Link building strategies are a cornerstone to successful SEO
Link building strategies offer great benefits to small businesses. Among the ways links help small businesses are:
- It helps businesses gain more visibility
- Boosts referral traffic
- Helps getting indexed in search results quicker
- Establishes your website as a valuable resource.
In fact, links are among the top two criteria considered in Google’s page ranking algorithm. However, link building can be hard, especially for small businesses with limited resources. Here are some of the best linking building practices a local business can follow to reap its benefits to the fullest.
Link building strategies
Most of these strategies will be effective regardless of your niche or business size.
Sponsor local events and non-profit groups
Local non-profits and events are always on the lookout for sponsorships. As a small business owner, you may not be willing to spend your limited dollars on sponsorships. But it is a good investment that will help you earn backlinks on their website or events page. Look for conferences, events, or festivals that may be relevant to your business or are likely to be visited by your potential customers.
Collaborate with other local businesses
Link building is a lot about relationship building. If you can collaborate with local businesses and build a rapport with them, they are more likely to add a link to your website on their website. Look up businesses that are related to what you do. Get in touch with them and find how you can mutually benefit each other. Backlink exchange is a common practice among local businesses.
Write local content
When you create great local content, you give other websites something they can link to. It not always easy to create share-worthy content. This is especially true If you’re operating in a very competitive market where a lot of businesses are serving the same audience. So, you need to work hard to create and promote content that appeals to both your audience and the industry. For example, if you run a food business, you can talk about all the food events that are organized in your city.
Connect with local and niche bloggers
Every business niche has some influencers that command a good following within an industry or local audience. Try to identify some local bloggers and influencers that talk about your industry or topics related to the local community. Get in touch with one of them to see if you can get into an arrangement with them. Maybe they can review your business or write about your business for something in return. It could be in exchange for a free trial of your product/services. You can offer a small fee that is paid when someone visits your business after hearing it from the influencer/blogger.
Write guest posts
You can use guest blogging for organic link building. When you write a high-quality post for an authoritative blog with a massive follower base, you will get noticed. People will start going to your blog too. When they discover that your blog is worthwhile, they start linking to it. It takes a lot of research to first identify a blog with good domain authority. Once you do, pitch your blog ideas, and then write something of value. If it’s truly good content, you will get the eyeballs to see it.
Look for unlinked business mentions
Unlinked business mentions are online mentions of your business or anything directly related to it, which do not link back to your website. Finding these business mentions are a cost-effective and convenient way to build new links. You can use your business name, brand name, and other relevant keywords to uncover such back-linking opportunities. Once you find an unlinked business mention, you can reach out to the website owner or blogger and convince them to convert the mention into a link.
Leverage social media
Social shares are considered no-follow links, which means they do not directly boost your site’s authority. But it is still important to have a good social media presence. Social media can help enhance your brand visibility and recognition. Most high authority sites have an engaging and credible social media presence followed by a sound content strategy. It redirects users to your website, increases referral traffic, and helps earn organic links.
As we said in the beginning, link-building can be tough, especially when you do not have the requisite expertise. This is where an experienced and credible SEO professional can make all the difference. An SEO specialist has link building strategies at the ready for your size of business and niche.
Local businesses can benefit significantly from effective, white hat link building strategies.