Local Business SEO is not such an easy thing to do. It can take a lot of time, effort and resources. We can all agree that link building is one of the most important elements of search engine optimization. On the other hand, without good SEO you can’t expect good ranking. Local business owners need special local business SEO that is slightly different from regular SEO. This local business SEO process involves optimization of websites that are focused to improve ranking in search engines of local character. If you are looking for a way to improve the visibility of your local business in the search engines and to build useful back links, I suggest following some of these tips.
1. Develop relationships with local influential people
This is a difficult task, but if it is performed in the right way, it will definitely pay off. The first thing you need to do is to locate these people and determine whether they can help your business or not. Business owners usually stick to journalists and bloggers. Use the local news, government websites and the websites of your competitors to find some influential people. Feel free to contact them and establish a relationship with them. Some of them will be glad to help you for free while others will ask for a fee or some sort of compensation.
2. Team up with your partners
In case you have a small local business that sells products from other companies, then you can contact your partners and ask them to list your business on their website. Of course, your info and link will be presented in their partner’s list. This is a legitimate and very efficient way to improve your ranking because these bigger manufacturers and wholesalers have developed high-ranking websites. This means that you will get a link from a website with high domain authority and page rank.
3. Make a donation for some local organization
This is a nice way for local business owners to show that they care about the community. Most successful businesses are contributing with donations for many causes. So, find some local organization or local club that is providing back links to their donors and make a donation. After you are done, you can promote the donation on your own website.
4. Create a hot topic and watch your local business reach the news
Creating a story of this type is not easy, but after doing some research I am sure that you can come up with something like that. People love to read blogs that can confirm their views and expectations. However, if you are planning for your blog posts to become viral, you can always try to spark some controversy. Of course, try to remain polite, but make sure to emphasize your firm stance regarding the things that are related to your business. This is the easiest way to reach the local websites dedicated to news and maybe even national news.
As you can see, there is more than one way for a local business to perform effective link building, but keep in mind that this is a time-consuming job and the results are visible after a while.
