Google focuses on delivering local and personalized search results to its users across all its platforms. One of the many possible reasons for this strategy is the growing user demand and need for local search. Google itself states that the searches for ‘near me’ are increasing 500 percent year on year, and this opens up a massive opportunity for the local business owners to scale up their business and income. As 81% of users search on Google for local businesses, it becomes crucial for the websites to appear on the top of the local search results page. This creates urgency among the local business owners to rank their website high on SERPs, and this is where working on local SEO strategy steps in. Here we will discuss one of the significant aspects of local SEO strategies: local SEO link building, which can significantly help you boost your backlink strategy and stay ahead of your competitors. Read our blog on local SEO optimization, which provides you with a complete guide on local optimization.
In this blog, we will explore the importance and benefits of local SEO link building and some effective strategies to get SEO backlinks that help websites in getting traffic and online conversions.
What is local SEO link building?
Local SEO is the practice or process of optimizing a website according to the SEO guidelines to rank on the search engine results pages in a specific location. At the same time, link building, also known as backlinks or inbound links, is the process of getting valuable backlinks from other websites back to us. In simple terms, if any website is giving a backlink to our website or any webpage, it refers its users to our services or features.
In the same way, local SEO link building is a part of the backlink strategy in which you have to build links from other local websites or businesses in your area to rank in a specific geographical location. With the help of backlink building, you can drive traffic from other websites and target potential customers related to your business.
Why is local SEO link building important?
The whole SEO or PPC campaigns are framed, planned, and executed to get ranking on the search results page which can drive conversions to the websites. This is ultimately the same purpose websites follow link-building strategies as Google considers the number of backlinks for website ranking. In fact not only the number of backlinks you have to generate quality SEO backlinks that actually work for you.
The second important factor that states the significance of backlink building is visibility in local organic searches. A high ranking means more visibility; thus, backlinks from any authorized website can enhance the brand’s reputation. But you have to put strenuous effort into creating a strong backlink strategy to gather more quality SEO backlinks, which will be discussed in the next section.
After getting ranking and visibility across SERPs, the next step is converting web users into your business’s customers. This task can become easy when you get a good number of SEO backlinks from established brands. Thus it would be clear that with the help of local SEO link building strategies you can get page ranking, website visibility, website conversion, and many more which are the primary business goals for most websites. For the same reasons, SEO link building services are so popular and useful that brands or businesses are actually working for them to enhance their SEO strategies.
8 Strategies for local SEO link building
So far, we have understood that backlink building is an integral part of local SEO strategy. For a recognized and established brand, it might be an easy task to get backlinks from other websites. Still, for new businesses or startups, gathering quality SEO backlinks will be a tedious mission. We are discussing some of the best recommended local SEO strategies for backlink building by SEO experts that help to get the desired results.
- Get reviews from local websites – Ratings, reviews, and feedback are essential in SEO strategies. Many local websites are active that help users find the business they are searching for. The most common and popular example of this is Google Maps, which helps millions of people discover their destinations. So these types of platforms you have to target to get backlinks. The importance of these can be understood with the fact that 98% of customers read reviews for local businesses, and of course, it cannot be ignored. Local review websites, travel websites, and bloggers, which are so popular these days, can review your business and provide backlinks for your website. You can also ask the other ranking websites to refer to your business through links. Also, you can encourage your customers to write reviews on local review websites or on Google maps. And the great thing is that most users will do it for you because 62% of customers will write a review for you if asked. So do not hesitate and go for it; you can ask your customers for it via social media, email, website, chat, etc. The more positive reviews or good ratings you can gather, the better for your business.
- Try to get PR links – Connecting audiences to your business is a great way to get PR links; for this, you have to take your brand in public with the help of promotions, organizing a contest, seminars, charity, etc. You can also provide free demonstrations of products and services through which you can build strong relations with the general audience. Spread the links to these contests via social media platforms, community groups, local newspapers, and other advertising methods. These types of activities significantly help your business in building public relations, and ultimately the mentions of brands with the links help in your link-building strategy. After setting up these special types of activities, now it’s time to advertise at maximum strength.
