20 Useful Local Link Building Tactics that Work for All Businesses

In today’s online world, getting local links is important for businesses that want to improve their visibility and reach customers nearby. Instead of trying to get links from well-known, big websites like in traditional link building, local link building targets websites and people that are focused on the community, like local directories and influencers.

These strategies help make your website more trusted and also improve how it shows up in local searches. If you run a small store, offer a service, or have an online business, building relationships with local groups, sponsoring events, and getting involved in the community can help you get strong links to your website. 

In this post, we will look at various local link building tactics. These strategies will help you become more visible in your community and show up better in search engine results and thus help you reach customers nearby.

What is Local Link Building?

Local link building is getting links from nearby businesses to show search engines that your business is in that area. This helps your business appear higher in local search results.

For example, if I’m a water purifier company and receive many links from businesses in Andover, Google will know that your water purifier business is located in Andover, Hampshire, England. This will make my website appear when someone looks for a “water purifier in Hampshire” or any similar local search.

Local SEO service providers prioritize building high-quality backlinks for local businesses, as these links are crucial for improving local search visibility. Quality backlinks not only boost credibility but also play a key role in driving targeted, local traffic.

How Many Local Links are Needed to Get a Ranking?

There isn’t a specific number of local links necessary to rank well. Each keyword is unique. Some will need hundreds of links, while others might not need any links. The easiest way to figure out how many local links you need is to look at what is already showing up on Google.

Just use a tool like Semrush to check how many links the best results have. Find the average number of links, and that’s all you need to do. There are lots of other things to think about, but this gives an idea of how many local links you should create.

Also Read: New Study Reveals Websites Need 1000+ Backlinks to Succeed 

What Links do Local Businesses Need?

Local Citations

These are the online mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP). They usually come from local business lists, news websites, online discussion sites, social media pages, and similar places.

Most citation links won’t help your website rank higher because they are “no-follow. ” However, they are still very important for local SEO. They help Google confirm that your business is real and in the right location. This can help you show up higher on local maps.

Do Follow Backlinks

These are the normal backlinks you get from guest posts and edits in specific topics. They give Google 3 important signals:

• Relevance: Backlinks help Google know what the page is about. For example, if you are an electrician in your area and other websites link to your page about electrical work, Google believes that your website is probably also about electrical work. Backlinks can also help show where something is located. For example, if you receive many links from magazines in Canberra, it’s likely that your business is located in Canberra.

• Power: This is what we often call “link juice”. In simple words, the more backlinks your page has, the stronger it becomes, and the higher it will rank. Not all backlinks are the same, and some links are more powerful than others. You can see how strong a link is by looking at the website’s domain rating (DR) and the page rating (UR). Generally, higher numbers mean better quality.

• Trust: Google sees backlinks as a sign of approval. If someone adds a link to your page, it means they think your content is good, and they are letting Google know that. Links from well-known sites or big names in your field are very valuable. This is because Google trusts them more.

Also Read: Crafting a Winning Natural Links Profile 

Local Link Building Tactics

1. Add Your Business to Aggregator Sites

This is how you will get mentions of your business in local listings. First, add your website to the main data collection sites.

• Google Business Profile
• Data Axle
• Foursquare
• Neustar Localeze
• YellowPages
• Bing Places
• Yelp
• Apple Business Connect
• Social Media

Next, sign up for online directories. For example, if you’re an AC mechanic, you can just look up “best ac mechanic directories” on Google and sign up for the best ones. Lastly, you should add your business to local listings.

For example, if you have a company in Bexhill, look for “best business directories in Bexhill” and add your business to those lists.

2. Add Your Business to Council and Chamber of Commerce Site

The best link you can make for your business is getting linked from your local Chamber of Commerce website. First of all, these websites are very trusted, so getting a link from them would be very strong. Second, they check each application manually, and Google is aware of this.

This means that other websites linking to you show Google that your business is trustworthy and real. Getting a link from your city’s Chamber of Commerce site shows strong local ties. This helps search engines link your website to that area more easily.

3. Analyze Your Competitors

Half of local link building is finding potential sites to connect with. You can spend many hours looking for good links to improve your website. Or, you can let your competitors do it for you. You can use a tool like Ahrefs to see all the backlinks that your competitors have.

Check for trends in how they reach out, like the kinds of websites they are linked to, whether they are local news sites, blogs, or directories. Also, check their content plans to find out what topics connect with local people.

By knowing where your competitors are doing well, you can find new chances to get links and improve your own plans to connect with the local community, which will help increase your online presence.

4. Contact Local News Outlets

Local newspapers, radio stations, TV channels, and blogs are always looking for interesting stories. So why not turn your business into one of those success stories?

Being mentioned in local magazines or websites helps you get a valuable link and makes more people notice your brand.

