Expert Local Business Link Building Survey 2018

Seriously, go start building links. It makes a difference in not just local organic rankings but is also a major competitive differentiator in pack rankings. It’s hard, you’ll learn a lot, and in the end, you are going to be able to build a process that you can leverage for success.

Dan Leibson

Local SEO Guide

Link building always needs to consider the unique situation of any given business. What links have they got currently? What links have competitors got? What do link opportunities look like in this business category? Only once armed with this information can you devise a sensible link building strategy.

Marcus Miller

Bowler Hat

I think link building should be one of many strategies used for SEO. I consider a strategy successful if the link also provides traffic to the site or some type of additional branding for the business. I try to avoid building links if the page the link is on is one that a human being is never going to visit.

Joy Hawkins

Sterling Sky

You don’t have to build links to all local business websites, only the ones you want to reliably rank well. Of course I am exaggerating somewhat. Local businesses with other “prominence” attributes (e.g. semantically relevant reviews) can do well, but those are also the types of businesses that attract links on their own.

Andrew Shotland

Local SEO Guide

In the UK, go back a few years and for some businesses you could generate good results without link building. This is assuming that local was in a bad place but authority was solid. Now, as things are getting more competitive then links matter more than ever and are typically the competitive difference maker.

Marcus Miller

Bowler Hat

In competitive SERPs, once you get table stakes right (i.e. citation consistency, etc), in my experience, topically and geographically relevant local links are the biggest difference-maker. One of our primary metrics is growing the number of linking root domains from topically and geographically relevant pages. In addition to improving search positions, these links are also great for branding, earning referral traffic, and qualified leads.

Gyi Tsakalakis

AttorneySync

No link building campaign for a local business will be fully effective without education (consultant’s responsibility) and client’s direct involvement. Business owners need to understand what good link building is and do their part to build business visibility online.

Max Minzer

ReEngage Consulting

Link building is a marathon, not a sprint. Staying focused on marathon type tasks are difficult enough for anybody, much less business owners with 100’s of other to-dos surrounding their business.

Adam Dorfman

SIM Partners

The biggest misconception is that link building is a one-hit wonder, in other words, once the job is done, the job is done. In reality, it is an ongoing, evolving process.

Susan Hallam

Hallam Internet

That Google doesn’t give you any “credit” for no-followed links or links from low authority domains.

Mary Bowling

Ignitor Digital

Biggest misconception: That all you need are local citations and you’re good to go. Biggest problem: The riskiest tactics have the biggest payoff and based on what we see, many businesses still don’t get it when they get slammed, and many SEO vendors are not transparent about the risky stuff they are doing for their clients.

Andrew Shotland

Local SEO Guide

Too many local SEOs treat links as a side dish. Their main courses are excessive citation-building and dumb on-page optimization. Except in un-competitive markets, you need at least a trickle of relevant links coming in, or you’ll hit a wall.

Phil Rozek

Local Visibility System

That they’re as important as or more important than reviews.

David Mihm

Tidings

The biggest misconception is that a marketer should only be going citation building, but in reality, they should be integrating blogger or influencer outreach.

Kevin Rowe

Rowe Digital

The biggest misconception is when people look at the domain rating or domain authority as the sole metric in links they’re acquiring. I can get 10, 90+ DA links today by filling out profiles, but are they really helping me? Probably not much because they’re not relevant to my business. Why value something everyone can get?

Casey Meraz

Juris Digital

As a rule of thumb, after the easy wins have been leveraged, we typically have the most success with a content driven link building strategy. This would usually involve the creation of a linkable asset that we can then promote to safely build links beyond the standard industry type of links.

Marcus Miller

Bowler Hat

Businesses (and many agencies and consultants) tend to have crippling old-school ideas about links. Others are afraid to do anything to gain more links due to a fear of penalties. It’s not hard to build decent local links, but you do need some budget for it. The more participation I get from a client, the more successful we can be in building their local brand.

Mary Bowling

Ignitor Digital

People need to realize that all aspects of link building in any form carry risk and determine what level of risk you are comfortable with.

Mike Ramsey

Nifty Marketing

It depends on location and competition. There is no universal right number of links to acquire.

Will Scott

Search Influence

It’s important to always be researching potential link opportunities but don’t try to force a certain amount in a month or your standards will go down. It should vary from one business to the next so it’s hard to provide a set minimum.

Tom Waddington

Wachae

There is so much hype about links that people think they need a large number to be successful. I have lots of clients that have gained a ton of new customers from Google in the last 6 months while only getting 1-5 new links during that time period. The amount and type of link building that works best also varies greatly depending on the industry.

Joy Hawkins

Sterling Sky

Link building for multi-location businesses can be more difficult because the principle of “economies of scale” don’t apply when delivering creative, content-led campaigns. These creative campaigns can be a rich source of local links, but it can feel like hard work when scaling this up for multi-location businesses, coming up with variations or new campaigns.

Susan Hallam

Hallam Internet

For us, working exclusively with car dealers, it’s much more difficult when we’re working with an auto group (multiple dealers under one umbrella). When an individual dealer does anything linkworthy, it clearly gets sent to their site. But when a group does anything linkworthy (sponsorships, community service, community events, etc.), it’s as the group entity, so it’s harder to translate into links for individual sites.

