Strategies for Building High-Quality Backlinks Locally

Backlinks are the foundation of building your website’s authority and credibility. They’re essentially endorsements from other websites, signalling to search engines your website provides valuable and reliable content. The more high-quality backlinks you obtain, the more search engines will find your website credible and trustworthy, thus the higher your chances of ranking.

Sounds promising, right? Here’s the catch: Backlinks are not easy to get. They require a lot of outreach work and knowledge of marketing your website to several channels. With that said, here are tried-and-tested strategies for building high-quality backlinks locally.

List Your Business in Major and Top Local Directories

Local businesses need two types of backlinks: local citations and do-follow backlinks. Local citations are much easier to get than do-follow backlinks because they’re online listings that mention your business’ NAP (name, address, and phone number) information.

While links in online directories don’t possess much power, they’re still important for local SEO. You can start with major directories like GBP, Bing, Yelp, and Foursquare, ensuring your NAP data is consistent across all listings. For local directories, you can search for location-specific directories, for example, “business directories + your location,” or industry-specific directories like “your industry + business directory.”

Guest Post for Authoritative Websites

Do-follow links are the type of backlinks you can get from guest posting. Do-follow backlinks have “link juice,” which allows them to pass link equity onto the page they’re linked to and helps that page rank.

Anyway, going back to guest posting. Look for relevant websites in your niche with high authority and good link profiles, and offer to write a guest post for them. The guest post’s content should include links from your website.

Guest posting is a challenging strategy for acquiring backlinks, but if done correctly, it can significantly increase your brand exposure and bring in new audiences. To find guest post opportunities, use the Google Search Strings technique, where you place your keyword next to these phrases:

• “Write for us”
• “Guest post”
• “Guest article”
• “Want to write for”
• “Submit a guest post”
• “Contributing writer”

After listing your prospects, identify content gaps using tools like Semrush’s Keyword Gap. Your goal is to find keyword opportunities the prospect websites are not ranking for but will benefit from and create your guest post around those keywords. Finally, with your guest post ready, send them a pitch that they couldn’t resist. Mention the content gaps and discuss how targeting these keywords will help increase their engagement and how your guest post blog will help fill the gap.

Utilise Connectively (Formerly HARO or Help A Reporter Out)

Connectively or HARO (Help A Reporter Out), is a platform for journalists and content creators to find reliable sources for a potential story. The reliable sources are industry experts, in other words, you. Journalists will post queries, which you can respond to with valuable insights based on your expertise on the subject matter. Journalists may use your response as a quote for their next story and get a link back to you or your website.

Since you’re interacting with journalists, always expect their queries to be time-sensitive. If you find a relevant query, act quickly! Another tip: When submitting a pitch, you want to provide value and personalise it by mentioning a previous experience related to their query.

If it’s been a while since you sent a pitch and haven’t heard a response, doing a follow-up won’t hurt. Just remember that journalists are also busy people.

Don’t spend all your time in HARO. Other alternative platforms include SourceBottle, Qwoted, Help a B2B Writer Out, and more.

Reach Out to Local Resource Pages

Resource pages are a landmine for backlinks to many websites. These pages house a collection of links listing websites, tools, or articles. You can reach out to resource pages through personalised emails and send out a request to include your website in their resource list.

Write Linkable Content

Write content other websites can use and link to as a leading source. Create ultimate guides, listicles, infographics, case studies, and anything helpful and shareable that proves your expertise in your industry. Become the go-to destination for information on all things related to your niche and targeted for local visitors.

Then, market your linkable assets everywhere! Promote them on all your social media, email them to your newsletter subscribers, or collaborate with local bloggers or influencers to help spread the word.

Send Out A Press Release

Hosting a special event? Releasing a new product or introducing a new service? Share the news with your local community through press releases. Local publishers are always looking out for new happenings about local businesses. But to get the publisher’s and the public’s attention, you must ensure it’s newsworthy, interesting, and impacts everyone in your area.