Local business owners should think of link-building as part of a larger outreach strategy. If your company creates great content and gets involved in community projects, links should naturally follow.

Small businesses can use this as an opportunity to develop long-standing relationships with like-minded websites and companies. These connections can result in a significant increase in referral traffic.

Earned Links

A well-written piece of content that is both informative and valuable to its audience will earn a link because it's useful to the people who view it. But creating an incredible piece of content isn't enough; you have to know how to publicize and promote it.

Often, local businesses can generate a lot of links by simply reaching out to their own community. Getting a link from a local blogger or website is often a great way to bring in traffic and build credibility in your industry.

There are a few different tactics that you can use to acquire earned links, such as guest blogging and the skyscraper technique. These techniques are all ethical, above-board ways to earn a link from another website or blog. However, they don't work as well for small business SEO compared to the other strategies discussed in this article. This is because they tend to have lower levels of trustworthiness in Google's eyes.

Guest Posting

Creating guest posts on high-quality websites is an effective way to drive traffic and build relationships. It also helps establish your business as an expert in the field and increases your domain authority.

When deciding on which blogs to approach, be sure to research their audience and writing style. Check to see whether they accept guest content and what types of articles they have previously published. Find out what topics resonate best with readers and use this to create your own content.

Ensure that your guest post contains a link back to your website. This is a great way to increase organic search queries, as it signals to Google that other sites consider yours as a reliable source of information. Be careful not to insert links that lead to paid promotions, as this is considered black hat SEO and could result in penalties from Google. This includes any content that is not fully disclosed to your readers, such as sponsored posts or paid endorsements.

Press Releases

Press releases are a powerful tool in your arsenal for link building for small business SEO. The key to a successful press release is making it interesting and informative for users, while including keywords that are relevant to your company and industry.

If you want to boost your SEO rankings, it’s important to use branded anchor text in your press release. According to a study by Semrush, over-optimized anchors are the leading cause of penalty-based website penalties. You should also avoid keyword-based headlines.

Press releases can also help Google discover new pages more quickly. This is because search engines crawl news publications more frequently, and they can often get new content indexed faster than your own site. This makes them an excellent choice for getting new pages ranked for competitive keywords. The first step in this process is to create and distribute a quality press release. You can then syndicate it via a wire service to increase the number of places it appears.

Social Media

If you have a blog, make it easy for visitors to share your content on their social media pages. This will help spread the word about your content and can result in links back to your website.

Creating high-quality content that people are naturally compelled to link to is one of the most tried and true ways to build links to your website. Make sure your content is relevant to your industry and that it is informative and helpful for your audience.

Consider using a tool like Semrush to identify websites and markets that your competitors are linking to. This will give you an idea of what types of content to create for your own business and which topics your audience is interested in.

Another way to build high-quality links is to become a source for journalists and bloggers. Services like HARO connect writers who need sources with experts willing to provide them. City studies are a great example of topical content that can garner links from local news outlets and blogs.