Author: Ryan Walsh

 

Table of contents:

• What exactly is local link building?
• How do you go about building local links?
• Is it worth building links from local directories?
• Local newspaper websites
• What’s guest posting?
• Local bloggers
• Influencers

Many companies think link-building is only for their national or international brands; however, this is not true.

Many local small businesses arrive at the logic of thinking, “Well, who’s going to want to link to my small business?”

However, the smallest businesses can sometimes still have the best backlink profiles.

For example, a fish and chop shop employing only three people might win an award, meaning the business gains backlinks from national newspapers, food bloggers, and food-related websites.

Can you compete with the leading competitors? Small businesses can also gain good backlinks. This article will explain how to do precisely that.

 

Outrank the local competition.

Businesses should naturally always be looking for competitive advantage, and therefore, one of the ways that a company can achieve this is if they rank high on Google. Whether it’s a village, a small town or a vast city where you work, getting your business ranked on the first page can get more business.

Most businesses locally know they need a good website and to follow Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. So, many companies understand and acknowledge that, for instance, they shouldn’t have duplicated content marketing.

However, many small businesses, in particular, don’t concentrate on accumulating strong, high-quality links.
Yet, good links for your small business can be the ticket to your company’s ranking on page one of Google.

 

What is local link building?

Links can come from national websites; however, if you concentrate on improving your business’s local search engine optimisation, you should also build local links.

Therefore, links can be built from local bloggers, business directories, and even local suppliers who may wish to promote your business.

 

Domain authority (DA)

Generally speaking, these local businesses, such as local suppliers or a local business directory, will not be websites with strong domain authority.

For example, the BBC is a national organisation; therefore, BBC News will have strong domain authority.

However, your local newspaper, run by, for example, perhaps volunteers, that website might not have strong domain authority. However, it could still be a respected source of local news that potentially thousands of residents read every day.

Therefore, because that local newspaper website is hyper-focused on offering news in one city, getting a good link from that business improves local SEO.

Our agency is based in Cardiff City, so if we were to get a backlink from Wales Online, this would be an example of receiving a link from a local newspaper that’s widely read and respected here in our home city.

 

Local bloggers

Many local businesses splash out on an expensive website, thinking they will soon be flooded with new customers.
However, it doesn’t work like that.

You could pay a small fortune to have a website designed that looks like the absolute bee’s knees.
However, here’s the thing: unless that website is supported by quality, well-engineered search engine optimisation, it might often sit on page 3 of Google or beyond.

Only when highly talented SEO consultants work their magic can they nudge a website onto page one of Google?

One way we do that is by slowly building links. Those sharp-witted among us will have noticed we used the wording “slowly built,” and that’s with good reason.

The links must be high quality but slowly built because of “link velocity.”

 

Building links is like maturing a fine wine.

 

Why do we say building links is like maturing a fine wine?

Well, because of link velocity

Google’s algorithms work like this: They want to see a backlink profile complete with quality links, but they want those backlinks built over a protracted timeframe. So, for example, a top brand—let’s take the example of a leading e-commerce website—might have been in business for over 10 years.

Let’s say a business retails running trainers and apparel. Now, that business might rank first in Google’s search engine results.

And how might that have happened?

The business might have been building links slowly over the last decade. A link-building expert might have disavowed any rubbish links, as

Googlebot crawled and indexed rubbish links.

All this means is that Google’s algorithms reward businesses with high-quality links. However, the crucial and essential detail is that Google wants the links to be built over an extended timeframe, which looks more “natural.”

If a business, for example, suddenly spikes in backlinks over a few months and the number of indexed links jumps up, well, this does raise a few eyebrows.

 

 

It looks suspicious because it looks like you bought the links. They could be spam, which could even mean a link penalty is imposed.
So, take your time and build quality links, but do this slowly; build the links like you are maturing and creating a fine wine.

 

Local suppliers

Sometimes, building local links is much more straightforward than you might have thought.

For example, you might think you need an expensive link-building tool and an SEO agency when building links.

Now, sometimes, many businesses need an agency to build links because they are in a competitive business sector.

However, you can often get the ball rolling yourself. For example, if you run a local restaurant, you are supplied by a local winemaker, beer maker, bread maker, etc.

It’s a fantastic opportunity on your website to mention those local businesses, and they can do the same on their website. It helps the customer because they know that you are purchasing local produce. Plus, it helps from an organic and local search engine optimisation point of view if local suppliers’ websites, which are quality websites, are linking directly towards, say, your homepage on your website.

Again, please don’t build many links at once, but let’s say that a local supplier has written a blog post about what makes their produce superior. There might be an opportunity within that text, such as a blog post, to mention your local restaurant. The reader of the blog post of, say, the local company that makes fine-quality cheese that supplies your restaurant may then link to you.

