Local SEO Link Building Tactics
Whether you are a business owner looking to build your SEO capability for the first time, or someone who has been working on it for years, one of the first things that you should know is that links are one of the most important ranking factors for your website. This means that if you want your local business to rank higher in a Google search, you will need to build your backlinks. Before we get into how to do that, let’s go over some of the basics about link building.
Local Link Building Overview
So what does local link building entail? Building links on your local business website means to connect locally relevant or contextual links to your website. This helps to drive users and traffic to your website, helps your website rank better for local search engine searches, and ultimately help people find your website and services.
This may sound complicated, but the good news is that most local businesses don’t need a huge number of links to rank in local search. A quick look at the search engine results page (SERP) shows us that businesses that have more than 150 referring domains rarely pop up on the first page. So, how do we find the balance of too many and too few links?
Tips for Building Local Links
Building local links for your website can be done with some research, perseverance, dedication and a bit of good advice. Let’s go over a few tips that you can use to get started:
- Get links from other ranking sites
Otherwise known as barnacle SEO, this technique is a great place to start. You’ll want to search for some terms relevant to your business in Google, make note of the sites that show up first, and then try and get links from those sites to yours. While you most likely won’t get links from any competitors that show up in the results, look for other aggregate or directory sites that you could list your business on. Since many people use these sites to search for new businesses, this is a great first step to boosting traffic on your website. - Create locally relevant content
The content on your website should be relevant, fresh, and attractive to your audience. You should spend some time researching topics that will be interesting to your target audience, and then creating and publishing content about those topics. Your content can be about anything that potential customers may be interested in, such as common pricing for the services you offer, tips and tricks, or interesting tidbits about the industry you are operating in. - Get links your competitors have
Your competitors are likely also working to improve their rankings, so it only makes sense to find out what links their websites have. By checking on tools like Link Intersect from Ahrefs, you can find relevant link opportunities that you can seek to gain for your site. - Claim unlinked mentions
An unlinked mention is when another website mentions your company or employees but doesn’t link these mentions back to your site. This happens commonly in businesses that get local news coverage such as law offices, community services, or even companies that participate in charity events. Finding these unlinked mentions and making sure they link to your site will help point people towards your site and business. - Reclaim lost links
Websites will change over time, and this can mean you will have links to pages that no longer exist. Make sure to redirect these old versions of your pages to more current versions so that you can recover the links and their value for your business. - Add internal links
Don’t underestimate the power of internal links – these are when you link one page on your website to another page also on your website. Try not to go overkill here, but definitely consider this to be a good opportunity to build your links. - Get local citations
There are plenty of citation services available that you can add your business information to, and you’ll want to seek them out as many of them feed data into other websites. Some great examples of these are Foursquare, Google Business, Bing, Yelp, Yellowpages, Facebook, and Apple Maps. Local ciations are also one of the powerful ways to increase your Google Business Profile rankings. - Pursue other local link opportunities
Think about any other websites that are focused in your area that you can build links with. There are plenty of opportunities that you can find with some diligent research and brainstorming. Some examples are: college and university websites, city websites, local news or media, local community groups such as Reddit or Facebook, local sponsorships, travel websites that focus on your area, or local business awards. Be sure to think about your specific local relationships and how you can get testimonials, case studies, or expert interviews about your business. - Buy companies or websites
This is more of a rare occurrence, but if you get the opportunity to make a merger or acquisition at the local level, you should consider taking it. If you are not in a position to buy an entire company, some companies sell their existing website or let their domain rental lapse. If you can acquire these domains, you will be the owner of two ranking sites that you can use to boost your links.
What now?
It’s tempting to go for flashy or complicated link building techniques right off the bat, but it’s important to start with the basics first. Start with the easy stuff to begin building your links, and then as your company grows you can move to the more creative techniques. If you need help getting started or moving to the next step, contact us to learn more about our SEO Victoria BC service.