Local Links & How to Find More Local Link Opportunities?
Links which are technically known as hyperlinks, when clicked, these links contain anchor text or keywords connecting you to another web page. Internal links help visitors find additional pages within your site and external links point to content outside of your domain. If you follow best SEO practices, your website will have an internal and external linking strategy that makes your website relevant and trustworthy.
When another website links to your website, it is like a vote of confidence. The more links or votes your website earns, the more relevant it is in the eyes of the search engine. Higher relevancy means higher rankings and more traffic to your web pages. However, not all links are created equal. So, you want to be careful to ensure you’re building links from trustworthy websites. One high-quality link is a lot more valuable to your website than 100 low-quality links. In fact, too many low-quality links can hurt your rankings resulting in little to no organic search traffic.
What are Local Links
So, what are local links? It is when other local websites in the communities you serve to associate your product, brand, or website with a hyperlink and text that visitors can click on to visit your website. For example, let’s say you’re a plumber in Largo, Florida. When the local chamber of commerce’s website links to your business, that’s a local link. It’s also a highly credible link. When you get these types of high-quality, authoritative local links, it increases the local relevancy of your website. So, when prospective customers search for a plumber in Largo, FL, your website will have a better chance of appearing on the first page of search results.
Why They are Important for Local SEO
Local links are essential to SEO because, over time, as you continue to build local links, it gives your website more opportunities for outranking your competitors. The higher your website ranks, the more traffic your website will receive, giving your local business a competitive advantage. However, search engines such as Google consider many factors in search engine results pages (SERPs). The two ranking signals that affect local links the most are authority and relevancy:
Authority
Obtaining local links from websites that search engines consider an authority or credible source of information can significantly boost your rankings. It lets search engines know that these highly credible sites are vouching for your credibility.
Relevancy
When building links, concentrate on earning quality links from websites relevant to your brand, market, or niche. For example, if you own a shoe store that caters to students in Austin, Texas, getting a ‘.EDU’ link from the University of Texas at Austin is more relevant than getting a similar link from a university or college in another state.
Where to Find Local Link Building Opportunities
Building links is a time-consuming process, but if you do it correctly and build a local link profile naturally, your online business will be rewarded with higher rankings. You might even consider hiring a local SEO expert like Brandtastic, who can do this for your company. You can also check out our recent article on keyword research to help determine the best anchor texts for your local links.
To help you get started, here are a few places to find more local link opportunities:
- Local review websites like Google MyBusiness, Yelp, Angie, HomeAdvisor, etc.
- Online Business Directories
- Better Business Bureau
- Chamber of Commerce
- Local hotels and motels
- Social media sites
- Local colleges and universities
- Popular local blogs
- Civic/non-profit organizations
- Your city’s municipal website
- Local news and media sites
Improve Local SEO for Your Website
Your Web Marketing & SEO partner is vital to your business when you want to improve SEO and achieve profitable results from your ad marketing budget. Your website can dramatically increase business leads, store traffic, and revenue when you implement the right digital and content marketing strategies for making local SEO work for your company in 2022. Frank Motola, President of Brandtastic, has been getting positive results for our clients since 1998. So, give Frank a call at (813) 441-0275, and we’ll start building quality local links for your business.