Are you having trouble getting links to your local business? We’re going to talk about how to start a local link-building campaign.
Inbound links play a significant role in how well your website ranks in the search engine results. Whether you provide a local service or run a brick-and-mortar business, local link building is essential. So, how do you find links for your business? Let’s explore.
What Is a Local Link?
When we think about link building, the traditional process is to leverage as many high authoritative domains as possible to link back to your website. The problem with this process is that it isn’t practical for small to medium-sized local businesses.
The best way to build links for your local business is to understand what you’re looking for when creating a link building campaign. Local SEO focuses on building relevance for a website by focusing on your locality. This includes:
- Correcting NAP information
- Building citation lists
- Creating hyperlocal content
- Building links
This strategy aims to establish a presence within the local search engine results pages using local terms in the local pack with Google My Business. You should also focus on organic search results for geotargeted keywords. For example, “keyword + your city.”
A local link should link back to your website and provide you the opportunity to speak to your local audience. Even if your local market influencers don’t command a highly authoritative site, they influence the local market. Getting a link from a local market influencer is more valuable than highly authoritative sites like Forbes or Huffington Post.
Getting local market influencer links is a great strategy, but you need to understand the limitations local businesses face. Lack of advertising funds to produce the type of content big publishers are looking for challenges small to medium business. That’s why it’s essential to make the most of the money you spend on your local SEO. Local businesses do best with link building within the confines of their local space. So, if you’re located in San Antonio, it would be a waste to waste your time on SEO in New York City.
Start with Citations
One of the best places to start building your local SEO is citations. Creating your citations, adding your information to general directories, and correcting information that is currently online will get you started.
Citations are a vital resource for small to medium businesses because they allow you to place your most crucial business information online for potential customers to see. NAP (name, address, phone number) listings give potential customers the details necessary to get in touch with your business. With countless listing directories online, citations help you get your business information out there and make sure what’s out there is correct.
Using as many sources as possible, you can grow your online presence with citations. Citation building services include:
- Yext
- Moz Local
- MapQuest
- TomTom
- Superpages
- Local.com
- And more!
The last thing you want potential customers to do is to find your business online, express an interest in purchasing your goods or services, and obtain the wrong address or phone number to get in touch. These can also be great auditing tools to help ensure that your business information online is correct.
Where Do the Opportunities Lie?- Anywhere You Can Find It!
In recent years, rumors have circulated that local link building is not beneficial for businesses. Other ideas floating around are that it’s not natural, and it seems impossible. While this can be true in some instances, a quality SEO team has the skills and experience to find creative ways to help your business stand out.
Link opportunities are much more limited, especially when you’re going up against massive brands with a big marketing budget. You’re fighting to rank for hyper-local keywords, but these tend not to have a lot of search volume. You’ll also be working with websites with low authority to start.
So, where does the opportunity lie? For local small to medium business shops, here are some links you can start with as you work to build your online profile:
- Local newspapers or media outlets that feature local businesses
- Local bloggers who create content for your community
- Local even pages that write about things to do or place to go in your local area- think tourism sites, downtown directories, chamber of commerce
- Other local businesses that work with your company and have websites of their own
- Local partners that do business with you
- Local charities- you could even sponsor or volunteer at these places to be featured on their pages
When you get creative, the opportunities are endless!
If you’re doing local SEO, you need to understand the local space’s limits and dive into that space as if it’s the only place on Earth. Everything you do to promote your business exists in the confines of the radius you focus on. Understanding your limits will allow you to think more creatively and effectively to find opportunities in your space. Ultimately, this leads to fantastic growth opportunities and value for your business website.
Where to Get Started
If you’re looking for places to start building your links, a link tool can help you get started. Start building a list of local prospects you need to consider as your competition. Analyze where they’re showing up in your local area. Focus on link building using local search terms that are most relevant to the goods and services you provide.
What’s that mean? Think of what your customers would type into the search bar if they were looking for your type of business. Then do your own search. See what businesses are ranking on the first page of the search engine results. Collect a list of those websites and see what links they have acquired. Compare what mutual links you and your competitors use. These are your direct competitors, so most of the links will already be specific to your business or the business you’re working on.
Analyze what sites are working and what sites are a waste of time. Remove any duplicate links from the list that your website has in common with the competition. Then go after the ones your competitors have, but you don’t. Of course, this all takes time. But, the more you work on this link-building strategy, the better your presentation will be in the local search engine results. This will level the playing field with your competition as far as links go.
Where Can I Find More Link Opportunities
If you’ve caught up with your competition with the link-building strategy we mentioned above, the next step is to continue to build your links, so you exceed your competition. Look at other businesses that operate in a similar way to yours. See where they have acquired press or mentions. This will give you some insight as to how other local businesses build a presence in your local space.
Looking at how popular local businesses use link building to show up online is a great way to grab new opportunities to build links, find local writers, land features on local blogs, and find new websites to build links. You can use a link analysis tool to find these websites.
The best way to find high traction local businesses is to use review sites like Yelp. Go to Yelp and search within your city, then filter by the most reviewed businesses. While these businesses might not be related to your value proposition at all, they can offer a wealth of information on promotional opportunities in your local space.
For example, if you own a local restaurant, head over to Yelp and search for restaurants in your area. Find the top reviewed business, then throw their website into a backlink analysis tool. You’ll be surprised what you find! While they can have thousands of links, we can guarantee they’re not all related to food. This gives you a goldmine of potential links that are local to your business. Even if you don’t serve the same type of food, you’ll have some great resources and new ideas. Do this method with the businesses that have gotten the most reviews and those within a handful of different verticals to get various potential links.
One important thing to remember is that not all link opportunities will be attainable. That’s ok. Start where you can, and as you build your presence, you’ll have the chance to reassess your website to see if you can grab those links in the future. The whole point of this strategy is to find some diamonds in the rough and build connections to local customers where and when you can.
Link building is just one part of local SEO, but it’s an excellent resource when you create an effective strategy. Now that you have learned about some great local link opportunities, it’s time to get to work.
Head over to our article- 9 Types of Content That Will Help Your Local SEO- to learn more about creating the website content to enhance your link-building strategy!