This is a good example of gaining a good quality do-follow backlink from a local supplier.

 

Local SEO is crucial to some businesses.

For some businesses to remain financially viable, they must partner with a local SEO company. For example, some people may only purchase goods and services once in a lifetime, so they don’t know which company to choose.

However, if your business has strong SEO, a critical part is strong links and powerful do-follow and no-follow links.

If you have local backlinks, Google is much more likely to rank your business higher in the local SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It’s another indicator to Google’s algorithms that you are based in that city or town. For example, if 89.9% of links are from businesses in Cardiff, Google is much more likely to have great confidence that your business is also based in Cardiff.

 

How do you go about building new links?

Competitors backlinks

So, a lot of businesses make the mistake of beavering away at trying to improve their SEO but operate in a silo. So, what do we mean by that?
Well, here’s the thing: The top agencies globally know that you need to work hard to improve your organic SEO, yet you also have to keep a close eye on what the competition is doing.

We say that because You can only overtake a competitor on Google if your company’s “ranking factors” are considered firm.

 

So, what are “ranking factors”?

How Google works can be explained, yet how the algorithm works is highly complex.

So, let’s take the simple explanation here for just a second

Google ranks businesses on the first page according to how strong their ranking factors are.

There are over 200 ranking factors in total, so this is where it can get a bit complex.

But let’s keep it simple here. You’ll only move up and take a competitor’s spot on Google, which they currently occupy if your ranking factors are better and stronger. What are widely regarded as the most important ranking factors out there? You got it: good-quality links.

So, if you have good-quality links—better links than your direct competitors—you have a serious advantage and can start to move up Google’s ranks.

Sometimes, just one link, just one single link from, say, the BBC can mean you start to leapfrog the competition. You can move from page 10 to page 2 sometimes if there are powerful and good-quality website links to you. However, building such strong links—well, that’s hard.

 

Who are your main competitors?

So, we recommend setting up a Google Search Console account and subscribing to a good SEO tool as the first steps.

If you were to ask our agency to recommend an SEO tool, we would have to say Moz Pro, hands down.

So, the next thing is selecting keywords with the right “keyword difficulty”.

You want to select keywords that have the following:

• Has a high search volume
• Relevant to the products and services you retail
• Not too difficult

 

I noticed how we said, “Not too difficult.”

Well, that’s because millions of businesses have made this mistake.

They think they can shoot for the stars and get on page one of Google for a hugely competitive keyword that the large national companies currently hold.

However, if you have a budget of 1k per month, the other companies might realistically be putting 1 million into their online advertising budget. The 1k per month won’t make a dent and is a drop in the ocean.

 

Keyword difficulty

So, let’s return to this idea of “keyword difficulty.” Therefore, it’s a bit of a balancing act. You want keywords with high enough search volume to help draw in business, yet not too difficult that it’s simply unachievable with a low marketing budget.

So, it’s this balancing act that’s important.

Have you got a link to competitors you can beat with your marketing budget?

Good

Let’s continue to the next stage of local link-building

Checking your direct competitor’s local backlinks

Finding out which businesses link to your competitors

This is a piece of cake because some fantastic link-building tools are now on the market. For example, there’s Ahrefs, Majestic, and Moz Pro, to name a few.

So, getting your competitor’s straightforward backlinks is a piece of cake.

However, knowing which ones to try to obtain is where the skill set of a link-building agency comes in. Some links will be spam, so you don’t want them.

Some links will be unattainable because, for example, they are for an award the business has won.

Some links will be of high quality, and your agency may think, well, we can also have a go at building them, which are the links you want.

Obtaining links is the hard part.

Obtaining your competitors’ backlinks is easy. Yet sifting through a list of 30 thousand links and selecting the best links you want to build takes a lot of time.

So, before you start link building and analysing your competitors’ direct backlinks, you should ensure you have enough coffee in the office, as it takes a lot of time and concentration.

 

So, which links should a business be looking to build:

The links should have:

• High DA score
• Be relevant
• Be from a respected business that’s known for offering quality service, such as, say, a link from The Guardian Newspaper
• Avoid spam links
• Avoid low-quality links
• Avoid links which are not relevant to your business sector

 

Relevant, quality local business directories?

So, you most definitely need local backlinks from local business directories.

However, some local directories are good quality, and some are not.

Remember the golden rule of link building: you need “quality links.”

Links which cut the mustard.

So, the local directory links you want are links from a website that represents your business sector.

Let me give you an example:

Let’s say you run a leading law firm.

There might be a website that acts as a directory for local law firms in Wales.

