Whether your company does business across the country, or you’re focused on a specific city or region, local SEO is incredibly important. If you want to rank higher in local searches, accumulating as many local links as possible will go a long way toward helping you reach that goal. Search engines sort of look at links as votes. The more sites that link to yours, the more “votes” you have – and the more relevant your site will be to Google and other engines.
So, how do you go about getting those links? The experts with Site Social SEO are here to help you put a link-building plan together. If you work with us, you’ll be working with a team of professionals who will be passionate about making your site rank higher, helping you increase revenue in the process.
Learn more about how we can help by giving us a call at 407-712-0494 or sending us an email.
Why is Local SEO Important?
Before we get into the details of acquiring local links, it’s important that you have as good an idea as possible of why local SEO is key to your website’s ranking.
You’ve probably performed some sort of local search before. It could have been “plumbers in Kansas City,” “the best pizza in New York City,” “air conditioner repair near me,” or something like that. So, you more than likely already have at least some level of appreciation for why local search is a critical component of any company’s SEO efforts.
The vast majority of local searches come from mobile devices, which only makes sense. How many times have you been out and about when you suddenly had a craving for a certain kind of food, yet you didn’t know where the nearest restaurant serving that dish was located? You pulled out your phone and you found out.
Multiply that by thousands, tens of thousands, or even millions of people if your city is large enough. The exposure you can get by bolstering your local SEO efforts could be amazing.
When other local companies link to your site, that can help those efforts exponentially. Here are some ways you can get them.
Connect with Local Directories
This is one of the quickest, easiest methods for accumulating local external links. Directories are basically listing sites for local companies in a broad range of categories. You just sign up, make a claim for your business, and then provide your “NAP” (name, address, phone number) information. Google My Business is probably the biggest one, but you can also get on Yelp, the Yellow Pages, Apple Maps, and even Tripadvisor if you believe your business could benefit.
But you can also get benefits from getting listed on your city’s Chamber of Commerce site, as well as any business associations that are relevant to your company.
Partner with Local Websites
This is where things start to get a little more involved. Your company probably has relationships with other local businesses. Check the sites of any local distributors, suppliers, contractors, wholesalers, or any other companies you do business with on a regular basis. Go to their sites and look for pages where links to your site would make sense, and then reach out to them to see how you could get them to link to your page.
If your company is doing something you feel is newsworthy, feel free to pitch it to a local newspaper or television station. You might get some coverage, and you’ll more than likely get a link to your site as well.
Create (and Maintain) Social Media Profiles
Social media isn’t going anywhere, whether you like it or not. You need to be part of it. This goes for just about any kind of business imaginable – law firms, plumbers, roofing contractors, etc.
Creating social media profiles is easy. Just make sure you fill out all the information you’re asked for, such as the services you offer, your NAP info, and, of course, your website. Huge social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram will allow you to link to your website.
Engage with Customers on Social Media
It’s not enough to just have a social media presence, however. You need to actually engage with visitors. If you give them information they need, or content they find interesting, they might tell others about you, linking to your website in the process. Don’t be afraid to think out of the box – use humor to grab attention, or get creative in some other way. Just remember to keep it relevant to what your company does.
Create Local Content
You might already have a fantastic blog that does a great job of telling the story of your brand. But if the people who live in your city don’t care, then what good is that content? Try to focus on delivering authoritative content that your local audience can actually use.
Let’s say you own a bike shop in Dallas. You could publish a blog for newcomers showing some great bike trails within a 20-mile radius. People seeing this blog will very likely send the link to others, and help boost your local SEO as a result.
Take Part in Community Events
When you do good, it doesn’t just benefit your community – it also benefits your company. If you own a restaurant, sponsor a local food drive. If you have a pet grooming company, work with a local rescue organization to help increase adoptions. Your partners in these charitable efforts will gladly mention you on their websites and link to your site.
Sponsor Local Scholarships
This is another win-win. Offer a $1,000 scholarship (or whatever you can afford), and that will very likely wind up on a lot of college websites that provide scholarship information to prospective students. Make the scholarship relevant to what you do. A law firm, for instance, could offer scholarships to law students.
Sign up for Local Sponsorships
This is another great way to help your community and gain exposure for your website at the same time. Say a local food bank is holding a golf tournament to raise funds. You could sponsor a hole. The organization organizing the tournament will have a link to your site on their “thanks to our sponsors” page.
Research Your Competition, then do Better
These are just a few ideas to consider, of course. There are tons of other things you can do to get links. Do your competitors continually outrank your site? Don’t hesitate to see why that’s the case. There’s a better-than-zero chance they have a lot more inbound local links than you. Find out where they’re getting those links, and see if you can do the same thing.
Let Site Social SEO Tackle Your Local SEO
The experts with Site Social SEO are ready to help your website rank higher than you might have ever thought possible. We’ll not only help you take advantage of local SEO, but we’ll also show you many, many different tools to help you achieve your goals.
Email us or call 407-712-0494 to learn more.
