Author: Celeste Gonzalez
Your involvement with the community you serve can (and should) improve your local SEO. After all, it’s your context and history with your area and your customers’ needs that makes you an expert—and searchers want to hear from experts.
In this guide, I’ll show you how local activities can pave the way for backlinks that improve brand awareness, bring in referral traffic, and benefit your rankings on Google. I’ll also show you to leverage your local expertise for backlinks via guest posting or through your own business website’s blog. Let’s get started.
Table of contents:
Why backlinks matter for local businesses
Links are one of Google’s most fundamental ranking signals—the company even says so in its documentation about how Google Search works:
“For example, one of several factors we use to help determine [quality of content] is understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content. This has often proven to be a good sign that the information is well trusted.” — Google
Whitespark, a local SEO software company, publishes its Local Search Ranking Factors Report every year after surveying the top experts in local SEO about ranking factors and their importance. The general consensus among the local SEOs is that links are amongst the most important local search ranking factors.
From your audience’s perspective, backlinks convey trustworthiness. If a local journalist quoted a home builder (and added a link to their website) in their story about new city ordinances that affect permitting for new home construction, readers would see that home builder as an expert on the topic. These positive mentions build trust and could have significant benefits for your local business’s marketing and revenue.
Local link building opportunities
There are numerous ways to attract backlinks for your local business—each with its own particular strengths. Embrace the ones that best complement your business model and/or marketing workflow.
In this section, I’ll cover link building via:
Local citations
Local business activities
Business partnerships
Creating content as a way of earning backlinks is also one of the most fundamental strategies, which I’ll discuss later in its own section.
Local citations and review platforms
Citations are online mentions of your business’s name, address, phone number, and other useful information. They help build awareness for your business and offer social proof through reviews, photos, videos, etc.
Your previous customers use these platforms to rate their experiences, while potential customers check out your citations to evaluate whether you’re the business they’re looking for (often based on customer reviews). Maintaining a profile on these review sites not only ups your credibility but also gives you the scoop on how to keep improving your service and/or products.
Another benefit is that review websites and citation platforms (Yelp, Angi’s, HomeAdvisor, etc.) will often rank for high-volume, generic keywords that local businesses have a much harder time with.
Let’s look at the example in the screenshot above. Searchers who look up [plumber oceanside] on Google can click on the Yelp search result, see your business listing on their page, and either call to book an appointment or visit your website. Through Yelp’s high ranking, you have the potential to gain traffic from your business’s Yelp listing. This is one way your plumbing business could get in front of potential customers without having to compete for a top spot in the search results (although that doesn’t mean you should rely on third-party business listings instead of prioritizing your local SEO).
Find out which directories rank for your primary keywords and claim your business profile to get your citations and reviews to do your marketing for you.
Some examples of citations across industries include:
Industry | Citation platforms |
Law | |
Medical | |
Home services | |
Real estate |
Local activities for coverage and backlinks
If you like to get involved with your community, you can capitalize on local events to earn awareness and links, no matter what type of local business you operate.
Leverage local media
See what types of stories news outlets in your service area publish about local businesses. It could be as simple as finding out if they have a monthly spotlight on local companies and submitting your business.
If you are a brand new business or celebrating 25 years of service, for example, share that news in a press release and ask local outlets if a journalist can cover your event.
Reach out to the media as well if your business has done (or will do) something newsworthy. Maybe your business works with a charity to fundraise, or you plan on running a big giveaway (more on this in the next section.
If it’s impactful to your community, it is worth sharing that information and seeing if your local media can spread the word to others.
Sponsor local events
Sponsoring local events and organizations helps build community awareness for your brand, enables you to support the community you serve, and can result in backlinks that improve your local SEO.
To find these types of opportunities in your area, use the following search operators (in Google):
“Our sponsors” [city]
“Our donors” [city]
Sponsors 5K [city]
[Holiday] Sponsors [city]
The great thing about this technique is that it applies to just about every local industry. A lawyer can sponsor a little league baseball team and an electrician can sponsor their city’s holiday 5K run. It’s a chance to do something good for the community that also benefits your business.
