According to Moz’s study, backlinks are crucial for local rankings factors and localized packs. In short, they are the backbone of any SEO campaign.
Local link-building has a greater impact than other link-building strategies. You should seek out links from sites that are relevant to your location.
This post will show you six ways to find reliable local link prospects that can help you rank higher in Google.
How do you build local links
Here are some ways to improve your local ranking, since the goal is to drive more traffic to your website from local areas.
1. Join your industry-relevant association
Niche backlinks are a great way to create local links. Niche backlinks can be compared to targeted advertising. These links allow you to reach your target audience quickly and convert them. These types of links can be obtained by joining a niche-relevant business association.
You can conduct a targeted Google search to find legitimate business associations sites in your area using any search engine, such as Google. Because they are authoritative and have the right local relevance, this is why they are so popular.
Let’s take the example of a pastry cook. Google will give you a list of relevant associations within your niche. An SEO tool will show you the SEO metrics for each page and domain within the SERP. You’ll notice that the URLs of listed associations have outbound links to member sites if you visit their page.
There are trade associations in the USA that work with the government and provide benefits to members. Because they link to government websites, these associations have incredible link values. You can get backlinks by becoming a member through an application or subscription.
2. Relevant, valuable guest posts for local websites
Guest posting is one of the most effective off-page SEO strategies to gain high-quality backlinks.
You will need to find local sites within your niche that you are able to pitch to.
Imagine you are a pastry chef and you want to search for recipes. You can then filter prospects based on their SEO metrics.
If you’re looking for local food and pastries blogs posts, they might be open to a guest posting pitch.
After that, add a word count filter so pages have at least 500 words. This will show you sites with reasonable website authority.
You can now pitch for guest writing opportunities by visiting the blogs that are still available. Send an email directly to the editor to pitch blogs.
3. Social media can be used to generate backlinks
Social media can be used to promote your product and increase your website’s visibility. Your profile can help you generate as many backlinks locally as possible with social media.
This involves adding links to social media pages, pages, or groups.
Let’s take Twitter as an example. Statista stated that Twitter received 7.1 billion visits to its website worldwide in 2012. The United States has the largest number of Twitter users, with 77.75 millions users. California and Florida rank among the top ten most active Twitter users. Let’s suppose you live in California. You won’t get enough clicks.
You can easily get backlinks to this microblogging platform if you have a decent profile.
Your bio and website fields are the best places to get backlinks via Twitter.
Did you know that your profile contains a field for your website? You can use the over 100-character bio space to share your link in both locations. Your site link will appear in your bio, which will be visible to your profile visitors and also show up in search results on Twitter.
Klout helps you to improve your Twitter bio information, but it won’t hyperlink any website links like Twitter.
Your photo and video tweets are also good places to link to your site.
4. Link building for local resource pages
This is one of many link-building strategies that has been around for quite some time.
Link building on resource pages is the process of getting your website featured on pages that link to relevant industry resources.
These are just a few examples of resource pages.
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These pages are great resource pages as they provide links to other relevant web pages.
You must first create a resource that is of great value to your community (shopping or travel guide), then search for relevant resource pages. Look for websites that have decent domain-level authority. Next, visit the pages and check for links to other websites. Once you have reviewed all the websites based on SEO metrics and scanned the remaining prospects, reach out to recommend your resource. Amit Raj, for example, received a link to a page with resources from a local university.
5. Take into account the backlinks of your top organic competitors
This is done to help your competitors rank high on Google. Find common links among your competitors and contact them. Find competitors within your area. Next, create a list with SemRush and Map Pack of the domains.
Make sure you are dealing with the real competitors of your business, not directories.
You can use a tool such as Ahref’s backlinks tool, or the SEO spyglass to find websites linking to you. You’ll find plenty of link-building opportunities by looking through the sites.
6. Make content that appeals to your local audience
Another great opportunity to build local links is this. This involves creating local content that is relevant to a local audience.
Local keywords are the best way to start your search. If you are a California pastry chef, you might search for California’s most popular cookie recipe.
To find the most popular local searches, use keyword planning and research tools such as Google keyword planner or SemRush.
Your blog posts should focus on local events and activities.
To get mentions on their sites or social media, it would be a good idea to also connect with local bloggers and influencers. This strategy will ensure that you get backlinks and clicks from your local area. You might be listed as one of the top 10 California pastry chefs if you reach out to an influencer. This will increase your reach.
Final thought
It’s up to you now to implement these strategies for your local link building system. Take it one step at a while, even if it seems difficult. Although you cannot predict the algorithm, at least you can be creative in building your brand’s search engine optimization.
Use the strategies in this article to get started on your journey towards gaining authority and local relevance in your niche.
Guy Sheetrit, the CEO of Over The Top SEO is an award-winning marketing agency providing customized SEO marketing solutions to ecommerce, local and Fortune 500 businesses. You can find him on Twitter @guysheetrit.
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Search Engine Watch’s first article, Six Local Link-Building Strategies for Small Businesses appeared on Search Engine Watch.
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