You want a link and a citation from this website. It’s related to your business sector so that it will offer a local link relevant to solicitors. Plus, you should obtain a mention of your company’s NAP. This will reinforce that your company is local and can help improve your local SEO.

 

Is your business already mentioned online?

It could be that your business has already been mentioned online, for example, for winning a business award, doing local charity work, or simply offering a product or service that helps the local community.

For example, you might run a law practice that’s won a local award to local businesses.

Your company director might have been pictured at the award ceremony, and the page is dedicated to explaining why your company won that award.

Yet, there might be one thing lacking from that page: a backlink.

Now, you could contact the business award company and state the page where your company director was awarded the award. This would present a fantastic opportunity for your company to obtain a backlink.

The page might have been live for some time, let’s say over three years. However, your new SEO agency could leap into action, get on the phone or via an e-mail, and explain that they could get a link to your homepage or another page.

The point we are trying to make is that sometimes there are good link-building opportunities to take without doing much work. Often, marketing companies refer to these as your “low-lying fruit”.

This means there are sometimes ample business mentions you can convert into links if the pages your business is mentioned are on a quality website. So again, it could be that your company has won an award for best food in the area. If they offer you a link, you can gain one from that website.

 

Local bloggers

Local bloggers and influencers can help draw in more business. Let’s give a rapid example: Say you’re about to open a new restaurant.

If a food blogger comes to your restaurant and promotes it on their social media websites, this could sometimes bring thousands of visitors.

Of course, it depends on how influential the influencer is.

However, a good influencer could bring in a lot of visitors. They may also offer a write-up of the restaurant or, say, hotel experience on their own blog, which, if it’s a good blog, may actually have a good DA score.

So, this is often for more hospitality-type businesses, yet it could also be for other companies.

 

Charity work and sponsorships

When you use a link-building tool such as Moz Pro, you might have noticed that local sports teams or charities appear in the list of backlinks.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s say solicitors practice may offer some time every month to provide free legal advice at a charity.

You could then obtain backlinks from that charity website, as this could provide a quality backlink to your website.

 

Infographics

Let’s say that you run a local business; let’s say you run a recycling company.

Now, you might produce an infographic showing how much plastic waste, cardboard, and glass is recycled.

This infographic might then be shared and mentioned on other business websites. For example, a business that uses many cardboard boxes may use the infographic to highlight how much-recycled cardboard is.

This provides a link-building opportunity for the company that produced the infographic to ask for a link. The backlink would presumably be from other Welsh businesses, as the infographic is about local recycling rates here in Wales.

Therefore, digital marketing agencies often produce infographics or conduct consumer research, which, when cited by another business, you could ask for a link because it’s your business that has conducted the consumer research.

 

In conclusion

Think about quality

Quality is much more important than quality.

When building links, whether for local, national, or global businesses, make sure the links are of high quality.

When you download it from Moz or Google Search Console, your backlink profile should be a mixture of quality do-follow and no-follow links.

The links should be quality.

Therefore, don’t go link building with the mindset that “more is better” because quality is the name of the game when it comes to link building. Only build quality links, and then use Google Disavow if you obtain low-quality / spam links.

When it comes to link building, we think it best left to the experts; here’s why we believe that:
Some websites, and even brand-new companies, can get hit by link penalties. An example of a link penalty would be a Google Penguin penalty. Businesses in Wales receive these because they have built links incorrectly.

Your business will most definitely want to avoid incurring an algorithmic or what’s called a Google Manual penalty. The reason is that Google can remove or “de-index” the website in the blink of an eye because it has spam links.

Therefore, many businesses have made the massive mistake of buying spam links. Google algorithms will pick this up, and if the backlink profile contains spam links, the website will receive a Google penalty.

Think about link velocity.
You want to build the links slowly, so if you’re a start-up business with a domain name without any links, make sure you create the links slowly.

Again, many links can make it look like you have purchased links.

Google only rewards businesses that build quality links, and they do so over a long time frame.

For example, let’s say a car insurance company, ranking number 1 on Google, may have, say, 1,000 quality links.

However, the marketing agency may have built up those quality backlinks over the last 17 years.

So, your business wants top-quality links that have yet to be built slowly.

The links should come from businesses that have very high DA scores.

 

Think about local links.

If your business is based in Cardiff and you only serve this area, you might want to build more local backlinks.

This will help to reinforce that your business is based here.

Because other local businesses are linking to you, it’s a powerful indicator that your business is too located in that city.

Does your business need help to improve your local search engine optimisation?

Does your business need help improving your local or organic search engine optimisation?

We have helped countless businesses to get onto page one of Google.

We can help your business to get onto page one of Google in Cardiff.

Give us a ring today.