Offer scholarships to local students
Scholarships are another way to do something good for the community while gaining backlinks from schools and/or media outlets. You can offer a scholarship to local high school students for whichever college they choose or a scholarship to current students at a local university.
However you decide to go about this, make sure to include all relevant information on a page on your site and reach out to schools and universities about the opportunity. They likely have a page on their sites that displays all scholarship opportunities for students and can add yours to the list. Don’t forget to reach out to your local news outlets for coverage as well—particularly during college application season.
Local business partnerships
Local business partnerships are a strategic way to boost your online presence and get in front of the audiences of complementary businesses. By highlighting your partnerships, you can enhance your visibility and establish your business as an integral part of the local ecosystem.
For example, if you operate a moving business that often refers customers to a packing business, it makes sense for you both to link to each other on your respective websites.
Create local content for backlinks and brand awareness
Creating insightful or useful local content is a great way to get noticed online and make real connections with potential customers.
Whether teaming up with local bloggers or whipping up authoritative articles for your own website, ensure that the content is relevant and interesting for your audience (that’s generally people in your area, but if you’re a local business that’s well renowned, ensure that your content reflects a wider context—especially if customers travel to support your business).
Collaborate with local blogs
Guest posting on local blogs enables you to add links back to relevant content on your domain.
To get started with this tactic, think about topics that are relevant to both your business and the local blog’s audience (once you’ve identified one to guest post on).
To find these opportunities, try the following search operators:
[City] intitle:“Write for us”
[City] intitle:“Write for me”
[City] “write for me”
[City] “guest post”
[City] “become a contributor”
In the example above, we see that the Sierra Club Angeles Chapter is looking for guest writers. They are a group with “...an extensive program of hikes/hiking, national and international travel, local conservation campaigns, political action, and programs for people of all ages.”
If you own a local plumbing business, for example, you could pitch a blog post about conserving water at home and tips and tricks for doing so. Or, if you’re an electrician, you could write about the big increase in demand for electric vehicle chargers in Los Angeles County homes based on your data/experience.
Use your expertise to speak to new, relevant audiences and inform them about something they are likely interested in. That way, they’re more likely to remember your business when they need services you offer.
Maintain a topically and locally relevant blog
Like my advice in the section before this, use your expertise to write locally and topically relevant content, but on your own business’s website. The electric vehicle charger example is the perfect case for something you could write about on your blog if you were an electrician.
You don’t have to limit yourself to writing traditional blog posts. Think about content that will serve audiences in your area. For example, a moving business might create a calculator to give estimates on moving costs to cities in their service area. This is helpful and puts your business right in front of potential customers.
Maintaining a blog requires resources (time, budget, or both) but a well-optimized blog with topic clusters, pillar pages, and user-centric content can help you earn many backlinks. While the generic link-building advice is that you should just focus on creating good content and the links will come naturally, unfortunately, that only sometimes applies in the local space. Often, small businesses need to reach a certain level of brand awareness before backlinks accrue organically.
Once you create your unique, relevant content, you’ll have to promote it on your other marketing channels (email list, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.) to make people aware that it exists.
Backlinks are an online expression of local authority
Remember to stay active and engaged with your community. Whether it’s through sponsoring a local sports team, partnering with a complementary business, or creating valuable local content, these efforts won’t go unnoticed. They will pay off and lead to brand recognition and the links and traffic to your site will follow.
By investing in these strategies, you’re not just boosting your online visibility; you’re laying down the roots in your community that will lead to lasting growth and success.
Celeste Gonzalez leads RooLabs, RicketyRoo's SEO testing division, where she drives innovative strategies and engages with the SEO community. She is passionate about pushing SEO boundaries and sharing insights on both successes and challenges in the industry. Twitter | Linkedin