12 ways to build local backlinks for your business
Local link-building is a big part of local SEO. So if you’re keen to increase visibility for your local business, drive more traffic to your website, and generate those all-important enquiries and sales, local link-building can help.
Here are 12 ways you can start building local backlinks for your small business:
Approach local bloggers and publications
Reach out to other local businesses in your area
Get links from travel, and local review websites
Share quality content on social media platforms
Highlight customer testimonials
Local directories and citation sites
Local business networks
Local events
Link round-ups
Reach out to local influencers
Use Canva to construct great infographic material.
Check out your competition
Let’s dig into each of these in a little more detail…
1. Use local bloggers and publications
Reach out to local blogs and publications that cover topics related to your business. By contributing content for their publications, you can often gain links from them. Using local bloggers for link building is a great way to increase your business’ online visibility and authority. Here are some tips for leveraging local bloggers for link building:
Connect with local bloggers who post about topics related to your business, such as lifestyle, food, or fashion blogs.
Offer them quality content related to your business that they can share on their blog.
Regularly monitor their blog and engage with the comments to create a good relationship with the blogger.
Invite them to review or feature your products or services in exchange for a link back to your website.
Reach out to other bloggers in your community and ask them if they would be willing to guest post on each other’s sites, allowing you both to benefit from gaining more exposure through links.
2. Approach local businesses in your area
Ask other local businesses with which you have a good relationship if they can link back to your website. For example, think about contacting local business networks in your area, or any neighbouring businesses.
Even friends nearby with their own businesses would be a great option to gain backlinks and you can return the favour! Local suppliers and distributors could also be good options when thinking of local link building.
3. Get links from travel, and local review websites
Getting links from travel and local review websites is an effective way to boost your website's domain authority and improve your ranking on search engines. To do this, it's a good idea to create a list of relevant websites in your industry and reach out to the webmasters or editors to request a link to your website.
You might also want to offer an incentive, such as a discounted service or product, to encourage people to write positive reviews about your business. This can help you establish relationships with local influencers and create a positive reputation in your community
4. Share quality content on social media platforms
Create and share unique, quality content on popular platforms like social media and forums that link back to your business website. Here are some tips on how to create high quality content for your audience.
Research what type of content resonates with the platform’s audience and tailor your content accordingly.
Focus on creating content that is high-quality, unique, interesting, and relevant to your business.
Include links back to your website wherever appropriate in order to direct people back to your site.
Repurpose existing content from your website and share it across different platforms in different formats.
Keep track of the performance of each post in terms of engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares etc., so you can identify what’s working for you.
5. Highlight customer testimonials on social media platforms
User generated content is a great way to encourage others to leave their thoughts and reviews. Highlight customer testimonials on social media platforms, and you might get some backlinks.
6. Local directories and citation sites
Getting listed on local directories and citation sites is crucial for any business that wants to improve their local SEO and visibility. These sites provide a platform to list your business with correct and consistent information such as business name, address, phone number, opening hours and more.
In addition to helping customers find your business, these directories and citation sites provide valuable backlinks to your website, which can help improve your domain authority and search engine rankings.
Some examples of popular local directories and citation sites include Google My Business, Yelp, Yellow Pages, and TripAdvisor. Regularly updating your information on these sites will help ensure your business appears in search results and provides the most accurate information to customers.
7. Local business networks
Focusing on building relationships with membership organisations and networks in your local area, and those within your industry can yield significant benefits for your business.
Membership organisations are typically trusted sources within the community and have a strong online presence, which means that a link from their website can improve your website's domain authority and search engine ranking. This link acts as a vote of confidence in your business, indicating to search engines that your business is a reputable source within the industry and location.
8. Local events
You can host local events or sponsorships to get backlinks from other local sites. Ideas include running a workshop, holding a competition, getting involved with charity events, and conducting a local workshop.
9. Link round-ups
Link round-ups are a great way to gain exposure and backlinks to your website. Link round-ups are curated lists of posts or articles from various sources that a blogger or website owner shares with their audience.
Pitching your content to link round-ups can help you earn quality backlinks, increase your website traffic, and raise your online profile. To increase your chances of getting your content picked for a link round-up, it's important to create valuable and relevant content. Identify websites or bloggers who create link round-ups in your industry or niche, and reach out to them and pitch your content, providing a brief summary of what your content is all about and why it's relevant to their audience.
In addition, it's important to share your posts across all social media platforms to increase their reach and visibility. This will enable you to attract a broader range of readers, which can make your content more appealing to the owner of the link round-up.
Overall, pitching your content to link round-ups and sharing it across all social media platforms can be a highly effective strategy for gaining more backlinks to your website and building your online reputation.
10. Reach out to local influencers
It is important to build a relationship of some sort with local influencers. Once you’ve built a relationship with local influencers, it’s time to reach out with an offer. Reaching out to local influencers is a great way to boost the visibility of your business. Here are some tips for leveraging local influencers for link building:
Research and identify local influencers who are relevant to your industry, target audience, and location.
Connect with them on social media platforms or via email to start building relationships.
Create tailored content for the influencer’s blog or content channels that would be of interest to their followers.
Invite them to review or feature your products or services in exchange for a link back to your website.
Leverage their reach by sharing their content on your own channels and encouraging your followers to engage with it.
Make sure your offer is engaging and tailored to their interests.
Create educational or informative resources.
11. Use Canva to construct great infographic material.
Use tools to make video content. Offer value to the user by means of a free e-book or any other creative ideas that can enhance or add value to your content.
12. Check out your competition
To truly stand out from (and outrank) your competitors you will need to build unique links. That said, analysing your competitors’ existing backlinks is a great way to find opportunities to kickstart your own backlink strategy. After all, at the very least you should try to appear wherever your competitors are as it gives you a platform on which to outlink them!
In closing
The variety of techniques available that can help build local backlinks for your business are plentiful. From reaching out to other reputable and credible local businesses in your area, to getting links from travel and local review websites, you have an array of options at your fingertips.
In addition, you can also take advantage of customer testimonials, participating in link roundups and networking with influencers within your community. All of these are important ways to create powerful backlinks and grow the organic search visibility of your website on a local level. If you're serious about improving your local SEO results, then incorporating the above strategies into your link-building campaigns is essential to success.
Start today by researching the methods outlined in this blog post and testing out which ones work best for you. This article is the first in a series of three articles on the importance of local link building for local business. You can read our related articles here:
Increase brand awareness and sales with local link building.
Bear in mind that local SEO is an ever-evolving process which requires patience and consistency, so make sure you keep up to date by signing up for our local business growth ideas email newsletter.
Who are we, and what is this?
We’re LocalMark, a London UK-based local SEO service that helps connect UK trade, service & retail businesses with nearby customers. This post is one of many that’s been lovingly researched and written by our local marketing experts to help support the UK’s thousands of owners, managers and franchisees with growing their local businesses. If you found this helpful and could benefit from more of the same, be sure to share, follow us on social and sign up for our local business growth newsletter.