Local results will always be a solid implementation of the majority of organic SERP listings.
Are your potential consumers finding you or are they hiring your competitors?
Were all too familiar of the power that links have on our rankings.
We recently took an in-depth look at Local SEO, in my most recent post, titled Local SEO 101.
Now that you all have a more clear understanding of what Local SEO is and how you can begin your own Local SEO campaign, you’re ready to take your knowledge of Local SEO and some of the most powerful Local SEO strategies, one step deeper.
Today we’ll delve into the driving force — behind Local SEO rankings and start working on achieving some of those top rankings for ourselves.
Before we begin, I’d like to ask you to take note that local link building is a long-term project.
This doesn’t mean that it takes a long time to see results — results can come quickly, depending on (you) how many links (and what kind) you build in a given time frame.
As is any great link building campaign.
Regardless of it being location based or not.
A great local link building campaign employs time-consuming research, testing diverse linking strategies and maintaining diverse goals and objectives.
Local link building is a highly untapped link building (gold mine) resource that can and will lead to fresh, high quality, juicy links, really fast.
If you can build a solid local link profile, you can rank organically for universal search terms with local intent in your vertical.
Get ready to go from invisible to unmissable in local search!
Local (SEO) Link Building 101
Local link building is somewhat similar to the types of link building that’re associated with an international link building campaign, except that local link building is geo-targeted and is unique in nature.
It’s important that if you’re a local business, seeking to gain traction in your local market, that you establish a local mindset.
To establish a local mindset, you’re going to need to build local relationships to leverage the most solid, most authoritative links.
When you think of local link building, you should be thinking about bringing offline relationships, online.
Adam Melson from SEER published an awesome piece that shows you 35 “outside the box” local link opportunities.
I realize that there’s a rather large percentage of you who’re more interested in learning how to leverage these juicy local links, without getting off of the couch and for that reason, I’ve planned to help you with that.
How Can I Find Local Linking Opportunities
Let’s take a look at some advanced search strings that we can all use to find local link opportunities in Google
First Check Out These Official Docs
It is not the job of Search Engine Optimization to make a pig fly. It is the job of the SEO to genetically re-engineer the web site so that it becomes an eagle. – +Bruce Clay
The 8 Greatest Search Query Publications of All-Time!
- Ann Smarty created an awesome list of search queries that you can use to find new local link opportunities
- Garrett French published a great piece over on Search Engine Land titled — 21 link builders share advanced link building queries.
- Himanshu Sharma created an awesome post titled — 10000 Search Engine Queries for your Link Building Campaign
- GeoffKenyon from Distilled published — finding link opportunities with advanced search queries
- ChrisDreyer authored a great post titled — Search Queries and Link Building Opportunities for Lawyers
- Ontolo published an article titled — 124 eCommerce link building opportunities
- Rand Fishken wrote a great piece titled — Non-Intuitive Search Queries and Resources for link building
- Jon Cooper wrote a nice one called — Nine search query combos for scalable link building
Geo-Targeted Anchor Text
What are anchor texts?
Anchor text are words that have had a link embedded into them. This is also referred to as hyper linking.
An anchor text helps Google to better understand what the linked webpage is all about.
Ideally you’d want to always try and use local (geo-targeted) anchor text.
As an example, I own my own SEO/Local SEO Company in Kentucky.
I would want to use anchor text similar to “Local SEO Company in Kentucky”
But with as many different variations as possible.
You have to use the same Anchor text principals as you’d use during an international SEO campaign. Don’t over optimize those anchors!
Here’s a great guide that was published on Ahrefs blog, that’ll help you to better understand anchor text distribution and how it all works.
Leveraging the Power of Local Citations
What is a Citation? – A citation is a text references to your site or domain, that doesn’t link to it. The mention of something.
I recently tore the web from limb to limb — searching for all the best places to establish local citations.
There’s lots of great lists online.
I decided to create a list of my own. Something far more effective than anything else in existence. So, I set out to do just that.
The ultimate list of Local Citations on the Web in 2014
List.ly allowed me to curate my list in alphabetical order.
It begins with Australia and provides all of the greatest citations, from Australia, to the U.K, U.S, Canada, Spain, Data Aggregators, Events, etc.
Remember — local citations are like links, when managing a Local SEO campaign.
It’s not about how many citations you acquire, it’s about the quality of each citation. So refrain from using spintax or spun content when creating your local citations.
Create a unique description for each citation, but always remember to keep your NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) the same across the web.
If you pay attention while creating your local citations, you’ll find that some will let you submit your link.
Getting your link on a local citation isn’t a bad thing.
Go ahead and shoot for as many local links as you can get.
Expired Domains and Private Blog Networks
You won’t find your average local SEO talking about using greyhat local SEO techniques, and that’s because they try to refrain from teaching anything that comes with a risk.
