Source: Link building

Link Building is the cornerstone of SEO, and without strategies, tactics, and tools to acquire links to your website, you can kiss your chance at ranking for local keywords goodbye. It’s not about quantity, though; it’s about quality. 65% of digital marketers state that link building is the hardest part of SEO.

This is to build relationships with bloggers, content creators, online publications and news channels in the industry to be willing to link back to your website – all to get their audiences to come back to you for their needs. There are a lot of areas where businesses can begin their local link building efforts, and it starts with seeking help from local SEO services.

What is Link Building?

Link building is the process of adding links from other websites to yours. They can be as simple as text links or more complex like widgets with code embedded in them. The most popular way for people to find new websites is through search engines such as Google or Yahoo!

When someone searches for something specific on these sites, they will see results based on what’s being searched for and how many times that particular term has been mentioned on other pages across the internet.

Source: Backlinks

To put it simply, link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. A hyperlink (usually just called a link) is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet. Search engines use links to crawl the web; they will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website and crawl the links between entire websites.

It is at the heart of every successful local SEO campaign. Link building can be tricky, but you can get excellent results if you take your time and think things through.

Top 7 Link Building Strategies for local SEO

A solid local SEO campaign aims to increase your visibility on search engines like Google and Bing. For that to happen, you need people to click on your website link when they see it on a search engine results page (SERP). So how do you improve these click-through rates? Simple: generate more links pointing towards your website! 85% of SEOs and marketers believe that link building has a big impact on brand authority and brand building.

Source: Link building tactics

The strategies below will help your local SEO efforts:

1) Create and Nurture Relationships With Local Businesses, Nonprofits, Events And Publications

Everyone loves getting something for free, especially if it helps them in their business or personal life. If you identify an event taking place in your area, reach out to the organizers and offer something that would benefit their attendees or participants. It could be a discount, a free sample or a gift card. In exchange, you get a link on their website, which also helps you reach a new audience that might be interested in your products or services.

When it comes to attracting links, content is crucial — and so are relationships. One of the best ways to build links for your site is by reaching out to other organizations in your area. You can offer to write blog posts for them or even trade links.

2) Write Blog Posts That You Pitch To Other Sites For A Link Back To Yours

This is the most common and effective way of getting links that point back to your site, and it’s the easiest way to get links if you’re starting with link building. All it takes is a list of people or sites that might be interested in linking back to you (e.g., bloggers, media outlets, etc.) and contact them via email or social media.

When putting together this list, you must be approaching people or sites relevant to your business. That is, if your company sells coffee beans, don’t go after websites that cover video games. Reach out to people who cover topics related to coffee beans, such as food and drink blogs or lifestyle blogs about home brewing.

3) Create a Popular Resource On Your Website And Promote It In The Places Where Your Customers Are Already Visiting

A resource page is a great way to create a central location for related content. Ask other companies in your industry if they would like to be included on the resource page. You could also reach out to bloggers in your niche and offer them an easy way to find related content on their blog by linking back to yours. They may even want to write about it!

You can use free tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner, Uber Suggest, and Answer The Public to generate a list of keywords that you can use to find potential customer questions.

4) Participate in Industry Niche Directories and Get Listed on Google My Business (GMB)

Like how a physical store has to be located at an excellent spot to attract customers, your business needs to be found online. One of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business is by getting listed on industry-related niche directories and GMB.

Getting listed on GMB is an absolute necessity for local SEO. Not only does it help your local rankings, but it also helps with online visibility and click-through rate.

Once you create your GMB page, ensure that you fill out all the necessary details. Include your business name, address, phone number, email address, and website URL. Ensure that all the information is accurate and consistent with other pages that mention your business.

5)  Host an Event for the Community in Which you Live and Work

Events are a great way to get links, brand mentions, and traffic. The event format will determine how many links you can get from it.

Hosting a community event is a great way to get links back to your site. Create an event on Facebook, cross-post it on other social platforms, and promote it. Make sure your website URL is included in all of your promotional materials.

The more successful you are with your event, the more likely you will get links. Local schools, nonprofits, and businesses will often link back to your site on their own because they appreciate the help you’re providing them. Your local chamber of commerce may even link back to you as well.

6) Ask Satisfied Customers for Online Reviews on Sites Like Yelp! and Google My Business (GMB)

Many people don’t realize that reviews can be considered “votes” in the web world, especially if they’re on highly relevant sites to your industry. That makes them a great way to build links and improve your site’s authority.

Reviews are a great way to show how good your business is and influence users to buy your product or service. The more reviews you have, the better your website will rank in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).

The best way to get as many reviews as possible is to ask satisfied customers to leave an online review. Many customers will be happy to oblige, especially if they had a positive experience with your business.

7) Fix Broken Backlink Building Opportunities

Creating a broken backlink is a surefire way to lose potential traffic. For example, changing your URL structure (which you should do for SEO purposes) would cause all of your old links to be broken. This means that anyone attempting to follow those links won’t be able to access your site. They will see an error message.

There is a lot of broken content out there. You can find broken links on any site using tools like Ahrefs, Moz and SEMRush. Websites with a higher Ahrefs/Moz/SEMrush Domain Rating correlate with higher rankings on the first page of Google.

You can either contact the website owner to fix the link or ask them to add your URL instead of fixing the broken link. This is an effective tactic as it saves both the time and energy of the website owner.

Conclusion

Top local SEO link-building strategies include quality links from trusted websites, editorial and blog mentions, guest posts, keyword research, etc. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it gives you a quick snapshot of what you need to be doing to rank locally in Google. The next step is to focus on implementing those tactics and begin tracking your progress.