Link building is crucial for SEO strategy, and whatever your business, link building for local SEO can help to improve your rankings. If you’re hoping to reach local consumers, you must ensure they can find your business online.
Finding high-quality and relevant links for local SEO will also be one of your most significant challenges. So, to rank your or your local business higher in Google, you will need local link-building strategies.
This article will give you insight into finding local backlinks, strategies to build Local Links, and the benefits of having a local link building everything to impact local search rankings.
What Is Link Building for Local SEO?
Link building refers to acquiring links from other websites back to your own. These links for effective link building are known as “inbound links,” “backlinks,” or “incoming links,” which can immensely help drive traffic to your website.
So, let’s find out what local link building for SEO is. Local link building is building contextually and locally relevant links to a business website. Local link building aims to boost visibility in organic search results and draw more traffic from local customers likelier to purchase from you.
Earning local backlinks for smaller organizations can be incredibly challenging; it’s essential to understand the relevancy of the links. Local SEO backlinks show that others relevant to the local area trust or endorse your business.
Why is Local link-building important?
Now, let’s see the importance of local link-building. Google’s organic search results have a click-through rate of 31.7%, which is stated based on the Backlinko study, which is the number one search result. That’s one of the reasons it is so essential for your business to rank in your localized business niche.
When determining your page rank, Google considers the number of backlinks you have. Over 67.6% of clicks go to the first five organic search results, and the higher the number of quality backlinks, the better your chances of securing better results in SERP.
Also, 98% of consumers use the Internet to find information about local businesses, and thus, Local link-building is vital for ranking in Google. According to recent local SEO statistics, searchers visit 1.5 billion locations related to their Google searches every month. In fact, according to a 2023 local search ranking factors survey by Moz, backlinks are one of the main ranking factors for local SEO.
How Many Local Links Do You Need?
Most of the time, local businesses only need a few links to rank in local search. You can check SERPs with Google ranking tools such as Keywords Explorer, which can give you a quick idea of how many backlinks you can expect to need to rank locally.
Image Source – Ahrefs
You can use Keywords Explorer to get a sense of the competition for your target keywords. Scroll to the search engine result page overview to see how many links the top-ranking pages have. This is how you will know how many local SEO backlinks you need.
Link Building for Local SEO: Top 5 Strategies to Build Local Links
Now, are you ready to get started on building your local backlinks? Local link-building requires research, hard work, time, and creativity. Here are my five top local link-building strategies.
Local SEO Link Building #1. Build links from Ranking Sites
Search some of your relevant terms in Google and try to get links from sites that appear in the results. Look for directory-type sites, as you probably won’t get links from your competitors.
People tend to use different types of sites when shopping for a company. You may get listed on them by signing up and adding your business. Signing up and adding to business is a quick, easy way to ensure you’re in the consideration set and get direct business value.
For example, getting Backlinks from authoritative local websites can simulate search engines and consider your website relevant and credible for local search queries. This can help you rank higher in local search results, which are highly valuable for businesses targeting a specific geographic area.
Local SEO Link Building #2. Acquire Links your Competitor Have
For acquiring links of your competitors, look at the overlap of links to your competitors’ sites; there are probably a lot of contextually and locally relevant link opportunities.
You can use an SEO tool to find and target competitor backlinks to get your competitors. Link Intersect helps you to check this quickly by adding your site and competitors to the tool to see which sites link to your competitors.
You can increase your brand’s visibility and awareness within your local community by obtaining links from reputable local websites. This can help you establish your business as a trusted local authority, increasing brand recognition and customer loyalty.
Image Source – Ahrefs
Local SEO Link Building #3. Bring Back Your Lost Links
You will often have links to pages that no longer exist. Reclaiming backlinks can be more difficult as compared to fixing internal links. Whether you can reclaim lost backlinks is up to the other site owner because you don’t have control over external links.
To find broken links on your site, use paid tools like the Ahrefs Site Explorer or free tools like Google Analytics.
Image Source – Ahrefs
You can recover those lost links and their value by redirecting the old versions of your pages to the current versions. You can do this by following these steps,
Open Site Explorer and paste your domain into it
By Links report, go to the best links
Add a “404 not found” HTTP response filter
Regaining lost link value can increase rankings and improve your link profile, SEO, and overall site authority.
Local SEO Link Building #4. Produce Relevant Local Content
Consider local content relevant to your business and valuable for your audience; creating blog content is a great way to reach your local audience. Content creation is finding topics to attract your target audience and planning, designing, and publishing content.
For example, you can approach local newspapers or online news sites, which are excellent content publishing options. You can write articles or opinion pieces about your products or services or even share your expertise on topics related to your industry.
Create shareable local resources, such as maps, local guides, or directories, that provide value to the local community. These resources can attract backlinks from local websites and serve as valuable content that can be shared on social media or other platforms.
Local SEO Link Building #5. Try to Get Some Local Citations
Building local citations is one of the most effective ways to improve brand visibility and drive more website traffic. By doing so, attention comes with more sales, increasing your chances of appearing in local search results and paying more attention to your business.
What is a Local Citation?
Any online mention, such as the name, address, or even the phone number of a business, is a local citation. It helps local users find local businesses and can happen with local business directories on websites and apps. Sometimes, citations can even be on social media platforms.
Why is Local Citation Building Important?
Citations appear in many places, such as business directories social media, and where people may look for local business information. More local citations show Google that your business is essential.
Let’s see a few reasons why building local citations is so vital for businesses.
Local citations can also impact local search engine rankings, a critical ranking factor for local SEO – According to a study by Whitespark; citation signals account for 7% of local search ranking factors. Accurate and trustworthy information about your business across multiple sources establishes trust and credibility, improving your search engine rankings and visibility in the search that will drive traffic to your website.
Image Source – Whitespark
Local Citation helps to build trust with prospective customers – Consistent and accurate citations can also help to build trust with potential customers. It establishes your business as an authority in your industry by increasing your credibility.
Increase visibility for your business – Get your business listed and displayed on more sites and locations online. Building local citations can also help you increase your business’s visibility by improving your SEO. For example, by creating local citations for your business on directory listings, you can attract customers who use those apps, sites, and maps to discover new companies. If you build local citations on community news sites, you can reach more customers using those sites as a resource for finding new businesses.
What is the Difference Between Links and Citations?
Benefits of having a Local Link-Building Strategies
Local link building can aid you in improving your organic traffic and ranking for keywords that are searched locally. Now let’s dive into some of the main benefits of using local link building:
Both online and off the improvement of local traffic
Higher visibility and lower bounce rate
Higher search rankings
Better site metrics and SEO scores
Better domain authority and trustworthiness
Increased sales, conversion, and click-through rate
Better customer relationships, user engagement, and more followers on social media
An improvement in local traffic is a primary benefit of local link building. As a result, your metrics and SEO scores will improve; thus, your business can rank higher in SERPs.
Final Thoughts
Local link-building is essential for your regional SEO strategy. Local SEO backlinks are vital for building a local audience that brings users to your store and increases online traffic. By following the above steps to create and plan your a strategy, you can increase traffic, sales, conversion rates, and rank in Google Maps. Also, you can reach the top page of Google for your target keywords. While doing local link-building for SEO, remember to do the basics, then use the more creative tactics as your business grows.
nasreen
Nasreen is SEO Outreach Practitioner & Writer at Unifiedist. She's devoted to digging deep into Email outreach and Writing Best Email Marketing Practices and Strategies for Leading Brands and Startups.