Local link building (also called local SEO link building or local backlink building) is one of the most powerful ways to improve visibility for local businesses and service-based companies.
Local link-building holds importance in establishing a business’s online visibility and credibility, especially in local search engine rankings. Local link building is often the foundation of digital marketing for small businesses that want faster local visibility.
In this article, we’ll cover local linking-building basics and share effective strategies to improve your local backlinks.
What is Local Link Building?
In simple terms, local link building is the process of acquiring local backlinks from websites that are geographically relevant to your business, helping you strengthen your authority in local search results.
Local link building is a critical component of any professional SEO service, especially for location-based businesses.
According to a Backlinko study, the first search result in Google’s organic search results gets a click-through rate of 39.8%. Your business needs to rank in your localized business niche so that it gets easily found on Google.
Local links prove that a business is trustworthy in its community. This is particularly important for local stores and service-based businesses that need to show that they’re reliable in their area.
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Effective Local Link Building Strategies for Local SEO Success
When it comes to building local links for your business, it’s important to get involved in your local community. The best links are often formed through strong relationships. Here are a few strategies for building local links:
Get links from other ranking sites
This strategy is called Barnacle SEO. In this strategy, you search a few of your related phrases in Google and get links from the websites that appear in the results.
This is one of the best link building techniques for local businesses because it places your brand where users are already searching.
It’s better to look for directory or aggregator sites as you probably wouldn’t get any links from your competitors. Individuals who seek a business to work with use these websites typically. This means that when you target directory or aggregator sites for local citations, you are more likely to secure valuable mentions without the added concern of directing potential customers to your competitors.
By signing up and submitting your business on these platforms, you can make sure that your business is included in the list of options and can receive direct business benefits.
The purpose of local backlinks is not just rankings but to generate qualified leads that convert into customers.
Social Media
You can get links for local SEO from social media accounts as well. Adding links to your website from various social media platforms will help boost your backlink profile.
You can create and optimize profiles on these platforms:
- Google My Business
- Apple Maps
This is the simplest and quickest way to improve your backlink profile as you can set it up yourself.
Relevant Round-ups and Resource Pages
Locally-focused sites frequently feature round-ups that showcase the top businesses in town. These round-ups usually focus on a specific industry, interest, or niche. You can also find helpful links on local resource pages.
For example, a coffee shop’s page may elaborate on the various types of coffee, how to brew them, and what distinguishes high-quality beans.
It may also link to other businesses that complement the coffee experience, such as suppliers of unique cups, coffee machines, or accessories. Additionally, the page could showcase customer feedback and feature a blog about the broader coffee culture, fostering a well-rounded exploration of related topics.
To have your website listed on platforms similar to yours, reach out to the website administrators. Contact them and request inclusion in their upcoming lists. Include a link to your website and highlight the value you can offer to their readers.
Guest Posts
Guest posting is a content marketing strategy in which a writer creates and publishes an article on another website or blog that isn’t their own.
Many local niche websites offer the chance to guest post. So, you can find guest posting opportunities there.
You can get a link back to your site in exchange for your free article. Just look for a website that has a “submit a guest post” category on their home page.
Creating a Local Blog on Your Website
It is crucial to create a blog on local topics. This will help you get more links for your local SEO, and here’s how.
By blogging, you can demonstrate your skills and knowledge. This will allow your customers to trust you more and prefer your brand. Blog posts are also a great way to attract buyers looking for information in the early stages of buying.
Plus, you can easily share your blog content on social media as it will increase your brand awareness and traffic.
So, to acquire more local links for your blog posts, focus on creating high-quality content.
High-quality backlinks work best when paired with optimized local landing pages designed to convert nearby searches.
Quality content and optimized pages are essential for targeted strategies like submitting to link roundups, promoting your content on social media, and networking with fellow businesses and bloggers.
By adopting this multifaceted approach, you can establish your presence as a local authority in your niche.
Find Un-linked Brand Mentions and Request Links
One of the ways for you to get local links from authoritative websites is to find unlinked brand mentions. This usually occurs when other websites speak about your business or individuals at your business but do not give a backlink to your website.
This is a highly effective method for building backlinks for local service businesses that already have some brand visibility.
If you belong to a niche such as cryptocurrency or if there is already an active community around your company and/or people, you are more likely to succeed with this approach. This tactic works best when the niche you are in receives news coverage.
Employment and Internship Posts
You can obtain backlinks by publishing an employment opportunity on a regional online job board. Include a link back to your website in the job listing.
Also, you can earn local backlinks by advertising internship opportunities on various educational and institutional sites.
Organize Special Events and Promotions to Obtain PR Links
Organizing special events or campaigns can boost your local visibility, and prominence, and get more links for local SEO. You can choose from various options, such as:
- Sponsoring a local sports team
- Hosting a charity fundraiser
- Running a workshop
- Holding a contest
- Offering a free product demo or seasonal discounts
The best option for you depends on your business model.
After you decide on an event or campaign, you need to spread the word about it.
Find out which local news outlets are popular among your target audience, such as local papers, radio stations, Facebook groups, etc.
