Sometimes for small businesses, the web can feel like an unfair battleground. Huge companies with huge budgets seem to dominate. But local firms can still carve out their own niche, and it is easy to boost search rankings by simply taking offline local marketing tactics and adapting them for a digital world.
Here are five ways any local firm can use to boost its search rankings.
Build contacts with the local press
Getting online press coverage is a great way of building valuable links. Obviously, you're not going to attract the attention of national and international papers, not unless you're doing something special, but the thirst for stories at a local level is almost insatiable.
Local hacks are always looking for leads to fill pages and these days that means online coverage too.
If you haven't already, get in touch with your local paper's business desk. Make sure you have a story for them first though - things like charity days or celebrity appearances are the bread and butter of local papers.
Organise something fun, then give local journalists plenty of notice of the event and you should end up with some online coverage.
Ask politely if they can include a link to your site in the story, but even if they don't put on in the rise of co-occurrence as a ranking factor means you're going to benefit anyway.
Once you've got to know a local journalist, do everything you can to build on the relationship - that way more coverage will be forthcoming.
Use your existing business contacts
In today's online world building links is all about building relationships. If you've already achieved a degree of success offline, then you'll have built plenty of relationships already.
The trick is knowing how to use these to connections to get valuable links.Your best chance of getting a good link from a business connection is by providing them with a guest post. If you know someone who already has a well established website with a blog, then ask if you can write an entry for it.
Offer tips based on your experience of business, and make sure anyone reading the blog will be able to go away and take action based on your advice. The result will be a great article, which will raise your standing and get you a link. Not only does this have SEO benefits, but if the link is on a high-traffic site, then you can expect to get visitors too.
Don't limit your efforts to commercial sites, chambers of commerce and other small business communities offer excellent link opportunities.
Make your blog something special
If you haven't got a blog, get one right now. If you have got one, come up with a content plan to make the most of it. Think of new, exciting ways you can approach topics which are relevant to your industry - you'll be surprised how easy this can be.
Of course, not everyone feels comfortable writing, and if you find yourself in this category then it really is worth spending a bit of money to hire an individual or agency who can do it on your behalf.
Combine this with a social media strategy, and you will not only attract links but also get some word of mouth marketing going.
Ask vendors to take a testimonial
If you use and love someone's service, get in touch with them and tell them you're willing to supply a testimonial for their website in exchange for a link back to your website. Firms love testimonials because they show the company in a good light.
Not everyone will say yes, but plenty will and you'll get a bunch of links out of it.
Learn a bit about SEO
This last point is perhaps the most important regardless of whether you plan to do your link building yourself or hire an agency to do it. Take the time to get to grips with the basics of SEO - read industry blogs, use free trials of tools and find out what makes a good link. That way you'll know how to build the right links yourself or, if you use an agency, you'll know if they try to pull a fast one.
Knowledge is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to any form of SEO, so make sure your equipped with it.
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@Breakfree
I guess the more backlinks you have, the more talked about and spread out your website is around the internet. More backlinks are always good!
My favourite point discussed in this article is to build contacts with the local press, this is a great way to attract local customers!
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I don’t understand why there’s a need for so many backlinks when your blog results on the first page of google
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SEO services are getting cheaper and cheaper. If you’re not inclined to learn your own SEO, the very least you can do is find someone who is good at it, and has a portfolio – something verifiable.
And the best way to attract attention is simply to get out there. The gimmicky fridge magnets and letter openers are effective simply because people will use them or see them. Of course, I’m talking real-world advertisement of your digital offerings, but don’t forget – people have real eyes and things they can touch will remind them and focus them.
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Hi Steve,
Almost all the online marketers were aware what you mentioned over here. Anyway thanks for refresh again. My few comments are below,
-Build contacts with the local press
Actually this may be a costly one, but effective. Publishing in local papers is the good idea for getting huge amount of traffic from local regions if we concentrate local goals only. But the thing is, we have to build or run a specific platform to track impressions/conversions from this local news paper advertisement. If we doing different marketing like affiliate marketing email marketing, advertising in both online and off line, we need a specific lead management system like ‘AdLuge’ (http://www.adluge.com/)to track all the marketing results.
-Use your existing business contacts
This is one of the latest and main linkbuilding techniques which all the marketers are carrying. This method has been notified since from 2012. In SEOMOZ a blog has been posted regarding this,
Forget Link-Building, Think Relationship-Building – http://www.seomoz.org/blog/link-building-for-the-little-guys
-Make your blog something special
Definitely everyone should be following this if you are running online marketing. This will helps to get huge traffic and publicity for you business in search engines. From here we will get current trend and updates of marketing industry. Also this is the main platform of knowledge sharing. I personally love and share blogs 🙂
-Ask vendors to take a testimonial
As author says, ‘Not everyone will say yes, but plenty will and you’ll get a bunch of links out of it’
-Learn a bit about SEO
This is a remarkable point, because every SEO agency has their own idea and links to build and establish your website through search engines. Every agent should have more than 10 year experience. Experience is the most important factor in the field on online marketing.
Thanks again Will Stevens!