What is local link-building?

Link-building is an important part of any local SEO campaign as it helps to increase visibility and drive more traffic to your website, as well as increase your search engine rankings. 

Local link building is the process of obtaining inbound links from websites that are located in a particular geographic area. This technique helps local businesses to boost their search engine rankings, for local search. On top of this local link building provides additional credibility to the business whilst enhancing its visibility among local consumers. Increased visibility and increased website traffic can lead to more sales for your local business.

Local link building is important for local business. Whilst a link from a high authority international website would do fantastic things for your brand awareness, it would not do much for your local visibility.

For instance, if you’re a pub who wants to improve your local rankings, getting a link from a local press site, influencer or blogger will do more for your SEO than a link from a huge international news site.

The ideal scenario is gaining a link on a site that’s local to your area, and also relevant to your niche.

What are the benefits of local link-building?

Here are 6 benefits of local link-building for your local business:

• INCREASED VISIBILITY 

• BUILD TRUST WITH LOCAL AUDIENCES 

• IMPROVED LOCAL SEO RANKINGS 

• GREATER SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT 

• IMPROVED LOCAL AUTHORITY 

• INCREASED REFERRAL TRAFFIC 

Let’s dig into each of these in a little more detail…

INCREASED VISIBILITY 

By leveraging local link building, you can increase visibility and credibility for your website and brand. Increased visibility is primarily a result of enhanced rankings in the local search results. 

This style of link building can help to increase the number of people who locate and visit your website. By using these local connections, you can get your content and website in front of a larger number of local customers. This helps you to expand your reach, and increase brand awareness in the local area. 

BUILD TRUST WITH LOCAL AUDIENCES 

Local link building helps you to build trust with local audiences. By partnering with already well known and trusted local businesses and connections, you can establish yourself as a trusted source in your local community. This will help gain a stronger connection with your local customers, which can help to build trust and loyalty. 

IMPROVED LOCAL SEO RANKINGS 

Local link building can be a great way to improve your search engine rankings in local search results. This not only increases visibility but also can make it easier for customers to find you and your products or services. 

Local link building can also help to get your content and website in front of a larger number of local customers, which can help to improve your local SEO rankings. This can help to ensure that your business is visible to local customers when they search for relevant terms. 

GREATER SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT 

Local link building can also lead to increased engagement with your brand on social media. As more local websites link to your site, more local people will become aware of your website, increasing the chances of them engaging with your social media content and sharing it with their networks. This again gains exposure and trust for your brand.

IMPROVED LOCAL AUTHORITY 

Linking to local websites is another way to demonstrate your knowledge, experience, and authority in your industry. As local websites link to your own website, it can help to build further credibility. 

INCREASED REFERRAL TRAFFIC 

Local link building can also contribute to increased referral traffic, by increasing the number of local websites that link to your site. This can lead to increased traffic to your website, and of course, improved search engine rankings and visibility. 

On a final note

To sum up, local link-building is a powerful strategy for businesses who want to improve their local visibility, build trust with local audiences, and increase search engine rankings in their area. It also helps increase engagement on social media and earn more referral traffic. Thanks to the impact of getting these links from localised sources - such as nearby websites and other businesses in the same industry - link-building allows your company to reach more people in your community. Doing the right kind of effective link-building can help make a real difference in your business’s success rate and help you achieve the high search engine rankings you need for success. 

What’s more, it has benefits that can continue working for you to drive new customers months or even years down the line. If you’re interested in optimising your SEO efforts for local search, then properly researching and executing strategic local link-building is an essential part of that process. 

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:

8 ways link-building differs for local vs traditional SEO

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.