So, I’ll be straight up.
There are some risk involved. If you don’t know what you’re doing, you had better learn — before implementing these techniques or hire someone to manage these (risk management) highly advanced SEO strategies for you.
The power of using aged, well trusted, high quality domains, that already have a solid backlink profile — is just electrifying.
You can get your hands on these types of expired domains for as little as $5 and in my tutorials, I show you exactly how to do just that!
Grant it — Private Blog Networks have been given a horrible reputation over the years, solely due to the many mistakes that have been made by those who have built Private Blog Networks (PBN) — with little to no education and experience in doing so.
As like the old saying goes, one bad apple can spoil it for the rest!
That couldn’t be further from the truth.
I’ve been working on building a set of tutorials. The tutorials I’m building help you how to do everything you’ll ever need to know. And to beat it all, I help you how to work with expired domains and PBNs, without risk.
Some have already been published on my blog that you can check them out.
How does this pertain to local link building?
It has everything to do with local link building. Remember that local link building isn’t that much different from international link building.
Simply use what I’ve walked you through here about implementing these local link building strategies, while using expired domains and PBNs to leverage some secret (juice) ranking power.
Here are a few tutorials to help get you started:
- How to find expired domain names
- What to do after buying an expired domain
- How to avoid leaving footprints
Advanced Search Queries Used For Local Link Building
I’m going to list some of the advanced search queries that I use to search for local linking opportunities, for myself and for some of my clients.
In the below list, you will see; (Head Term) this is where you will enter your own head term keywords.
A head term is the main keyword, usually consisting of just 1-2 words max.
As an example, the word “SEO” is a head term.
I will also be using (geo-targeted) — where you find this tag, this is an indicator that you will have to enter in your own geo-targeted search terms; (State), (City), (Neighborhood) or (Zip Code).
Search Queries to Find Local News Site’s
- (City) News
- (City) (MDKW) News
- (Neighborhood) News
Search Queries to Find Local Directories
- (State) Directory
- (State) (MDKW) Directory
- (City) Directory
- (Zipcode) Directory
- (Neighborhood) Directory
Search Queries to Find Hyper Local Site’s
- (Neighborhood) (City) News (note: city may not be applicable… it depends on the uniqueness of the neighborhood name)
- (Neighborhood) Blog
- (Neighborhood) (MDKW)
Search Queries to Find Local Coupon Site’s
- (City) Coupon
- (City) (MDKW) Coupon
- (City) Coupon Blog
Search Queries to Find Local Events
- (City) Events
- (City) (MDKW) Events
- Submit (City) Event
Search Queries to Find Local Chamber of Commerce
- (City) Chamber of Commerce
- (State) Chamber of Commerce
- (Zip Code) Chamber of Commerce
Search Queries to Find Local 3rd Party Review Site’s
- (State) (MDKW) Reviews
- (City) (MDKW) Reviews
- (Neighborhood) (MDKW) Reviews
Search Queries to Find Local Resource Pages and Guides
- “Guide to” (city) (MDKW)
- (Neighborhood) (MDKW) Recommendations
- (Neighborhood) Resources (MDKW)
Search Queries to Find Local Charities
- Thank* “our donors” (Zip Code)
- “in kind donations” thank* (City)
- “in kind donors” thank* (City)
Search Queries to Find Local Sponsorship Opportunities
- (City) “our sponsors”
- (City) Thank* “to our sponsors”
- Thank* “to our sponsors” (Zip Code)
Search Queries to Find Local Blogs
- (State) (MDKW) Blogs
- (City) (MDKW) Blogs
- (Neighborhood) Blogs
The more interest that you have in something, the more motivated you are about achieving something, the easier the task will become.
Learn to manage your time, when working on your local link building campaign.
Trying to get everything done all in one day isn’t only impossible, but is foolish.
Some say that link building in general is a boring, tedious task.
That’ not true.
I personally love building links.
I suppose it’s because I love my work.
And I manage my time wisely!
As a business owner, you can find your motivation by determining how hungry you are to reach your business goals.
One thing’s for sure — there isn’t a lack of information. Everything you need is right here in front of you.
In Conclusion to my Local Link Building Guide
Have some fun with it!
Check out some of these awesome link building communities on Google Plus!
Stay clear of building link spam.
Building link spam isn’t the way to go, and I’m not sure it ever was.
If you care about your business and want to achieve some serious results, then build it with pride.
Every backlink that you create, resembles you and your business. Keep that in mind the next time you think about being lazy.
Google is not going to become any less lenient on website’s and or webmasters. If anything Google is going to become more strict than ever before.
Be wise in your work and flourish.
Hope to hear from you in the comments. I’m free to answer any questions that you might have for me.
Until next time — link wisely and keep it simple.
