Link building is important for gathering authority and credibility in your niche. Many techniques, both white hat and gray hat, can be used to maximize your benefits. Now, think of doing local SEO link building.
Imagine the whole strategy that’s focused on one locality. This article will discuss how link building works from a smaller but more focused angle. Small or medium enterprises (SMEs) have local websites you can reach out to when doing link building for local SEO.
Read along if you want to know more about link building for local SEO.
In this article
- Why Is Local SEO Link Building Important?
- Local Link Building
- Benefits Of Local SEO Link Building For Small Businesses
- Possible Dangers of Local Backlinks and Citations
- Local SEO Link Building Strategies
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
- Final Word
- Related Reads
Why Is Local SEO Link Building Important?
Local SEO is a bit different when it comes to search engine algorithms. Keywords with “local intent” are different from generic keywords. When users search for “clothing stores near me,” Google will run an entirely different algorithm to search for useful resources.
Thus, it’s important to optimize your link building for local SEO strategy also. It will help you appear more often when users search for local businesses and establishments. It’s good for your business, especially if you have a physical store or want to gather local customers.
Another important benefit of local SEO link building is conversion. According to local SEO statistics from Safari Digital, almost 28% of local searches convert. Moreover, 78% of mobile searches lead to store purchases.
By boosting your local SEO, you can reach out to the locals in your community and convert their interest to sales. Other community websites will also notice your presence by building links with them.
Local Link Building
Letting other community websites know about your presence is a great way to start it up. Once your relevance in the local community grows, you can easily work your way to other niche websites. Your website becomes more available and visible to those that are searching with local intent.
Local SEO link building should focus on:
- Producing high-quality backlinks from websites with high metrics.
- Backlinks from websites that are well-known locally.
- Providing correct business information for local search results.
- Local citations and local content.
These tasks should be credited by Google as efforts to gain traction with local audiences. It will boost your local SEO and make your business easier to find online.
Benefits Of Local SEO Link Building For Small Businesses
Link building is an important part of any digital marketing, and the benefits are numerous. This is especially true for small businesses. Why? If you have a local business that is primarily focused in your locality or city. This means you need a proper local SEO link building to go with it. Here are some of the benefits of local SEO link building.
1. Improves The Credibility Of The Brand
Reputation is an important factor for many businesses and this is true, especially in an era of smartphones and Google searches where a person will immediately look up the name of a brand to see if they are legitimate. If you want improve your credibility and increase brand awareness in your locality use local SEO link building.
2. Increase In The Brand’s Visibility
If you have a local business, consider building an e-commerce website and use local SEO link building. This can help to improve visibility of your businesses and expand the reach of your businesses to more people. Backlinks allow marketers to increase the number of visitors to their website referral traffic.
3. Increases The SERP Rankings
Backlinks are a great way to increase your chances of appearing on the search results and improving your rankings. This can also drive more traffic to your website which is what every business owner aims to achieve.
4. Helps To Build Brand Authority
Local link building can help to increase a brand’s authority and the best way to do that is by creating helpful content. This is number priority by Google and the fastest way to build authority and trustworthiness.
5. Have A More Competitive Edge
Link building involves conducting a competitor analysis to see what type of backlinks they are using. So, you as a business owner must keep in mind what they are using and come up with a better strategy to stay ahead of the competition. For small businesses this can be a boon, because if the businesses in your locality don’t already have one in place.
6. Improve Domain Authority
Domain authority is used to measure the health of a website. The higher the domain authority, the more chance you have of ranking higher in the search results. The ideal domain authority is 60 and it is always to best to get higher than that.
7. Expand Your Network
Local link building can help businesses find more interested parties and expand their network. This in turn can help you find more people to come across your business and some may even want to collaborate with you. Small local businesses can use this as an opportunity to attract people in who are willing to buylinks. If they are asking fot backlinks from you, it means they are hungry for inbound traffic and links.
