According to a study by Moz, backlinks are essential for local packs and localized organic ranking factors, in summary, it’s the backbone of any successful SEO campaign.
Unlike general link-building tactics, location has more impact on local link-building. Therefore, you need to get links from local sites which have locational relevance to your website.
In this post, I’ll be showing you 6 ways to find solid local link prospects that will help you rank higher on Google.
How to build local links
Since the goal is to drive more local traffic to your site, here’s how you can improve your ranking with local links.
1. Join your niche-relevant business association
One of the best ways to build local links is through niche backlinks. Niche backlinks are like targeted advertising. They help you reach your target audience and convert them in no time. You can get these kinds of links by joining your niche-relevant business association.
Conduct a targeted search for legitimate business association sites in your city on Google or any other search engine. This is because they have authority and the right local relevance.
Let’s consider the previous example of a pastry chef. To find relevant associations in your niche, type California chef association on Google. With an SEO tool, you’ll see the SEO metrics for each domain and page within the SERP. If you visit the page of any of the listed associations, you’ll realize that they do have URLs with outbound links to their members’ sites.
In the USA, there are trade associations that negotiate with the government, and unions to provide members benefits. These associations have insane link values because they have links to government sites. Becoming a member of one of these associations through an application or subscription can help you get the needed backlinks.
2. Valuable, meaningful guest posts on local websites
One of the best off-page SEO tactics to win high-quality backlinks is guest posting.
What you need to do is to source for local sites in your niche that you can pitch to.
Let’s say you’re a pastry chef, you can use an SEO tool to search through several pages of content. Then you filter prospects by their SEO metrics.
Target those local websites with food and pastries blog posts as they’re likely to accept a guest post pitch.
Afterward, set a word count filter to show pages with at least 500 words along with a domain rating filter. This process will reveal the sites that have reasonable website authority.
With the few blogs left, you can start pitching for a guest writing opportunity. Consider pitching blogs by sending a direct email to the editor.
3. Generate backlinks from social media
Social media is not only to showcase your product but also enhance your website’s visibility. The truth is, with social media, you can generate as many local backlinks as possible by using your profile.
This process involves adding links to your social media profiles, pages, and groups.
Let’s consider Twitter as an example. Statista reported that Twitter had 7.1 billion website visits worldwide this year. The United States currently has the most Twitter users of 77.75 million users. And states like California and Florida are in the top ten of active Twitter users. Then let’s say you’re in California, you’ll be lucky to get enough clicks.
With the statistics above, it’s clear that you can get a good number of backlinks on this microblogging platform by setting up a decent profile.
One of the most suitable places to get backlinks on Twitter is your bio and website field.
Do you know that your profile has an actual field for your website? It does and with its over 100-character bio space, you can share your link in both places. The benefit of having your site link on your bio is not only to appear straight to your profile visitors but also to show up in Twitter search results.
Sites like Klout help to elevate your Twitter bio information but unlike Twitter, it’ll only hyperlink website links with http://.
Other places to include your site link is your photo and video tweets.
4. Local resource page link building
This is one of the most popular link-building tactics that have been around for a while.
Resource page link building is the practice of getting your site featured on web pages that link out to useful industry resources.
Here are some examples of resource pages.
These are good resource pages because they link out to other related web pages.
To build links with this tactic, you must create a resource that will be of huge value to your local community (shopping guide, travel guide), then you find relevant resource pages. Search for websites with decent domain-level authority. Then visit the pages to check for external links to other websites. After you’ve reviewed the sites based on SEO metrics, scan the remaining prospects and reach out to suggest your resource. For example, Amit Raj got a link for a seafood business from a local university with a resource page.
5. Consider your top organic competitors’ backlinks
The idea behind this is to find backlinks that help your competitors rank well on Google. You’ll need to find common links between your competitors and reach out to those sites. Search for competitors in your niche that are within your city. Then gather a list of those websites domains using SemRush or Map Pack.
Ensure you’re dealing with your real business competitors’ sites and not directories.
Use a tool like Ahref backlinks tool or SEO spyglass to see websites that are linking to your competitors but not you. Look through the lists of sites and you’ll be able to find enough link-building opportunities.
6. Create content that caters to your local audience
This is another great local link-building opportunity. It involves creating relevant local content for a local audience.
Here, the first thing you should target is getting local keywords. For example, if you’re a pastry chef in California, you may search for the most popular cookie recipe in California.
Use keyword planning and research tools like Google keyword planner or SemRush to get the most popular local search queries.
Then your blog posts should be about local events and activities on a local scale.
It would be best if you also connected to local influencers and bloggers to get mentions from them either on their websites or social media. With this strategy, you can be sure to get local backlinks and clicks within your area. For instance, after reaching out to a local influencer, you can be listed among the top 10 pastry chefs in California, increasing your reach.
Final thought
Now, it’s over to you to put these strategies in place for your local link-building system. Even if the process seems challenging, take it a step at a time. You can’t predict the algorithm but at least you can try to be as creative as possible in building your brand’s SEO.
By using the tactics discussed in this post, start your journey to gaining local relevance and authority in your niche.
Guy Sheetrit is the CEO of Over The Top SEO, an award-winning marketing agency that provides customized SEO marketing solutions for ecommerce, local, and Fortune 500 companies. He can be found on Twitter @guysheetrit.
Subscribe to the Search Engine Watch newsletter for insights on SEO, the search landscape, search marketing, digital marketing, leadership, podcasts, and more.
Join the conversation with us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
The post Six local link-building tactics for small businesses first appeared on Online strategy.
