When you’re marketing a local business it’s easy to put up billboards and other offline marketing strategies to drive traffic. But now that we have transitioned into the digital era it’s important you understand why social links are needed in 2020 and beyond.
Marketing your local business online is what successful and thriving local businesses are doing. Having a good SEO strategy is great for business. This is no surprise with how many people shop online. But what many small and medium business owners fail to realize is how much foot traffic can be obtained by building local links.
In this article, we are going to walk through the benefits of local links. And why link building for a local business is important. It’s a piece of the marketing puzzle often left out. Portside Marketing wants to make sure we offer you the best value. We want to continue to show you ways to grow your business in this ever-changing digital world we live in.
So let’s get started.
What Are Local Links?
Local links are a form of building backlinks to your website. This makes connections with people locally to make your business more noticeable. What are backlinks? These are links that other websites create that connect to your business online. They show the relevancy of what your website offers or speaks about. And creates a connection from the referring website to your website.
It tells the visitors of the referring site, that your business is trustworthy and holds value in that business space. The higher the domain authority of the site linking to your business website, the more valuable the link (There is a caveat to this, more on that later).
Local Links on the other hand are a bit different. They are specifically built with the intention to build relevancy towards your business’s location. And to build awareness of your business. Again, this is something local businesses are not usually aware of when understanding how their website can drive traffic.
Why Are Local Links Important?
When customers or prospects are going through the start of the buying journey, they begin doing research online for a product or service. The potential customer is doing there best to discover answers, to frequently asked questions, trying to find as much data they can on what they are interested in.
These local links are important because the more your business pops up in the resources they are using to gauge who they can trust the better. The more insights, opinions, online reviews, and favorable education on the subject or product the customer finds that points in the direction of your business. The more they become aware your brand can be trusted.
When you are earning backlinks to your site and other web pages from the correct sources it makes lead generation effortless.
Knowing what links you need and how to include this as part of your marketing strategy is what we do at Portside Marketing. Our SEO strategies are tailored to your business, and we maximize local link building as part of that strategy for your business.
This is just one of the reasons why social links are needed in 2020. By building and earning local links to your website you increase your chances of success drastically.
Local Lead Building
Another wonderful reason for local link building is the potential for collaboration and relationship building with another local business in a similar market. This helps you get qualified leads.
Because these customers are being sent to you from businesses where people are already trusting the recommendation of their local business.
Identifying a local partner is a very powerful way of creating links and more leads.
What Kind Of Links Should You Get?
As a local business you want to get links from websites of high authority, but you also don’t want links for the sake of getting links. You would be surprised at the number of businesses getting this wrong. And not getting links from local businesses and local resources.
For example, a local link needs to be able to offer two major pieces of criteria.
- It must link back to your website (easy enough)
- It must provide you with the opportunity to interact with your local audience (this can be hard if links are not local)
Now earlier we discussed backlinks and getting links from highly ranked domain authority sites can be good for your business. But when you are a local business there are limitations you must keep in mind. If your links don’t help people locally find you how helpful is that backlink?
Other local businesses or those locally that can influence your market can have less authority. But consequently offer more relevancy and getting a link from a smaller business locally most often will offer higher value than a higher authority site with no local connection.
It can be a good idea to have a mix, but definitely you want more local links.
Remember you are doing business within a local area, so getting traffic attention from people in other states is not helpful to you. It highlights your quality when a hight authority mentions you but if locals don’t read that publication or visit that website it’s not as helpful.
Local Link Ideas
Here are some local links SEO professionals focus on for a local business.
- Directories
- Review websites
- Local news websites
- Local bloggers websites
- Community forums
- Local charities
- Event pages
There are others but this a good start.
Can you see how having an SEO professional that can build up your local links would be useful? We figured as much, and welcome you to inquire about more information on how we can build your website to maximize local links the right way.
Building Relationships
Portside Marketing is known for having wonderful working relationships with customers. And also building an impressive business perception for your brand.
Part of being a local business means being a part of the community and getting involved.
When Locals see you interacting with the city or town in a way that shows you care – links will be built this way too. More importantly, the strong relationships you establish with people will drive traffic just the same.
In Conclusion
There are several do’s and don’ts to link building but getting it right builds empires. This is part of why social links are needed in 2020. Conversely, it can destroy your business when you get it wrong. It’s complex, and running a business is hard enough.
You want to leave this to a specialist. A local SEO professional who can help you build your brand and local links. After all, don’t you want to focus on your business in ways that you’re good at? That is smart business.
Portside Marketing welcomes you to call us at (972) 979-9316 and let us take care of the planning of local link building for your business. We know why social links are needed in 2020. And they will continue to be—as long as there are local businesses and customers who need service. Don’t waste any more time, reach out to us at (972) 979-9316 and start building local relationships today.