Does link building affect local SEO?
There are many aspects to a successful SEO strategy and bringing together the different elements is critical. As a specialist in search engine optimisation for businesses in Glasgow and the surrounding region, I often get asked about link building and what impact it has.
When a business creates a website, they have control over some things and not others. For example, you’ll be able to determine the quality of your content, what keywords you target, the design and who you link to externally. Get it spot-on and you should expect more visitors and more conversions.
What you won’t have control over is who decides to link to your site. Encouraging these links as well as other link-building strategies can have a long-term impact on your rankings.
What is link building?
We all know what a link is – it’s the asset on a web page you click to visit another page. There are three different types that business owners need to be aware of:
- Internal links: This is where you link to different pages on your site. This gives search engines like Google an idea of the structure of your site and can have a small but significant impact on your ranking.
- External links: These are the other websites that you link to. For example, you might link text in a blog post to a local news article to give your visitors more information.
- Inbound links: This is by far the most useful when it comes to local SEO. Inbound links are like votes for your website. They tell sites like Google and Bing that your page is important and popular.
How does link building help local SEO?
Link building can be time-consuming but if you get the strategy right it can certainly boost your rankings and help you show up for local searches with much more regularity.
Let’s say you own a local bar. You put a lot of time and effort into your website content to make it attractive but every time you carry out a search you end up behind your nearest competitors. Link building may help change this.
There are a lot of different factors that go into rankings and sites like Google and their algorithms are pretty complex. As a strategy, you can work on creating great content that people want to link to. Over time, your ranking improves and outperforms your competitor because you have a greater number of inbound links.
While this is oversimplified, getting more, high-quality links to your site, particularly from local businesses can make a significant difference.
The danger of spammy link building
As with all things to do with marketing, however, there is a caveat to all this. Google loves inbound links but they need to be from authoritative or respected sites.
Way back in the murky past of link building, all marketers had to do was sign up on the many hundreds of listing sites or create dummy sites that linked back to their pages to rank effectively. Google wasn’t happy for this and their algorithm changed – it’s now about the quality of the backlinks rather than the quantity.
How to find an SEO specialist in Glasgow
Getting link building exact for local SEO can be pretty tricky. It’s not just about creating great or relevant content and hoping for the best. It’s understanding what sort of connections you want to encourage and who you need to reach out to that might want to link back to you.
Working with an SEO specialist is important if you want to make the most of your link building strategy for local searches. It will certainly mean that your resources are concentrated in the right area and tailored to your business. Done well, the effects can be highly sustainable with a strong ROI.
If you would like to find out how link building can benefit your Glasgow business, contact Mark Slorance SEO today.
