Know more about Link Building Strategies? To make any business prosper, it should have the proper exposure to its intended audience. Small businesses, in particular, should have the right marketing strategies and should also employ the use of an online website to promote their business further. In turn, their sites should also be optimized for Local SEO to bring out it’s efficiency to the fullest.
There are many aspects one should look out when optimizing for Local SEO. But the one owners should look out for is the link building aspect as it is one of that could potentially spike your traffic ratings the most. It’s also one of the Local SEO strategies that, when done wrong, can cause your site to get penalized by Google. Hence, it’s only natural that it should be done right.
Here are some of the basic link building strategies for Local SEO.
Linking from People You Know
image source: Dreamstine.com
The best way to gather links is to gather the nearest possible ones to you. Do you have any friends, colleagues, neighbors or just about anyone you know that has a site? If so, they make a phone call and ask them if they could link back to you. In this digital era, it’s not uncommon to find people who have their own blogs and sites near your vicinity.
Once you’ve gathered links from these people, you can then go to your next target – your past and current clients. Always make sure to ask your clients to link back to you if they found your products/services useful to them. Your buyers will always be happy to comply, so long as you provide the needed service to them.
Guest Posting and Press Releases
image source: Growth Rocket
Guest posting should be a strategy that’s known for years now so I won’t be surprised if you knew this already. If you do, then this’ll be a refresher for you. Guest posts and press releases with links is the classic strategy for gathering links. However, it doesn’t work like what it used to back then.
When guest posting was on the rise, they were exploited and became a means to send out spammy links to different sites. The preferred type back then was quantity over quality – it didn’t matter if the articles were good or not, or if they have been recycled so long as it can be sent out and posted. Google then stepped in and changed the game since then. Now, this kind of strategy will easily put you under their radar and if they find out, you’ll be seeing your site on the top pages no more.
Quality of quantity – make sure your articles are knowledgeable and will provide any readers with the information they need. These articles must also be of unique quality, no grammatical errors and typos. And lastly, they must be posted on sites that are relevant to yours. You can try putting them on article directories and such and in return, earning you a link or two.
The same goes for press releases. They should also be informative, precise and straight to the point. And it should be interesting enough for it to catch the eyes of your local news publishers and the like. Press releases that can easily pique the attention of anyone reading it has a high chance of getting published, shared in various medias, such as the local newspaper or on social media.
Get Out there and Participate
image source: Citizen engagement blog
Always be on the lookout for events happening in your local area and participate as a sponsor or a participant. You can also start an event on your own and invite various site owners and other people in the city you’re in. These events gives you a chance to meet these people and befriend them. You can then ask these people to check out your site or ask them to link back to you.
Take charity events for example. One can easily participate here, find potential links, clients and partners, and at the same time, help the community. You’re not only building an online presence here but also a social presence.
Third Party Sites
image source: Boast.io
There are too many too mention so I’ll just be general. Sites that are relevant to you (vertical markets) or sites that are built as directories can easily house a link from you. You can also use your social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter to share links from your website. Links placed here can greatly increase your exposure so make sure to have a definite list of these sites under your belt.
Blog
image source: Search Engine Journal
Content is easily one of the most important parts of the site, and a site optimized for Local SEO could use a lot of it. By setting up a blog section, you’ll be clearing this base with ease. Of course you’ll have to make sure that your blog has been constantly updated with new information and such. Lastly, you can use interlinking (a link that redirects to another link in the same website) or outlink to other sites that may have relevance to your posts.
Afterword
There are still a lot out there, some more diversified and complicated. However, as learn your way about Local SEO, you’ll eventually run into these and you’ll be able to apply them into your link building strategies as well. Just make sure that your link strategies will not make Google think it’s some sort of link spam and you’ll be good.