The Essentials of Local Link Building
The advantages of local SEO are obvious for brick-and-mortar establishments: localizing keywords limits the competition and segments your audience to people more likely to visit your store in person. According to one study, 50% of mobile users who search for a business locally will visit that store that day, making local SEO high converting. Yet, have you considered local link building as one of your strategies? Sure, the local 3-pack and Google My Business make it easy to rank high for local searches, but local link building goes beyond traditional link building. For many, it’s actually part of a larger strategy to increase brand awareness in their local area and acquire some affiliate traffic. The best part is that local links don’t need to be niche specific, just geographically strategic. Not local SEO strategy would be complete without link building, so here’s the essentials you need to know.
Directory Sites/Citations
Before we start conducting a granular link building campaign, the first step for any business practicing local SEO should be registering with local citations and local directories. While useless as link equity, these are important resources for consumers to reach your business and contact you. More importantly, citations are a high-ranking factor in local search, regardless of of a link or not. Just the mere mention of your business over citations helps search engines index your site. That’s why it’s important to maintain NAP consistency (name, address, and phone number) to ensure your contact information is properly indexed and giving your business some conversions.
Local Intent Keywords
When optimizing your website for local search, it’s important to optimize for local intent. For example, a general contractor in St. Louis, would benefit from, “St. Louis home and repair contractors” or “Home and repair contractors St. Louis.” This is important for ranking highly lucrative local web pages for local search terms, through your link building campaign. By inserting local keywords in anchor text, you also extend the reach and visibility of your brand in the process.
Leveraging Local and Niche Content
Along the same lines, you want to create a mix of content that is optimized for purchasing intent and local intent. This means mentioning the areas you service on service pages and even blog content. Creating local blog content also adds a valuable resource for your site to collect links, that may move the needle on its national rankings as well. Some link worthy local content includes:
- Local resource content (e.g. statistics, maps, or guides detailing local area)
- Local interviews with influencers, celebrities, or community leaders
- Breaking local news stories
Yet, these types of content only scratch the surface.
Link Building Opportunities
- Guest post in a local blog
- Host a scholarship and submit to directory sites with a profile, logo, and link
- Sponsor a local event in your area and ask for a link on the landing page to your site
- Mention local influencers and celebrities in social media posts to attract attention and get a mention
- Host a local event or contest
