Link Building for Local Sites

Hey John,
A good strategy for local site linking is business directories. Not just any though - search for those with high DA, business relevance & those that continue to pop up in the SERPS when searching for the broadest KWs to find a business or its services. Spammy links from poor sources or directories are obviously no good but Google etc. is ok with link building from reputable directories.

Well, if I have web site in the same town, I would link to plumbers simply because
if I have link, then there is good change when someone is looking for plumbers,
keywords would point to my site and I might to grab attention of otherwise stranger.

Same apply to Directories. To keep index fresh, we scrape web for something that
could be useful for business directory e.g. info related to local businesses which
normally don't have enough cash to advertise.

So, don't try to format attractive pages but preferably useful to others.



fastreplies

You do not write a homepage that is your skyscraper technique landing page. You write another page and link from it to the homepage.


It will pass juice.


Also, look into silos for SEO. Bruce Clay has a good explanation. This paragraph is an excellent example of the skyscraper technique at work. Bruce would be happier, of course, if I linked to his silo article from one of my sites, but this is good.

If I was you J wouldn't go to wide on my topics. You can always niche down and break up subjects to craft different pieces of content relating to your niche .Establish yourself as an expert .Link building can hurt your ranking or improve your ranking. Here are a list of things you can do in addition to using the sky scraper technique.

1 Out bound linking
2 Inbound linking
3 Get high authority domains
4 Remove or fix broken links
5. Create quality content
6 Find good linking candidates
6

Local links are done with the intention to build relevance for a website towards its locality. Local SEO professionals fixate on: Correcting NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) information. Building up a list of citations.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed. You have really opened up my eyes to how to go about this and I have renewed enthusiasm today. Any further advice about links for local pages would also be appreciated.

The more popular and important a site is, the more weight the links from that site carry. A site like Wikipedia, for example, has thousands of diverse sites linking to it. This indicates it provides lots of expertise, has cultivated authority, and is trusted among those other sites.

To earn trust and authority with search engines, you'll need links from websites that display the qualities of E-A-T. These don't have to be Wikipedia-level sites, but they should provide searchers with credible, trustworthy content.

Moz has proprietary metrics to help you determine how authoritative a site is: Domain Authority, Page Authority, and Spam Score. In general, you'll want links from sites with a higher Domain Authority than your sites.

Followed vs. nofollowed links
Remember how links act as votes? The rel=nofollow attribute (pronounced as two words, "no follow") allows you to link to a resource while removing your "vote" for search engine purposes.

Just like it sounds, "nofollow" tells search engines not to follow the link. Some engines still follow them simply to discover new pages, but these links don't pass link equity (the "votes of popularity" we talked about above), so they can be useful in situations where a page is either linking to an untrustworthy source or was paid for or created by the owner of the destination page (making it an unnatural link).

Say, for example, you write a post about link building practices, and want to call out an example of poor, spammy link building. You could link to the offending site without signaling to Google that you trust it.

Standard links (ones that haven't had nofollow added) look like this:

<a href="">I love Moz</a>
Nofollow link markup looks like this:

<a href="" rel="nofollow">I love Moz</a>
If follow links pass all the link equity, shouldn't that mean you want only follow links?
Not necessarily. Think about all the legitimate places you can create links to your own website: a Facebook profile, a Yelp page, a Twitter account, etc. These are all natural places to add links to your website, but they shouldn't count as votes for your website. (Setting up a Twitter profile with a link to your site isn't a vote from Twitter that they like your site.)

It's natural for your site to have a balance between nofollowed and followed backlinks in its link profile (more on link profiles below). A nofollow link might not pass authority, but it could send valuable traffic to your site and even lead to future followed links.

Thanks for your wonderful post, Mohammad. I've never heard the the different types of links explained in that way before nor how to use a nofollow link from my site to a lesser site. Really useful stuff.

By the way, I'm still working on my sites and one has just crept onto the bottom of page one for Google.

Thanks for all

I think skyscraper technique can be used only in blogs not for home page !!

I've been involved in local seo for several years now - especially the plumbing niche.

Attracting links naturally for a plumbing site in some random town is going to be difficult.

You could create a blog with helpful content such as 'how to' guides, tips, tricks, etc. Then have an internal link from the post going back to your home page or another service page with an exact anchor.

But this is time consuming. You need to build or buy the links for faster and quicker rankings. Outreach can work, but again, it's time consuming.

As for the home page, I usually just talk about the services we offer etc.

First H1 Tag will have the tile. For example, say we are doing Plumber London.

For the H1 Tag, I would put 'Plumber in London' (Google is smart enough to see that Plumber in London is similar to Plumber London)

Then I would add an intro, for example; Are you looking for a Plumber in London? Then look no further than us! We are.....

Then I would do a breakdown of services that we offer and add some text under them.

Depending on the location, I would the add service pages (for example, Sink repair London) and also city pages (Plumber Fulham etc).

Hello,
I recently created a site based on the local market where I am selling local home-made products, and the sales weren't going well because the site was new, had a low ranking in google, eventually I started an active advertising campaign, everything started to go well, but the google rank was still low. My brother who also owns a site suggested me to try the seo company in malaysia, sine he was living and working there, he worked with this company, his site now is top tanking in google, and my is still worked out, but so far it gets higher and higher.
I can say that I am satisfied with their work

Thanks everyone for their help so far.

My site is presently jumping around in the search results. It was as high as number 11, spent quite some time at 15 and is now 41. Hopefully, it'll rise again soon.

My next query ;

I'd like to try to adding backlinks using the broken link method (find a broken link on another site, reproduce the missing information on a page on my site, contact the owner and ask for the link) but I'm finding it is impossible to find links on sites that are in my field.

So, what about links form sites not in my field?

Let's say I'm going after "plumbers in Essex" and I get a link from a site about new hairstyles. The article I reproduce on my my site will be about hairstyles, not plumbing.

So, how will it affect my site if I get a link from a site not related to my field?

How will it affect my site if I place a hairstyles article on my site for the link to work?

I must say, I'm hesitant to do this as both are irrelevant, but I'd really like to hear from experienced SEO people about this issue.

Something that I would suggest is missing in all of this. #1 in terms of "local SEO" I would focus heavily on "Citations" over back links. #2 If I were to focus on creating Local SEO backlinks you have to realize that a "LOCAL" back link might have more value than just some website out on the web.

Have to keep in mind here as well that outward links maybe not as important but are a bit more important within "Local SEO" So Plumbers are good at fixing "Plumbing" but generally speaking they suck at doing drywall repair and usually each plumber will have a suggested drywall guy. Linking to that drywall guy ( that is local ) is NEVER a bad idea.

You want to focus on "Local" backlinks over just back links. Getting the opportunity to write a monthly "Tips" segment for the local newspaper is good advertising.. and creates solid LOCAL backlinks.

This is what I focus on anyways.

Hope that Helps!