People believe in their local news, and getting mentioned in it can quickly make your business look trustworthy in the community. The key to this local link-building method is to share an interesting story. That’s why we like to do data studies to get those links.

For example, let’s say you want to help a furniture store in Okinawa, Kyushu get noticed in local magazines and newspapers. I’ll begin by coming up with interesting ideas that could grab people’s attention in the news. For example, aesthetics in Okinawa. After that, you will begin collecting some information like:

• The percentage of people with separate room for kids
• What brand of furniture do they already own?
• How often do they replace their furniture?
• What is the average cost of hall decoration?

After that, you will gather all your information into one news release with a title like: “Complete Furniture Renovation for Your Hall and Kids Bedroom”. Now, that’s an interesting story. Finally, you will start sharing the work.

You will post it on social media, reach out to news reporters and media companies, and share it with blogs related to your topic. You might be wondering, how will I gather the information? Well, that’s the difficult part.

In our example, the study is quite complicated and would need a lot of time and resources to complete. But you can make a much easier one and still get good results.

For example, you could write an article called “Furniture Renovation Costs 25% More Than the Last Decade”. To do this, you just need to look at the prices for furniture over the past decade.

Even if your business doesn’t have the information you need, you can still find people to take your survey on Reddit, Facebook groups, local forums, and other places.

The easiest way to find people for surveys is by using email lists. Get in touch with magazines or large local websites in your area and pay to advertise in their newsletter. Also, give something free to participants to make them more interested.

5. Be a Host or Talk at a Local Event

Local events have two main benefits: they build your reputation in the community and can help you get valuable links to your website. Speaking at events lets you show what you know and is also a great way to meet new people. Here are some easy ways to get backlinks from local events:

• Local Listings: Local government websites, community centers, and event calendars usually share local events and also provide links to the people or groups running them.

• Facebook: Local Facebook groups are helpful for discovering and sharing events. Join these groups and find out where you belong.

• Guest Speaker: Business expos and seminars are great places for opportunities. These events need guest speakers for important talks, and they also advertise them a lot on the internet. If you talk at these events, you usually get a special section about you on the event’s website, which often includes a link to your own website.

6. Support a Local Group

Local groups often have pages that show their sponsors and link to the websites of these important supporters. This is a great opportunity for local SEO, especially for non-profit groups, because all donations can be deducted for taxes.

You’re supporting your local community and getting links to your website at the same time.

That’s solving two problems with one payment. You might be wondering how to find sponsorship chances in your area. You can begin by doing a basic search, like:

• inurl:donations “city”
• intext:donations “city”
• intitle:donations “city”

These searches will show you pages in your city that have a part for sponsors. After that, you can contact groups, clubs, or sports teams in your city to find out if they can give you a link on their website in exchange for sponsorship.

7. Team Up with Nearby Businesses

Local link building is about more than just getting your link on websites. It’s about making connections and finding ways to help each other grow with other local businesses. Here are some teamwork ideas that can help your business and give you backlinks:

• Mutual Promotion Agreement: Find businesses that go well with yours but aren’t in the same market. For example, a coffee shop might work together with a local bookstore. They could have special offers together: like a free coffee when you buy a book or a discount at the bookstore if you show a coffee shop receipt.

• Spotlight Features: Create a part of your website to showcase your local partners. Tell their story, explain what they sell or offer, and why it’s important to the community. Ask them to feature you on their website too. This builds trust with your customers and also gets links back to your site.

• Bundle Up Products: Provide special deals that include products or services from both companies. This helps increase sales and can also result in shared marketing efforts, news announcements, or posts on both websites.

• Joint Events: Work together to organize events that are good for the audiences of both businesses. This can include workshops and local events.

• Shared Loyalty Programs: Create loyalty cards or discount coupons that work at both stores.

8. Submit Your Entry for Local Awards

Many local news groups have award categories that highlight the top local businesses.

When you apply for awards in your field, you’re not just looking for recognition; you’re also hoping to get a valuable backlink and media attention that come with winning. To find these chances to win awards, search:

• inurl:awards “city”
• intext:awards “city”
• intitle:awards “city”

Remember, it’s not just about having the link, it’s about the trust and reputation that come from being an award-winning business in your area. You can also give awards. The important thing is to stay relevant. For example, if you are an electrician in your area, you can give an award to the best hardware store in town.

9. Provide Scholarships

Local colleges and universities are always looking for ways to help their students pay for school. Giving a small scholarship can really help a student change their life.

Also, schools and colleges have strong trust online, and they usually have special pages for scholarships where they list different options. Here’s how to create scholarship links:

• Create a Scholarship: You need to set up a scholarship that connects to your business. For instance, if you are in the construction business, you can start a scholarship for students studying to be civil engineers.

• Make a Scholarship Page: Share information about the scholarship, why it exists, who can apply, how much money it offers, and other important details.