Greg Gifford

DealerOn

A link-earning strategy that works in one local market tends to be applicable to the others, so one good idea x 10 locations may = 10 good links, rather than one.

Phil Rozek

Local Visibility System

It’s always easier to receive links from larger brands because they already have awareness and tons of brand mentions that you just need to get turned into a hyperlink. No one ever got penalized for linking to Walmart.

Matthew Hunt

Powered By Search

When a recognized brand contacts you, the email gets a much faster and better response than when you see something from Joe the Plumber.

Mike Ramsey

Nifty Marketing

If you are running SEO for a multi-location business, my number one link building recommendation is to train the corporate location manager liaison in local link building so they can train individuals at unique locations to build links themselves.

Adam Dorfman

SIM Partners

Best links are gained through good relationships with neighbors that have influence. Building those relationships in the community should prove to build the highest quality links.

Joel Headley

PatientPop

A successful local link building strategy needs to rely on truly localized and relevant links. Getting listed in a local directory that has a 75 domain authority with 1 million other businesses is likely not going to have as big of an impact as a link from a community website or organization that has a DA of 35 but only a few outgoing links.

Casey Meraz

Juris Digital

The most successful link building strategy ends in a diverse link profile with varying anchor text and site DA, with high contextual relevance.

Kevin Rowe

Rowe Digital

Local businesses should be focused on local opportunities. If you spend even just a little time brainstorming ideas with the business owner it’s amazing what you can come up with: helping clients identify opportunities for community involvement, identifying opportunities to improve anchor text, researching competitor links, or discovering hyper-local directories. The sky is really the limit.

Colan Nielsen

Sterling Sky

[Links] don’t have to be high authority followed links. I’ll take a low authority link any day, and I could give a crap if it’s followed or not. All links matter in local, as long as they’re relevant.

Greg Gifford

DealerOn

Links that would be considered low quality can still make a difference but too many people get addicted to them.

Tom Waddington

Wachae

Whenever we decide how much link building to do for a client, we always look to see the effort vs the impact. Link building can be extremely time-consuming so we always want to make sure that time will actually result in an ROI for the business that we can justify.

Joy Hawkins

Sterling Sky

Don’t go overboard with anchor text. Keep it natural and avoid penalization.

Casey Meraz

Juris Digital

Legitimate relationships and traditional PR techniques have to be at the center of a real link building strategy. The most effective local content focuses on comparisons/competitions of multiple markets, or neighborhoods within a market. You then have content that can be spread around multiple communities which increases the chances of acquiring a link.

David Mihm

Tidings

[Link building is] a multi-faceted approach, looking at lots of different opportunities. The easiest approach is relationship-based links – looking at things the business already does and relationships that already exist. It’s a slow burn, looking for REAL local opportunities for links that competitors don’t have. In many cases, we’re talking really small scale, so in some cases, it doesn’t even take that many links to win.

Greg Gifford

DealerOn

Don’t rely on one strategy. Most or all of your links should be from sites that are relevant to your industry, or to your local area, or both. Join a few industry organizations, a Chamber of Commerce, and sponsor a few local causes or do some pro bono work. Then throw in a couple of strategies that take more long-term effort, but that you can nibble on. Either ramp up the ‘community giving’, make a name for yourself as a blogger, or do HARO outreach religiously.

Phil Rozek

Local Visibility System

The best link building strategies reflect the real-world marketing activities, relationships, and spheres of influence a local business has earned. Having a detailed plan of action for creating a strong local reputation will, with careful execution, simultaneously deliver a successful local link building campaign.

Susan Hallam

Hallam Internet

Short, snappy emails and phone outreach work best. Keep it real, remember we are dealing with real humans.

Matthew Hunt

Powered By Search

The best link building strategies align with other things you are already doing. If you are engaged in organic or paid social, then you should see if you can layer in influencer outreach to get eyeballs and links.

Dan Leibson

Local SEO Guide

A successful local business link building strategy would be one where the business bakes backlink acquisition into its everyday processes. A business that understands the importance of links shouldn’t need to use an SEO company to go out and get them. Of course that’s a total fantasy, but it’s the ideal.

Andrew Shotland

Local SEO Guide

It looks a lot like PR. 1. You make a plan 2. You define targets 3. You execute your plan 4. [Results come in] over time.

Will Scott

Search Influence

Consistent process of outreach and community building that leverages the natural relationships the local business already has in their community.

Joel Headley

PatientPop

Glib answer: One that improves your visibility on Google and Bing when potential customers are searching for a product or service you offer. Real answer: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all strategy as the lowest hanging fruit often varies from business to business.

Adam Dorfman

SIM Partners

Link building should be thought of as digital PR. It’s very similar to traditional PR, but the digital PR person is a technical SEO/PR person who also understands how to get the hyperlink vs just the mention.

Matthew Hunt

Powered By Search

It involves doing multiple tactics and strategies and not just focusing on one thing such as outreach.

Colan Nielsen

Sterling Sky

It looks exactly like a local brand building campaign. Increase awareness of your brand within your own market area and continually strive to improve your reputation among the people who have the greatest potential to become your customers.

Mary Bowling

Ignitor Digital