 81% of consumers searched for local business information via Google in 2021. When the number of local searches increases, so does your local SEO strategy.
Google and other search engines consider backlinks a key factor in determining page rank. The more quality backlinks you have, the better your chances of getting a first page ranking.
In a recent survey, Local SEO experts across the board consider local link building as a critical component of a comprehensive and effective local SEO strategy.
Building local connections is an effective way to increase the visibility of your brand. Getting backlinks from well-known local websites increases brand awareness in your area and helps people trust your business.
Local link building also allows you to drive specific and highly targeted traffic to your website. Focusing on the right traffic helps you attract consumers who are likely to buy your product, bringing in 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? A key factor of local link building is that it should be location-specific and come from a site with a similar local audience to yours. These can be local websites such as news sites, directories or other local businesses.
Let’s take a look at ten important local link building strategies and tips for your local SEO.
Get listed in business directories
Adding your business to local business directories is the first local link building strategy to get local backlinks.
Business directories list companies within a specific industry or geographic location. Many people usually use business directories to shop for a business.
To get local links from these sites:
- Search Google for some of your relevant terms, such as “directory (in your area) (type of business), “small business directory (in your area)”.
- Consider the directories that appear in the first search results.
- Sign up and add your business to the site to get listed.
Some popular business directories include Yelp, Google, Facebook and Bing.
Get local quotes
In addition to directories, there are location data aggregation sites and top-rated business listing sites that you should definitely get listed on. Most provide their data to various websites and they are considered to be 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 job of manually uploading 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 relevant to your business. Identify the companies that appear on the first page of the SERPs and collect the list of websites to see what links they have in the past.
You will discover many relevant local hookup opportunities when you look at the overlap of links with competitor 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 gather links from your competitors helps you find potential customers.
Create useful content for your local audience
Showcase your knowledge and expertise by creating locally relevant content for your target audience. The content you create can strengthen organic links from local websites.
Let’s say you own a bakery. You can blog about topics like “cookie baking tips,” “how to bake red velvet cake,” or “how to get your oven ready for baking.”
Posting valuable content like this can get you backlinks from local bloggers or websites.
Find unrelated mentions and request links
An unlinked brand mention is when a site talks about your company or employees without linking it to your site. It can be a great opportunity to secure backlinks from high quality and authoritative websites.
You can use Google Alerts to search the internet for mentions of unrelated brands and use the relevant contact to send an awareness email. Rather than overlook unrelated brand mentions, research them, build meaningful relationships with website owners, and turn them into relevant backlinks.
Guest blogging on local blogs
Another way to get local backlinks is through guest posting on local blogs from local businesses and influencers.
As a business owner, you may have specific skills that may be of interest to others. If you know of local websites that rank well, you can contact them and ask if you can write a guest post. Make sure you create useful content related to your business and the page where you host your blog.
When you host a blog, strive to make it an opportunity to link.
Reach local and valuable websites
Increase the usefulness of your website and content by sharing it with other local governments on their websites.
Create an outreach email to bloggers, influencers and journalists who are likely to reuse and share your topic, providing a link to your site.
Swap links with local brands
Another way to get local links to your website is to exchange links with local businesses in your area. Most of them could 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 business areas.
Look for other local hookup opportunities
Local link building includes links from other websites that focus on your area.
Some great opportunities you can take advantage of include:
- Local sponsorships such as races, meetups, sports leagues or charities
- Existing local events on community groups like Facebook Groups, Nextdoor and Reddit
- University or college, such as scholarships, job offers and club sponsorships
- Community sites such as local non-profit sites and community groups
- Local businesses with websites that want to have a “Business We Love” page or a “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 affiliates or vendors.
Include internal links
One of the most overlooked local link building tips and tactics is to properly link your website internally.
An internal link is a link from one page on your website to another. Using internal linking is an effective link building tactic that can be applied to your local strategy.
Make sure your local landing pages and localized content are properly linked internally (both from and to) to your general service or product offering pages.
Also, it’s important that local landing pages link to top-level menus, such as in header or footer menus.
We are 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 drive 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 challenging for a business owner.
You already have many responsibilities and we can help you. LocalBizGuru is a full-service digital marketing agency that can help you create and execute an effective local marketing strategy for your business.
Don’t hesitate to contact us if you’re looking for help executing local link building or any other aspect of your local SEO strategy.
