Why are local back links important?

Most of the links pointing to your site will begin gradually as people discover your content through search and other marketing efforts. You may already have successful mentions across the web, and those links are indeed adding some value to your local SEO efforts. These links to your site are referred to as back links. Just as Google uses the quantity and quality of your citation to determine the value of your business, it too uses back links to provide those signals. Traditional SEO tells us that the more relevant back links we collect, the better our SEO is overall.

And on that vein, the quality of the sites linking to us greatly impacts our reputation as well. If you’ve done some research on backlinks before, you’ve likely seen link exchanges, link building farms, and a mass of companies promising thousands of backlinks. That doesn’t work. Google is smart enough to know that strategy and it’s quick to penalize you. But we’ll talk more on that in a later video. With local SEO, we arrive at a really unique crossroad. In the pursuit of gaining high-quality backlinks, you should be basing your efforts toward local back links.

Google wants a clear understanding of your goal. If you’re truly in it for earning local business, Google needs to know this is your priority. They want to know you intend to be part of your community, and that your services really are available to local consumers. And this goes back to Google’s whole motivation. The users who search on Google expect accurate and quality results. If you found a local business on Google and went there only to find it out of business, you’d question future recommendations by Google. Now, all backlinks add value, but those built within your geographical location will increase your rank for that area.

Find and interact with authoritative sites that are established in your local community. Local back links are often easier to obtain, and because of a smaller market, you’ll be met with less competition.