• Get in Touch: Contact nearby schools or colleges and tell them about the opportunity you have.

10. Add Your Website on Alumni Pages

Have you ever remembered your old school or college? Many schools have lists of their former students on their websites. These lists often highlight the success stories or local businesses run by these former students. Just contact your old school, tell them about your business, and get a good local link.

11. Work with Local Influencers

Influencers and local bloggers may not have many followers, but they can greatly help your business reputation. Also, many of them have their own blogs, which means you get another good link to your website.

Keep in mind that being relevant is essential. Some industries have a tougher time finding influencers, but that’s okay. It’s just one more tool you can use to build links for your website.

12. Use Quality Pictures

Using quality pictures is a great way to get local links and improve your online visibility. Good-quality images can really help get more attention on your website and social media, making it easier for people to share your content.

When you make eye-catching content, like infographics, photos from events, or pictures of local landmarks, it makes it more likely that local websites and bloggers will link to your site. Share these pictures with local news stations or community websites to help them with their stories.

Also, getting involved in local events and taking great photos can help you get noticed by event organizers and local news. This method improves your links and also shows that your brand is active in the community. Here’s how to use pictures to create local links:

• Perform keyword research: Begin by discovering what images people are looking for.

• Create the pictures: You don’t need a professional photographer, but make sure the pictures look nice.

• Optimize the pictures: Add your keywords to the image’s alt text and file name so they show up better in search results. For example, instead of using a name like “IMG1. jpg,” use a clearer name like “picturename. jpg”.

• Add a soft watermark: Think about putting a soft watermark with your brand or website name on your content. It makes sure that if someone uses it without your consent, people can find out it belongs to you.

• Share your photos on free websites: Websites like Freepik, Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and others let you upload your photos for free. Sign up and start sharing your photos.

• Use Reverse Image Search to monitor: Check where your images are used online by using Google’s reverse image search. If someone uses your picture without mentioning you, ask them to link to your website.

13. Create Content that People want to Share

The best way to get links to your site is to make useful content that people will want to link to on their own. But to tell the truth, that’s really tough. Making this kind of content takes a lot of effort, and the results can be underwhelming.

As more website owners realize how important backlinks are, it’s become tougher to get them to link to you for free, even if you have a great resource. That’s why most link builders like to use other methods, such as guest posting.

You can still make content that gets links with just a little work, by focusing on local words.

Local keywords are much simpler to rank for, and there’s a good reason for that. The number of searches is very low.

Being at the top of Google has some benefits, like getting more backlinks. When writers look for information on a topic, they often use the first results that come up on Google. This is especially true if you have a statistics page or a local guide that is really useful.

If you run a gym in Hawaii, you can create a guide on the best fast food places in Hawaii that offer high-protein meals. This method will not only bring in really relevant visitors who might buy from you, but it will also help you get backlinks naturally.

14. Get in Touch with Travel Websites and Local Tourist Board

This way is very effective if you work in entertainment or travel. Travel sites and tourist boards often suggest local places to eat, rest, and have fun, like restaurants, bars, hotels, and bowling alleys.

These are some activities to enjoy in the city. This can give you a lot of visitors. Also, that valuable link. If you run a local business that visitors might like, be sure to take advantage of it. The tourist board will also be very interested to help you since it helps improve tourism.

15. Leverage HARO

Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a service that links reporters with people who are experts in the industry. Journalists ask questions to get expert opinions for their stories, and you can share your knowledge in response.

It’s a good situation for everyone: journalists gain useful information, and you have the opportunity to be mentioned in their articles, which includes a link to your website. Using HARO seems easy, but there are skillful ways to use it well, especially for building local links. Here are some easy steps to get backlinks from HARO:

• React Fast: Local reporters usually have very short deadlines. When you see a question that matters, reply quickly. The first person to act gets the link.

• Make Your Personal Pitch: Talk about something specific from your past work or how your knowledge of the area can make their story better.

• Follow Up: If you’ve sent a message and haven’t got a reply, a polite reminder can be very helpful. But keep in mind, journalists are very busy people. Be calm and kind.

• Look for Alternatives: HARO is great, but don’t rely on just one thing. Websites like Featured, Qwoted, and SourceBottle are good for talking to local reporters.

• Think Long-Term: Making connections with local reporters can create more chances for you in the future. Don’t be sad if you don’t get a link right away.

16. Find Unlinked Brand Mentions

Have you seen your local business name online, but it doesn’t link to your website? That’s a chance just waiting to be used. You can find brand mentions that are not linked by using this search operator:

Intext: (Business Name) – (Business Website) – twitter.com – pinterest.com – facebook.com – youtube.com

17. Do Guest Blogging

Just sending cold emails to websites, saying you have “great guest posts” doesn’t work anymore. You need to be different by giving them something valuable. Here’s a simple way to give something helpful:

• Start by researching: Look for blogs or websites in your area that have good backlinks.

