Local SEO Link Building Strategies For Cumbrian Businesses
Getting good quality backlinks from a locally relevant websites is still an important long term method of boosting the visibility of your website to local customers.
In the 2023 Local SEO Ranking Factors report for 2023, the consensus amongst the contributors was that backlink factors had reduced in importance over the past couple of years. However, there are a significant number of those contributors pointing out that where the market is competitive at a local level, they are a significant difference maker.
It Starts With Good Quality Content On Your Own Website
Other businesses need a reason to point a backlink to your website. If you’ve got good lively content that actually answers questions or otherwise solves their problems or their customers issues, then you are one step along the way.There are no silver bullets which shortcut this strategy for you.
These are the factors you have to keep in mind when turning out content.
- Understand your target audience and what makes them tick. Personas are useful here.
- Understand the questions and pain points that they are having trouble with.
Then you need the motivation to create content that chimes with the way they see the world! Content can be written articles, video, interview recordings, podcasts or even slidedecks. The material you create needs to be industry relevant, or about your business. It needs to be something the right people find interesting.
Use it to make your business stand out from the crowd, gets people reading, gives them a chuckle perhaps or otherwise engages them.
How To Get Local Backlinks The Sustainable Way
The best quality backlinks come from outreach to other businesses and website owners. You need to get in touch with businesses connected with what you do. Local SEO link building is mostly about building up a relationship.
Local Newspaper Stories
Get to know the journalists and PR specialists who write for the top local news websites in your neck of the woods. Local newspapers or blogs about the local area will be good. These are very useful because they have high authority and usually lots of local visitor traffic. Some of that visitor volume may well click through to you! Even a mention of your brand can be helpful on these websites when editors are reluctant to give out a link.
Local Blogs
Some areas even have bloggers who write or vlog about the local area. For local eateries a review or article from one of these characters can really push you higher. As mentioned earlier, negotiation and relationship building is the most important part. Some form of enticement could well be needed if they are an influential blogger. To avoid Google’s absolute beady eye don’t just buy a backlink. Various kinds of value exchange often work. Sponsorships, free products, or mutual sharing of their messages on social media.
Sponsor Local Organisations
This could be a local sports club, youth club or charity. The closer to your market, the better. The more influential organisations often have higher hurdles to overcome in the negotiation process. They are wise to requests like this so they will probably have a page discussing sponsorship deals. Unless you are just being altruistic (which we love) you can check whether a link will result.
Complementary Businesses
There will be other local businesses which similar, but not doing exactly what you’re doing. Competitors won’t link to you, except in very rare circumstances. A welding firm might negotiate a link from an engineering company. Legal firms often have their specialisms and may be willing to give a backlink to you if it would help someone they have visiting their site.
Outlier Backlinks
Businesses in a different industry could still be sensibly linked in some way, especially when there is the local connection. For this to work you’ll probably need to have some kind of bridge between the two worlds, most likely about an event you both attended so that the backlink has some context. This could be on your website, or a guest post on theirs. An example might be an immigration law specialist receiving a backlink from a local travel or tourism blog after a lively networking event organised by Cumbria Chamber of Commerce. Perhaps you helped the fledgling firm avoid a grave visa error. They can return the favour.
Local Forums / Comments
Not particularly powerful in Cumbria but there are some forums for particular areas and business sectors. They can help in the relationship building process and any links placed there do help but are very low in power.
Get ClimbHigh SEO to Help You Attract The backlinks You Need In Your Area
This overview of the types of backlinks can form the backbone of a successful link attraction / building campaign for businesses in Cumbria and the Borders. If you create engaging content that resonates with your local audience, it’s going to dramatically increase your chances of driving them to your site – and generating business.
You’ll then find as you continue to build some authority, rank better for local terms, are being talked about in forums, blogs and newspapers – you’ll then start to build some brand awareness. And you may even start generating some links on autopilot! Whether that’s links within other websites, or people linking out to you via social media – its all going to work towards generating more traffic and more business.
- Publish More Stunning Stuff! Content marketing is an ongoing process that your company needs to commit to in a business like manner.
- Pay the star staff who take the time to learn how to build and attract links ethically Pay Your Staff for Their Time. Whose job will all of these tasks be? It is a major marketing responsibility! Careless or spammy backlinking practices can get you some very unwelcome attention from Google!
- OR Engage Us. We have connections with some of the most amazingly inventive agencies in the UK and abroad who can create link worthy content in a variety of formats for you.
Background Information For Safe Link Building Programmes
Quality Considerations For Attracting Links
The best link building comes from a website which voluntarily publishes a backlink that points at some of your amazingly useful content without being asked. The sad truth is that for businesses in competitive industries where the customer base is national or global, just waiting for the natural recognition of the quality of your site isn’t going to cut it.
It’s Hard Work!
You do need to work at attracting links. For local businesses, those links may just be a few good quality directory listings which are better and meatier than your competitors in the town you are targeting. For an SEO and marketing agency like ourselves, the game has to be approached in a more sophisticated manner. Why not make use of our audit capabilities to see how healthy your backlink profile is?