Local Links and Where to Find Them

Backlinking is a standard process in SEO. As a business, we want people linking to our website from their website as it helps establish an online presence, lets search engines know what our website is about, and presents a trustworthy image to potential customers.

Now, if you’ve just started your business or are competing with a couple of high-profile competitors, then backlinking can be particularly difficult. Your business isn’t going to get linked by the New York Times or Huffington Post from the get-go, not unless you’ve done something truly spectacular. You’ll want to start small with local links, then go on from there.

Local links are links from location-specific sources. They’re pretty valuable—these links are relevant and influential to your local market and specifically target customers in your area. They also don’t take much effort—since you’re not competing with others on a global or international scale, you’ve got more chances of being visible.

But how exactly does one go about building local links?

Drive Traffic Media, an SEO company in Los Angeles, prepared a list of ways to start local link building.

1. Build Citations

Citation building involves getting listed on relevant general and niche directories. Doing this is super helpful as any directory is a chance to get your business noticed by a reader, especially locals. They’re also free to use and offer additional services like managing reviews, uploading photos and videos, and posting promotional content.

Popular directories include Yelp, Yellow Pages, and Foursquare.

Once you get listed on these directories, it’s important to maintain consistent and accurate information, especially when it comes to office hours, prices, and such. If you don’t, you could get a bad rep from both customers and search engines for false information. So, only get listed in as many directories as you can handle.

Several citation-building tools can help you out, like Yext, Moz Local, Brightlocal, and Whitespark.

2. Get Creative

Using basic techniques like citation building is a good start, but it’s not enough to expand your brand. Sure, your business name’s been listed on reputable directories, but so are your other competitors. To the average reader, you’re just another link in a vast ocean of links.

So, it’s time to get creative. Look for local opportunities to build links. You’d be surprised at how many there are!

Always start with local media outlets like newspapers or tourism websites. They’d love a chance to write more about their beloved town or city, and what better way to do that than by showcasing your business?

You could also partner with local influencers, local businesses, or local charities and organizations. Their followers are probably from within your target area and are the most likely to become customers. You could sponsor a free meal for influencers in exchange for a mention or host organizational events, for example. 

3. Take a Peek at Your Competitors

To understand how your competitors work, you’ll first want to know who they are!

Think about keywords and phrases you think are the most relevant to your business and look them up on search engines. Then, start compiling a list of the highest-ranking websites. These are your competitors. You’ll want to look through their links and see if they’re gaining substantial traffic from them as these links will probably be relevant to your business too.

Use link research tools like Ahrefs, Majestic, and SEMrush to do this. Simply input their URLs to get a list of all backlinks, picking up on mutual links and unique links among your competitors. Then, narrow the list of links further and start pursuing each plausible link one by one.

4. Be Diverse

You’re eventually going to run out of links that are directly related to your business. It’s not going to happen for a long while, and it will take a really good amount of time and effort to accomplish this, but you are going to run out eventually.

That doesn’t mean local link building has to stop there, though. Just broaden your scope!

Start by searching for the top-reviewed businesses in your area. Let’s use London in the United Kingdom as an example:

Source: Yelp

Then, look for their website and input their URL into a link analysis tool.

Source: Ahrefs

That’s a whopping number of backlinks right there. And what’s more, not all of them are going to be related to the business.

Take a look at these examples:

As you can see, Dishoom has some links that aren’t food-related at all. The first example is an article written by a web design company, while the last two seem to be companies that have worked with them before. You’re now presented with even more opportunities to build links!

  

Conclusion

To improve your SEO, getting local links is a must. It helps local customers find you better, and it also boosts your rankings. While it may take a lot of time and effort, it is very much worth it.

Fortunately for you, this article ensures you’re not completely left in the dark. We hope you found this informative and helpful for your business. If you have any more questions or want to avail our Los Angeles SEO services, feel free to reach us at (310)341-3939.