Most people use social media daily, so online platforms are a good option. Write a brief press release that includes the main events, details, and a link to your website. Also, use keywords that are relevant to your niche.
Buy Domains in Your Niche
Purchasing unused or expired domains within your niche can help in your local link-building for SEO strategy. About 70% of domains don’t get renewed following the first year, making it a golden opportunity to buy relevant domain names for your business.
By gaining once-active domains, you gain access to a pre-existing backlink profile. These domains may have links from reputable websites, you can leverage these links to enhance your website’s authority.
You can leverage acquired domains by redirecting them to relevant pages on your current website. This preserves their backlinks and enhances your site’s authority.
In addition to redirecting acquired domains, you can also update and repurpose their valuable content to incorporate into your current website. This strategy helps maintain the existing backlinks and enhances the content’s authority, which in turn boosts your website’s overall authority in your niche.
You can secure new local backlinks. Expand your network by outreach and relationship building.
Local Business Partnerships
You can partner with different local businesses to gain links from their website. Ensure that they are not your competitors and are relevant to your industry.
For instance, as a local florist, you can boost your search engine ranking by exchanging backlinks with other businesses such as wedding planners, photographers, and venues. Reach out to them to introduce your business and explain how exchanging backlinks can benefit both parties.
By partnering with other local businesses, you can increase your online visibility, attract more customers, and boost local link building efforts.
Google Business Profile (GBP) Signals
Linking to your Google Business profile from your website and other online platforms is a good practice. It provides additional signals to search engines about your business’s location and relevance.
When combined with proper Google Business Profile optimization, your local SEO backlinks become significantly more powerful for map pack rankings.
Additionally, having a well-optimized and accurate Google Business Profile with consistent information across the web can positively influence local search rankings.
Internal Links
You can use internal linking for local link building. It does not count as a backlink but does count as a local link.
Internal linking also helps Google to understand your website’s structure. With internal linking, you also ensure Google finds and ranks your relevant content. This will help in ranking for local search results.
Before building more links, make sure your foundation is right
Start with a Free 3-Point Revenue Opportunity Audit.
How to Get Local Backlinks Consistently
If you’re wondering how to get local backlinks at scale, start with repeatable systems:
- Build partnerships with local businesses
- List in niche and city directories
- Pitch guest posts to local blogs
- Sponsor community events
- Monitor unlinked brand mentions
- Analyze competitor backlinks
These are some of the most reliable local link building tips that work across industries.
Tools for Local Link Building
Using the right tools for local link building can speed up discovery and tracking:
Ahrefs / SEMrush
These tools help you analyze your competitors’ backlink profiles so you can see exactly where their local backlinks are coming from. This makes it easier to identify local websites, blogs, directories, and news portals that are already linking to similar businesses and target them for your own link-building efforts.
Tools like Ahrefs help you analyze competitor backlinks and uncover local link opportunities.
BrightLocal
BrightLocal is built specifically for local SEO. It helps you audit your local citations, track local rankings, and find opportunities to build location-based backlinks. It’s especially useful for improving Google Maps visibility and NAP consistency.
Whitespark
Whitespark is excellent for discovering niche local link opportunities. It helps you find industry-specific directories, local blogs, chambers of commerce, and community websites that are perfect for earning high-quality local backlinks.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts notifies you whenever your brand name is mentioned online. This makes it easy to find unlinked brand mentions and request a backlink, which is one of the fastest ways to build high-quality local links.
Google Search
Simple but powerful. By using search operators like:
“city name” + “business directory” or “city name” + “guest post”, you can uncover hundreds of local backlink opportunities manually that make your link profile more natural.
BrightLocal Citation Builder / Manual Directories
These help you submit your business to high-quality local and niche directories. Directories are still an important foundation for local SEO backlinks when done correctly.
Localo
Localo helps optimize and monitor your Google Business Profile and strengthens your overall local SEO signals. When combined with local link building, it increases your chances of ranking higher in the Map Pack.
Hunter.io / Email Finder Tools
These tools help you find contact emails of local bloggers, business owners, and editors so you can perform outreach for guest posts, partnerships, and unlinked brand mentions.
Google Sheets or CRM
Not a “tool” in the SEO sense, but essential for tracking:
- Who you contacted
- Follow-up status
- Live links acquired
- Link quality
This keeps your local link-building campaigns organized and scalable.
Using the right tools for local link building doesn’t replace strategy, but it makes execution faster, more organized, and far more effective. Combined with consistent outreach and quality content, these tools help you build a sustainable local backlink profile.
Difference Between Local Backlinks and Local Citations
Before getting into local backlinks, it is crucial to understand the difference between local citations and local backlinks.
Local Backlinks
Getting a link from a different website to yours is called a backlink. Usually, backlinks are given from forums, blogs, and other areas on the internet.
Local link building means building links to a business website that are relevant to the local area. This will help bring organic traffic to your business. Also, It will enhance both the local search ranking and map packs of your website.
From a technical perspective, acquiring local backlinks is crucial for enhancing a website’s visibility. Search engines interpret local backlinks as signals of local relevance and authority, positively impacting the website’s search engine ranking.
