Everything you need to know about local link building

What is local SEO link building?

Local link building means obtaining links from local sites that link back to your own. These are often known as local backlinks or inbound links, and they’re a great way to increase traffic to your site and improve your position in local search results. 

Why are local backlinks important?

Improve your page rank

Google considers the number and quality of backlinks when determining your page rank. This means the more high-quality links your site has, the more likely your site is to rank higher in the search results. 

Increase your local visibility

Backlinks can also help increase your local organic visibility. This helps move users through the customer journey by providing your target audience with more touchpoints with your brand.

Drive targeted local traffic to your site

Local link building isn’t just beneficial for SEO. More relevant local links will mean more relevant users searching for local keywords are directed to your site.

How to get local backlinks 

If you’ve not done link building before, it can be tricky to know where to start. An effective local link-building strategy involves research, time and hard work. 

However, there are some simple strategies you can use to get started. Here are 8 of the best local link building tactics to help you get more local links. 

1. Create profiles on high-quality local directories 

Your first step to obtaining local links should be creating a profile for your business on local online directories. Google indexes local directories, and if the directory has high domain authority, this can help your directory profile or local citation rank highly, even if your site isn’t ranking highly. You’ll also likely gain a backlink from the directory, which can help boost your site’s performance in the search results. 

Creating a Google My Business listing should be your top priority before searching for other directories. These listings appear above the search engine results, so they can be a great way of driving traffic. 

2. Get links on third-party review sites

Getting your business on third-party review sites can be a great way to drive relevant traffic and increase your local backlinks. There are loads of review sites to which you can add your business to Google Business, TrustPilot, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Foursquare, and Zomato. Generally, you’ll want to create profiles on all relevant quality review sites but choose only one review site to actively ask for customer reviews. 

Local bloggers might also compile lists of the top businesses in a location (e.g., the top ten cafes in Sheffield). These sites will generally compile these lists based on existing Google reviews or other third-party reviews. So, encouraging new or existing customers to leave reviews is key. One way you might want to do this, particularly if you’re a new small business with no or few reviews, is to offer incentives.

3. Hold special events or promotions 

You should consider holding special events or promotions to increase your business’s local visibility, improve brand awareness and get more local links. This strategy is generally more labour-intensive than creating business profiles on directories and review sites. However, this can be an effective tactic to build links from quality sites and gain more PR for your brand.

Depending on your business, you might want to think about:

• Running a workshop 
• Doing community outreach 
• Hosting a charity fundraiser 
• Sponsoring a local sports team 
• Holding a contest 
• Offering free product demos

Once you’ve chosen an event or promotion, you can advertise it to local news sites. You must draft a press release containing keywords, event details, business information and a backlink. 

4. Write high-quality local content 

Whether you’re already writing regular blog content or haven’t considered it yet, focusing on local topics can be an effective way to gain links. This will let you show off your local and industry-related knowledge, improve SEO rankings, increase site traffic, and ultimately drive conversions.

If you write high-quality, relevant content, other sites should link to your content naturally. However, it’s also worth being active with your link-building strategy by pitching your content to link roundups in your niche. You should also share your posts on social media, which will encourage other users to share your content, increasing the visibility of your content. 

5. Check what links your competitors have

If you’re struggling with finding relevant link opportunities, it’s always worth checking out what sites link to your competitors. One way to do this is using SEMrush’s Backlinks Analytics tool. You can enter your competitor’s domain and then see a comprehensive list of all their backlinks, how links have changed over time and their authority score. 

Many links will likely come from third-party directories and review sites, which you can add your business to if you haven't already. Check for relevant sites in your industry with high domain authority and see what pieces of content are linked to your competitor's site. If they've written guest posts for a particular site, consider a similar strategy.

6. Reclaim lost links

Your website structure will likely change over time, which means you might have links to pages that no longer exist. Redirecting old pages to new versions of the page or similar pages means you get the value of those lost links. 

You can check the ‘lost and found tab’ of SEMrush’s Backlink audit to see a list of any lost or broken links. 

7. Claim unlinked mentions

Unlinked mentions are another opportunity to capitalise on blog posts or news articles mentioning your company or staff but not linking to your business website. This tactic is ideal if your industry gets a lot of press coverage or you have active staff members in your industry’s online community. 

You can find unlinked mentions using Ahrefs’ Content Explorer. You can search for any mentions of anything (e.g. your brand, services, products or staff) on the web. This feature lets you exclude specific sites, such as your website, and filter by domain rating and organic traffic. This is vital for finding mentions from quality sites with lots of traffic.

You can then export this data and use a different tool, such as the Free Link Checker Tool, to search through the results and filter out any ones already linking to your site. Then, you can start working your way down the list, reaching out to the most relevant sites and requesting a backlink.

8. Check you’re using internal links

Ideally, internal linking should already be a part of your content strategy to help direct users to relevant and related content. 

Although internal links don’t count as backlinks, they are local links to your content. Plus, they help Google understand your site’s structure and how pages link together. This helps improve your site’s overall SEO and search rankings.

Need help with local link building?

If you’re unsure where to start gaining local links, it might be worth getting some outside help. Implementing an effective local SEO strategy often requires skill, time, and specialist tools - a specialist SEO agency will help you boost your SEO rankings and drive relevant local traffic to your site. 

At Logica Digital, we offer a free digital marketing audit to help you get started. We’ll look at your current SEO rankings, how your competitors are performing, and how to boost your SEO strategy. 

Get in touch with us today to learn more about what we do and what’s included in our free marketing audit.

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