What is a Local Link and Where Can I Find More Local Link Opportunities

Link building is an important component of any local SEO strategy, and it can help improve your rankings whether you're a brick-and-mortar store or a service area business.

Finding high-quality and relevant links for local SEO will be one of your most difficult challenges.

So, in this blog, you'll find a variety of useful tips to assist you in identifying prospects, putting tools to work for you, and achieving greater success in your link building outreach tactics.

What is a Local Link?

When we think about link building, the traditional thought process is that we want highly authoritative domains to link back to our websites - and as many of them as possible.

Earning backlinks for smaller organizations, on the other hand, can be extremely difficult, especially if no one has heard of you.

If you've been tasked with creating links for a local brick-and-mortar store or service area business, it's critical that you understand the importance of the links.

Local links are created with the intention of demonstrating that others in the local area trust or endorse your business.

Local SEO experts typically focus on:

• Correcting NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) data.
• Creating a list of citations.
• The creation of hyperlocal content.
• Creating links from websites in the surrounding area.

All of these tasks are completed to establish a presence in the SERPs for local terms in the local map pack with Google Business Profiles, as well as the organic search results for localized keywords.

When attempting to obtain local links, try to concentrate on the following:

• Backlinking to your location page or the most relevant page to the backlink.
• Assuring that the linked page contains a call to action.

Websites in your specific geographic area may not command a highly authoritative site. They might be small themselves.

For localized sites, avoid using link metrics such as DA.

Even if a website has a low DA, obtaining a link from them may be more valuable than obtaining a link from Forbes, Huffington Post, or The New York Times due to their influence in and relevance to your small market.

While big links from highly authoritative sites are always great, it's important to understand the limitations that local businesses face - and, more often than not, a lack of budget to produce the type of content that these big publishers are looking for.

Setting big goals is great, but we also need to understand the constraints we're working with.

A local business will only conduct business within the confines of the local space it occupies, so doing business in San Francisco and receiving traffic from New York may prove to be ineffective in the long run.

Begin with Building Citations.

Citation building, finding general and niche directories, and correcting the information you currently have will help you get started.

Citations are useful because they allow you to place a link on some fairly decent websites where your key business information may be seen by some searchers if the query has a low enough level of competition.

Services to help you to tackle citation building include:

• Yext
• Moz Local
• Brightlocal
• Whitespark

These are all excellent platforms for citation creation and auditing that most SEO experts used.

When you first start using one of these tools, keep an eye out for the niche directories in their database. Niche directories will be more influential than general directories.

Where Are the Opportunities? You Can Find Them Anywhere!

There is a widespread belief that local link building is not beneficial, is not natural, and (in some cases) appears to be impossible.

However, those doing local SEO may need to be more creative than those doing SEO for a large brand.

Local link opportunities may not be as diverse as national or global link opportunities. You're battling to rank for hyperlocal keywords with low search volume, and you'll be working with low-authority websites, to begin with.

If you're doing SEO for a local area, it's critical to understand the boundaries of that area and make it your new home.

Everything you do to promote this business exists within the parameters you specify.

Understanding your limitations will allow you to think more creatively and effectively in that space, resulting in the most value for the business website you're working on.

Start Looking for Prospects With A Link Tool

Ahrefs and Majestic have been the gold standard for link research for as long as we can remember.

It is worth noting, however, that Semrush has come a long way in terms of database upgrades and now claims to have the largest backlink database. Using multiple tools is sometimes a good idea!

To begin building your prospect list, you must first understand where the company stands within its industry and how competitive it will be to rank in the future.

Begin with the terms you believe will add the most value to your company. Then, look at which companies are currently ranking on the first page of the SERPs.

Gather the list of websites and see what links they have previously acquired.

Compare their mutual links and the various links they have acquired.

Because these are direct competitors, the majority of the links will be about the specific business you're working on.

Compare the lists you compiled with the link profile of the site you're currently working on to see where you fall short.

If you can acquire all of the links that the competition has acquired, you will be able to compete on a more level playing field in terms of links.

How to Find More Linking Opportunities

If you've surpassed your assumed competition for your search space in terms of links, the natural next step for you is to obtain more links than your competition.

Investigate other local businesses to see where they have received press coverage.

This will assist you in understanding how other companies outside of our industry have built links in the same local space.

Looking at popular businesses in general within our local space, we can begin to find some low-hanging fruit of opportunity to build links and find local writers, local blogs, and sites in general that want to (or have previously supported) local businesses.

Another strategy I've used is to look for businesses with a lot of traction and run their website through a link analysis tool.

Review sites like Yelp can help you find a high-traffic business.

Go to Yelp and search for the most reviewed businesses in your city.

These companies may have nothing to do with your value proposition, but they can provide a wealth of information on local promotional opportunities for your site.

To get a variety of potential links, use this method with businesses that have received the most reviews and businesses in a few different verticals.

While browsing these lists, you may come across links that are completely unrelated or unavailable. But that's fine.

The goal of this exercise is to find the few diamonds in the rough and connect with those in the local area who have some clout when possible.

Finishing Up

There are numerous ways for businesses to attract links on this list of local SEO link building tactics. However, leaving it to the SEO expert is the simplest way to build links.

BizzDesign has a proven track record of using white-hat link building tactics to generate quality links for forward-thinking businesses.

You get the high-authority links you need to grow your local business without having to do it yourself.