• Find content gaps: Use tools like Ahrefs or other similar ones to see what keywords these websites are not focusing on but could use to improve.

• Make a special proposal: Contact them and point out the missing information. Explain to them how much engagement they’re losing by not focusing on these specific keywords.

• Close the deal: Suggest writing something for them that addresses these gaps. Make sure to emphasize that it will be customized for their local audience, which will lead to better engagement.

18. Think About an Acquisition

There are many blogs and old website names that you can buy for a good price. Have you ever thought about getting one? Buying and sending traffic from other domains to your website to boost its search engine ranking still works, but there’s a catch.

It needs to be related. Don’t buy a food blog if you own a hardware store in the city. The more related the blog is to the topic, the more it helps with local SEO and brings in more visitors from search engines.

19. Provide Testimonials

Businesses like to show positive reviews from their happy customers on their websites. It gives them proof that helps turn visitors into paying customers. When you give testimonials, you usually get a link to your website. This is a great chance to build links for your local SEO.

Make a list of all the businesses you work with, the tools you use, or your favorite restaurants. Then, contact them and offer to give a testimonial. Don’t stick to just one thing. Local art shows, workshops, or community events can also be good places to get testimonials.

20. Do Internal Link Building

You’ve been putting in a lot of effort to get good backlinks, but have you thought about the links that you already have access to? We are talking about links within the same website.

Internal links are important for sharing link value between pages on a website.

When a page has many links pointing to it from other pages on the same site, it’s like saying to search engines that this content is important. Internal links can also help make your content more relevant to certain topics and locations.

Also Read: 7 Best Internal Linking Plugins for WordPress Websites

Challenges You Might Face While Building Local Links

Less Local Resources

One big problem in building local links is that there aren’t many good local websites to focus on. Compared to big cities that have many different online groups, smaller towns might have fewer trustworthy local blogs, news sites, and directories.

This limitation can make it hard to find good links that improve your SEO. So, businesses usually have to spend more time looking into and building relationships with local groups or important people.

Also, you might need to be creative to find specific markets or local websites that want to work together. So, it’s helpful to use current relationships, take part in community events, and create partnerships with local organizations to create more chances to connect with others.

Competing with Bigger Brands

In many local markets, bigger businesses mostly control the online space, which makes it hard for new businesses to compete for local attention. These well-known brands usually have good connections and a long history of interacting with the community, which helps them do better in local SEO.

Smaller or new businesses need to plan carefully to succeed in a tough market. It’s important to know what makes your business special and to focus on sharing how your business helps the community.

Connecting with local groups, supporting events, or making special local content can help everyone compete better and open up chances to get important backlinks.

Low Reply Rates for Outreach

Another common problem in local link building is that many people do not reply to outreach efforts. When you contact local websites, bloggers, or businesses to get links, many people might not reply or care.

This can be frustrating if you had spent time creating special messages. The secret to getting past this challenge is to keep trying and improve how you do things. Think about checking in again after your first message, because many people might miss it.

Also, try to make real connections with people instead of just looking for links. Interacting with their posts on social media or going to local events can make them more likely to get a good response, which can help create successful links.

Quality and Quantity Percentage

It’s tough for many people to find the right mix of good quality and quantity when building local links. It might be easy to go after a lot of low-quality links, but doing this can hurt your website’s SEO over time.

Search engines like important and related links, so it’s better to have a few good backlinks than many low-quality ones. This means you need a smarter plan, taking time and work to find trustworthy local places that match your business.

It’s important to carefully check potential link partners to make sure they have a good reputation and a real local connection. Making connections and providing useful content or working together with others can create good chances for getting quality links, which will improve your local SEO.

Staying Updated with Local SEO Trends

Local SEO is always changing, which makes it hard for businesses to build local links. Changes in algorithms, new best practices, and changing customer habits mean we need to stay alert and adjust all the time.

Being update with the latest trends in local SEO is important for making your link-building efforts more successful. This could mean reading blogs about the industry, attending online seminars, or joining local SEO groups.

Also, getting used to new technologies like voice search and mobile optimization can change how and where you create local links. By staying active and adaptable, businesses can make sure their local link-building efforts match current trends, which will improve their online presence.

To Conclude

Building local links is an important part of a successful local SEO plan. By getting involved with the community, working together with others, and using local resources, businesses can build important links that improve their online reputation and also make their connections in the community stronger.

Don’t forget to look for chances to sponsor local events, work with nearby businesses, and support local causes or charities. These actions help more people find you and build good relationships and trust with local customers.

Focusing on building local connections will help your business grow and succeed in a tough online market. Make the most of your local relationships, and see your online visibility grow as you bring in more customers from your neighborhood.

FAQs