Link Building For Local SEO

If you want to be the number one business of your own neighborhood or town, you must be aware of Link Building For Local SEO strategies. However, you should not completely surrender to the normal link-building approach when doing this since they are slightly different than each other.

Although link building and Link Building For Local SEO have similarities in common, local link building for a website is a subject that has differences when we go into the details. While normal link-building requires more extensive and general study, local link-building requires more specific region and area study. As a result, the links to be bridged with each other must be relevant to the local area you serve.

It may sound a little complicated, but it’s nothing to worry about. Actually, everything is quite simple. In this article prepared by Screpy experts, a guide about local link building awaits you.

Link-Building Definition

In order to better understand the purpose of Local SEO link-building, we first need to understand what link-building is. Link-building is when a website acquires backlinks to its website from third sources, which is one of the most important SEO studies. The more authoritative and credible these third sources are, the more effectively your link-building will work and the better SEO rankings you will get. On the contrary, the poorer the links you receive, your SEO ranking will be negatively affected.

Here are the advantages you will gain with link building strategies:

• Your website will rank higher in search engines since link-building is an SEO factor considered by search engines.
• The authority of your website increases.
• You acquire natural traffic to your website.

Local SEO Definition

Local SEO is a critical SEO study that is necessary to make your business more visible in the internet world and to improve brand awareness. Throughout this study, it is aimed to optimize your business’s online presence to achieve the highest ranking in local search results. Thus, a website becomes SEO-optimized to rank higher through certain keywords that are most likely for a particular geographic location.

Google Maps, Google My Business, and the correct use of keywords are the key variables of local SEO. Through these three, it is ensured that you appear first in the search results of local people or tourists roaming near you.

Importance of Local SEO

Remember, local searches are one of the most common types of queries performed on search engines. For example, for Google, this rate is almost 50%.

Local search results are the most relevant results displayed for people searching for any place near their location. With these search results, Google provides the following features to the user:

• Name and address of the business
• User rating and comments
• Work hours
• Communication channels such as phone/mail
• Website address
• Images

In short, Google puts everything relevant to your business in front of the searcher. This very point creates the seconds when searchers decide whether to click or not. For this reason, Local SEO optimization has a very important place to increase user traffic.

Link-Building For Local SEO Definition

Local SEO link building differs from normal link-building as it usually comes from local service providers or sources located in the same area as you. As its name reveals, you can get local backlinks from well-known social media influencers, news sites, and blogs in your local area.

Importance of Link-Building For Local SEO

Based on our Screpy expertise, we have listed the advantages that your website can achieve with local link building for SEO:

• Your website will have organic, local, and relevant traffic.
• You can easily take the steps that will become “number one” in your local area. When X Town is mentioned for a specific service, the first place that comes to mind becomes your place.
• You will get a wider network thanks to the business/friendship relations you will achieve during the local SEO link-building process. This is often equivalent to more new job opportunities.

For example, let’s say you run a decoration store in the city of Barcelona. You have offered all kinds of goods, large and small, to the service. You have a variety of products for both locals and tourists. When someone near Barcelona searches for “Decarotation shop,” Google tends to display a result based on the location closest to the user. Especially when the search query changes to “decoration shop near me,” the result becomes even more specific, and places that will maximize the user experience are presented in the first place of SERP.

Local SEO Link-Building Strategies

Now that we’ve talked enough about what Local SEO and link building are, we can now move on to Link-Building For Local SEO strategies you can apply.

Local-Based Social Media

By creating a social media account on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, you can both promote your brand and meet the necessary backlink needs. Well-known social media platforms have high authority, and you can reach different people through these platforms, which are used by tens of thousands of people even in your local area. You can also share your website URL as a plugin by sharing link-based stories on Instagram or via Facebook posts and acquire backlinks very easily.

As another option, Google My Business is an effective social media platform/Google tool that you can use. You can easily provide users with your brand name, address, and phone number information through Google My Business while helping a search engine like Google evaluate you.  

Social Media Ads

After creating your social media account, you can benefit from social media ads if you want to reach more local people more quickly and easily. Especially Facebook ads are very useful in this regard because they can produce ads that will hit the bull’s eye. That is, when you advertise on Facebook, ads are shown to people with a certain demographic. For example, you have a pet shop on one of Miami’s famous streets, and you advertise on Facebook. Anyone in or near Miami who needs something related to the petshop will see your brand’s ads from the moment you advertise.

Social Media Influencers

Social media influencers are an option where you can get backlinks at least as effective as social media ads, thus increasing your site traffic. If there is an influencer that will increase your communication at the local level, do not hesitate to cooperate. Prepare a service, product, or content on your website and share them through influencers. This sharing, which will be performed by an account followed by at least hundreds of thousands of people, will leverage the traffic on your website. As a result, you will acquire a healthy backlink at a local level. 

Local Backlinks From Different Local Sources

We are in 2021, and there are news sites, forums, communities at the local level almost all over the world. If not all three, at least one is certain. You should conduct research by considering the keywords related to your industry, the concept, and their relevance to you. After you find those who are in parallel with you from these institutions, you need to make contact and offer them to share your own content. Although it requires manual outreach, this method is great for promoting your brand at the local level and a logical approach to get high-quality backlinks for your website.

Analyze Your Competitors

Observe the link-building structure done by your local competitors. Where did they get links from, which websites did they use, and what techniques did they follow? In this way, you can eliminate your deficiencies by identifying their better sides, and you can improve those at which you are already better by identifying the backlink factors. Besides, you can get a healthy comparison by utilizing tools like Ahrefs, where you can examine both your own and your competitors’ backlinks. After you complete the review and research, the left is up to you. You can reach the websites that you want to acquire backlinks from or improve your own good sides!

Local Content

As Screpy experts, we would like to remind you that when you adopt a Local SEO approach for your website, you need to include local content in order to keep the user experience at the highest level. Although global content is also important, content relevant to your region may not be of interest to people 100 kilometers away. Or, the local content you create may be more useful to anyone in your area. For example, your area is where tourists visit every season, and you run a restaurant. By preparing a quality guide about your region and adding your restaurant at the end, “You can taste the most delicious flavour as a cherry on the top!” Thanks to its quality, content such as this will increase traffic and be shared among people independently of you on different platforms.

Business Directories

Apart from Google My Business, you can easily share the NAP information of your own business through online directors such as Bing Places for Business, Yahoo Business Listings, Whitepages, and you can get backlinks from reputable websites while doing this. However, the downside of these sites is that they are focused on providing the best results for everyone rather than a local search result. In short, although they are websites with high authority, which millions of people use, they do not have local-specific features. For this reason, apart from these sites, you better check out and utilize Google Advanced Search to find a more local and specific directory. Through it, you can find the most effective directory for your area. 

As Screpy experts, we have talked about seven link-building strategies for local SEO. Now, It is time to find answers to frequently asked questions about link-building for local SEO.

FAQ

Conclusion

Link-building for local SEO is just one of the processes of optimizing your website for SEO to attract more users through relevant local searches. It helps you promote your products and services to users in the search results of location-based queries performed on Google and other search engines. In this way, all information about your business such as brand, address, website, communication channels such as mail and telephone, working hours, and services will be placed in the first place on the SERP page, which users will see first.

Link-building for local SEO is a set of studies that local businesses should include in their SEO strategies to be more successful.