As Google continues to roll out more and more updates to their algorithm, one persistent trend in all of them is RELEVANCY. This makes local link building essential for businesses that rely on local customers. By link building with neighbors you create a dual benefit for your business or website, you’ll receive more SEO value, while driving relevant and targeted traffic.
Building these links can be easy, especially with local publications writing about nearby businesses every day. Local publications generally have the strongest PR (Page Rank) and are in the business of generating quality content. This takes effort, time and often the right connections to get mentioned by a local publication. Typically it takes some relationship building with authors of the publications around you but that effort may pay off in more ways than one since they always have large networks.
The beauty of utilizing a local search engine optimization agency the legwork of relationship building is already completed. Agencies such as ours are constantly reaching out to local orange county bloggers, businesses, website owners and organizations to build relationships through win-win tactics. For example one of our guiding philosophies is to build the network before we need it.
In case you’re curious on past methods we’ve utilized, we decided to list out a few. Just keep in mind that we’ll utilize dozens of link building techniques over the course of your local SEO campaign. So here they are:
Guest Blogging – We’re sure everyone already knows about this one but we still wanted to mention it since it’s still one of the best methods. As bloggers ourselves, we’re always looking for win-win situations, so we like to guest blog on other blogs while at the same time featuring others on ours.
Local Hub Sites – There are so many variations of these from local business associations, community directories, chamber of commerce sites, travel guides, neighborhood sites, events sites and the list goes on. The point is, depending on your business, to find these sites and reach out to them as they already have the right type of traffic.
Sponsorships – This can vary from sponsoring local events and organizations such as animal shelters, events, school clubs and sport teams, meet-ups, and marathons are just some of the examples.
Testimonials – Businesses love testimonials. So why not leave testimonials for products or services you enjoyed. It’s not costing you anything to endorse them, while at the same time you can earn a backlink.
Many of these techniques require proper Google Queries for prospecting local link building opportunities. We thought about including that but felt it would get away from the subject of this post, which is what types businesses should use a local search optimization agency.
In the end, we’re not saying having a local SEO agency is always the best option but more often than not, it is! The reason being, if a company is familiar with the surroundings already and already serves companies in the region, they’ll save you money by not having to waste time researching potential opportunities. Also the little overlooked fact we forget to mention earlier, you can drop in and have a meeting with them which definitely beats virtual meetings any day.
