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If you’re looking for a way to get a hand up over your local competitors, local link building is the way to go. Many people are overlooking it in their internet marketing strategies, and it can easily be much more rewarding than simply focusing all of your efforts on general link building. Localization is starting to play a bigger and bigger role in search engine result pages as well as other GPS enabled services on mobile devices.
Local link building is different than general link building in that it prioritizes, you guessed it, location over, for example, the quality or specific relevance of the link. Don’t be mistaken-quality and relevance are still important, just not as important as location. So how do you go about gathering local links for this cause?
Get In the Community
Get involved in the local community. Participate in an event, host a meeting, sponsor a charity or local youth sports team, interview a local community member. Interacting with the community will give local organizations or businesses to link to you on their websites. If you put an interview or feature article about someone or about some local news with your expertise and insight inputted into it, for example, it will easily encourage whomever you are featuring to link to it on their own. Local journalists would also love to have a local and accessible legal expert to help them translate ‘legalese’ in court and law cases into English for their articles. If you offer your services in this manner, they will do their part to promote you as well. Do things with good intentions, and people in the community will have more reasons to thank you with a link.
Offer a Local Resource
Assuming that you already have a blog, if you start creating content that is very local-oriented, like a history of all the most popular court cases that happened in your city, the mystery of all the
unsolved malpractice cases, a quick profile of all the most influential people in your city, calendar of events, etc, these links will more likely be shared locally. People also tend to like locally relevant resources as well, since it makes them feel more specifically catered to, and it allows them, also, to show their pride for the neighborhood. You can ask around for advice and figure out what people could really use as an online resource and fill that niche, or you can partner with local organizations. You will know best how to cater to your community if you keep your eyes and ears open while you’re in it.
Local Directories
This is an obvious one; list yourself and your firm in all of the local directories that you can find. Look into local government sites, local organization pages, and local media pages. Consider authority when looking at places to list, because these processes usually take a considerable amount of time and energy. It is therefore important to allocate yours wisely.
Local link building takes time, commitment, and connection, which may seem like a significant investment, but the payoff can be incredibly valuable when your name starts climbing up the SERPs when people search in your locality.
Olivia Lin writes for The Loewy Law Firm, a personal injury practice in Austin, Texas. She is passionate about SEO and believes that connection and involvement are keys to success even in today’s technological world.