- Go for local listings – The more visibility you can acquire for your business, the higher the chances of getting more backlinks for the website. For this, you have to list your business on local business directories like Google My Business (GMB), Facebook, Yelp, etc. GMB is a very useful platform for local businesses where your listings can rank on the Google results page if optimized well. The idea behind getting your business listed on the local directories is to maximize your business visibility so that it can rank on SERPs, be visible on different social media platforms, have visibility across local search results, etc. Thus now you have more possibilities and opportunities to get quality SEO backlinks from other local websites and listings.
- Content marketing – Content marketing is always one of the best SEO strategies. Writing blogs or articles on local or viral topics by keeping the local audiences in mind is an excellent way of backlink building. Creating locally relevant content that could draw the attention of the users can increase your organic traffic as well as other websites can link you if they find it useful. Once you are done with writing a blog, share and promote it on different social media platforms and link it wherever necessary. With the help of blogs, you can internally link your contents that can drive traffic and conversions to the website.
- Find competitor’s backlink sources – Competitor analysis is crucial in any business and applies to local SEO strategy. Also, after you identify the competitors in your business, find the website from which they get backlinks. For this purpose, you can use link-building tools or opt for local SEO link-building services to know their source of backlinks. You can contact the business owner who is providing links to your competitor through outreach emails and ask for their backlinks; in return, you can also offer links back to their website, which can be a good deal. Asking all websites that are the sources of competitors’ backlinks should be avoided. Only go for those websites that can help build your brand’s reputation.
- Search for unlinked mentions – Unlinked mentions are the only textual mention of your business name, website, idea, or anything related to your business but do not provide you the links back to your website. Unlinked mentions have both cases, it is good for you, but at the same time, it is not so good that they can benefit your brand or business. It may be less useful in the sense that you are not getting backlinks from authorized websites. But the good part is that people are talking for your business in the market, and with proper SEO strategies turning unlinked mentions into actual SEO backlinks is not a very difficult task.
You only have to search for unlinked mentions of your website or business on other sites or listings with the help of the various link-building tools and tell them to link to your website. You can ask them via social media chat, phone, or in person (if possible); the most efficient way is through outreach email. But you should be careful not to ask every company or brand for their backlinks because less reputative and low-quality websites cannot help you out so much; thus, there is no need to ask them for backlinks. Find and opt for only authorized websites but in any case, neglecting the opportunity of backlink building through unlinked mentions is never a good local SEO strategy.
- Get links through social media – Local searches for businesses and brands do not always happen on search engines, but social media platforms also have a major share in building local businesses. Thus its importance cannot be neglected as you can get a significant number of quality backlinks with the help of social media. Join local community groups on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or any other social media and tell them about your business and ideas; regularly share business-related posts to show your activeness in the business. For link-building strategies, local newspapers, magazines, online news websites, podcasts, etc., can significantly help you in getting visibility.
- Avoid spammy and broken links – Until now, we have discussed building a backlink strategy to get links to your business from external websites, but what about the inbound link you already have? Are they still relevant to the business? Yes, only getting backlinks on the website is not enough; you have to check the old links on the website so that they should not be broken, which is shown as a 404 error. You can use various SEO tools to find broken backlinks on the website and also check that any link is not redirecting to an irrelevant website.
As mentioned previously that quality SEO backlinks matter more than simply the number of backlinks. Avoiding backlinks from spammy, less authoritative, or extrinsic websites is crucial as it will cause more harm to the website traffic and ranking. Check for these types of links and remove them immediately from the site.
Conclusion
Local SEO strategy is not complete without inbound links. This is why SEO link-building services are now in great demand for companies focusing on increasing business revenue with the help of search engine optimization. For off-site SEO, backlinks building is an integral part which is usually called the heart of it, so optimizing for inbound links is necessary; with the help of some link building tools, you can find it an easy task. You can use many other sources and strategies to get links from authorized websites to boost your local SEO strategy. However, for any SEO-related services, including SEO link-building services and PPC services or help, you can contact our company, a team of SEO and PPC experts.
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