Establishing these connections through various platforms strengthens the association with the local landscape, making it more likely for your website to appear in search results when users seek local products or services.
Local Citation
A local citation refers to any occurrence where your business name is mentioned online. It can include your business’s NAP data and information like customer reviews, key offerings, photographs, and so on.
By claiming existing citations or creating new ones, Google will recognize your business as a crucial part of the community.
Online directories often display local citations, which typically include a backlink to your website. These citations not only improve your online presence but also significantly contribute to local search engine rankings, making it easier for individuals to discover and engage with local businesses.
When search algorithms like Google, identify consistent and accurate information about your business across various online platforms, it boosts the credibility and relevance of your business in the local context.
This consistency acts as a positive signal, contributing to higher local search rankings. It increases the likelihood of your business appearing prominently in local search results.
This is why many digital marketing experts believe that citations are essential for local SEO rankings.
How to Gain Backlinks from Local Directories?
Locating Directories Based on Location
Start by using a search engine like Google. Look up your city, state, or service area with the phrase “business directory.”
Finding Directories Based on Industry
Here, instead of focusing on location, concentrate on industry-specific directories.
Use search terms like “restaurant business directory,” “photography business directory,” or “directories for fitness services.”
Explore the initial search results containing NAP information. You can refine your search results by location on industry-specific directories.
5 Factors to Consider When You Start Local Link Building
Undertaking a local link-building journey can be a strategic move for businesses aiming to boost their online presence within a specific geographic area.
To effectively start local link-building for your business website, you should consider these five crucial factors of digital marketing:
Avoid Using Proxy Domain Metrics
This can be Trust Flow, Domain Authority, and so on. These scales don’t necessarily reflect the value, relevance, and potential of the local links.
Don’t Overlook NoFollow Links
Even though some websites have NoFollow policies, they can still provide valuable hints to Google for crawling and indexing your content. Dismissing them altogether is an outdated practice.
Don’t Worry Too Much About the Anchor Text
While earning a few keyword-rich anchors can help, it’s easy to abuse and can make a pattern that harms your website’s reputation. When looking for relevance in your search, it’s crucial to have relevant keywords surrounding your link.
Identify Link Opportunities
Several local sites have various problems you can use for local link building (i.e., linking to obsolete content, broken links, etc). Crawlers can make it easier to find the path of least resistance for earning a link, such as by linking to pages identical to yours.
Use Your Competitors
Find sites linking to your competitions but not to you. The majority of links you discover may not contribute immensely. Investing time and resources in building these links wouldn’t help you much.
Already building local links but not seeing results?
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Benefits of a Local Link Building Strategy
Link building is crucial for local SEO. It helps your site gain credibility and authority in the local community. Trustworthy websites linking to your local business site is seen as a sign of approval by search engines, which improves your local search rankings.
Here are some benefits of using local link building:
Improves Local Traffic Both Online and Offline
By building local links, you can attract people to your website from nearby areas. This increases the chances of turning online visitors into customers. Also, it encourages more people to come to your physical location, which helps to grow your local customer base.
This strategy is especially effective for local SEO for clinics, where trust and proximity are ranking factors.
Boost in Website Metrics
When you build links with local businesses, it helps increase the number of people who click on your website, stay on it longer, and reduce the number of people who leave quickly. This makes your website more interesting and helpful to users, which is good for your website’s overall performance.
Increases Domain Authority and Trustworthiness
Getting backlinks from reputable local sources can help improve your website’s domain authority, making it a trusted resource in the local community. This credibility can impact positively on your overall search rankings, as search engines value trustworthy sources.
Improvement in Sales and Conversions
Using local link-building can help your business become more visible and trustworthy to potential customers. This increases local traffic, resulting in higher sales and conversion rates. By establishing your business as a reliable local entity, you can build trust and credibility among your audience.
Increases Social Media Followers
When you build links locally, it can help your business become more visible on social media. This can bring in more followers who are interested in your brand and what you have to offer.
As your business gains recognition in the local community, your social media audience can become more engaged with your brand and content.
You can build meaningful relationships and expand your network when you reach out to customers and businesses.
One key motivation for local link building is visibility, making it easier for your audience to find and engage with you.
Conclusion
Local link-building is a crucial growth strategy that you cannot ignore. It helps attract a targeted audience to physical stores while strengthening online traffic.
When you start local link building keep this phrase in mind “Patience is key”. Link-building strategies don’t give results overnight, but it will in the long-term.
Remember, local backlinks present immense value for SEO and conversion rates. As businesses aim for Google Maps prominence and top search rankings, you need to prioritize local link building as an ongoing strategy.
Many businesses eventually choose to work with a local link building company or local SEO link building service when they want scalable results without manual outreach.
If you’re looking for a performance-driven digital marketing agency in India that understands how to convert local SEO into consistent revenue, Egara Digital is here to help.
At Egara Digital, we specialize in enhancing your website’s local search optimization and creating excellent local backlinks. We use effective strategies and tools to boost your website’s visibility, traffic and conversions from local customers.
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