Possible Dangers of Local Backlinks and Citations
Local SEO link building is tricky. You have to be cautious in doing it because it can drag your website down. Linking to high authority local websites that are not related to your niche can get you penalties from Google.
Getting your business listed on local citations and directories can be helpful for readers only if it’s listed in the right directory. Web directories have multiple categories where you can place your business. As long as you categorize your business properly in the right directory, you’re doing fine.
Local SEO Link Building Strategies
For local SEO professionals, 3 important factors are considered for their link building strategies. That’s why for our strategies, we will focus on the same factors as well. These factors are:
- Correct and update the NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) profile on the Google My Business listing.
- Links from local citations.
- Hyperlocal content.
Creating a strategy for more exposure locally is a good way to attract consumers. Focusing on creating content for the benefit of the locals will yield more traffic. It can also bring links to your site, which will further boost your credibility.
Here are some local SEO link building strategies you can employ.
1. Get Links from Local News Websites
Local news websites are powerful backlinks to have on your link profile. Getting links from these authority websites will make your site more authoritative in your area. Other local websites can link to your site if you get featured in the local news.
However, getting featured on a local news website is not easy. It requires you to create a stunning piece of content that is newsworthy. Ensure that your featured article provides insight and value to the local readers to establish a connection.
2. Complete NAP Information to Directories
Your local store’s NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information should be updated in all your directory listings. It should also be consistent on every website. This will prevent misinformation for local users searching for local stores.
The NAP information you provide will also help increase your sales. Providing the right NAP information will help customers locate your local store if you have a salon.
A famous directory used by most local store owners is the Google My Business directory. By listing here, your local store can be located using Google Maps. According to the same statistics as before, Google Maps is used by a large portion of local customers.
3. Leverage Local Bloggers and Influencers
Local bloggers and influencers can drive a lot of traffic to your website. SMEs use local influencers to get more impressions for their products. Once they get a hold of potential customers, guest articles from local websites will lead them to conversion.
Niche bloggers also have connections with other local websites. You can bring in more links once you start building links with local websites. These sites are good prospects for your link building campaigns.
Once you build links with local bloggers and influencers, other websites will notice your presence. Your credibility will also increase, thus improving your overall SEO score. Search engines will still favor authority sites when showing local search results.
4. Look for Unlinked Mentions on Local Websites
There are a lot of roundup articles that are focused on specific places. Such articles have titles like “Top 10 Best Stores in New Jersey” or “Best Stores Near You.” These articles will mention your store if you pass their screening.
If they mention you without linking to your site, it’s a linking opportunity to a high-quality article. You will also be featured in a roundup, so make sure that you will receive positive reviews.
Claiming an unlinked mention from a roundup with a positive review is important. It gives you an edge against other local competitors, and Google will favor you more than them.
5. Locally Relevant Content
To optimize your local SEO strategy, one important thing to do is increase content around more local keywords. Creating local keyword-relevant content will narrow your competition down and help you reach the target audience better. The best way to create local content is to understand what local audience want to know. One way to understand the target audience is by talking to them face-to-face. You can also use local demographic data from Google Analytics or social media analytics like Instagram or Facebook to understand your local audience better.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. Does Google charge for SEO?
No, Google doesn’t charge any cost to appear your website organically in SERP results. Only for Google Ads, you have to pay an amount.
2. What is localized SEO?
Localized or local SEO is a local SEO plan that helps businesses to get more visibility over a particular geographical location.
3. Is link building still relevant to SEO 2020?
To build brand awareness and increase organic sales, lead link building still remains a very relevant source to increase the site’s SEO score. Any business with a physical geographical location can optimize for local SEO.
Final Word
Localizing your link building strategy is an important thing to consider, especially if you’re running an SME. Link building for local SEO will greatly improve your presence in the local community. This will increase the customers knocking at your storefront.
Start building links with local websites in your area. It will bring a lot of prospects to your website. Ensure to provide the updated NAP information so customers can easily find you around the area.
Related Reads
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