Much of local link building comes down to citations and locally-relevant links. Getting the right local backlinks and citations will help you establish yourself as a local authority in your niche. That’s why using the right local backlink tool is so critical. With the right tools, you can find the best local citation opportunities, including sources your competitors are using and those competitors have not yet discovered.
Why you need local citations
Local citations influence SEO rankings, but some link sources have a greater impact on SEO than others. Backlinks and citations show Google your website is popular and worth being listed.
However, it goes beyond that. Getting citations on the right platforms will help customers find you and drive local traffic. The more citations you have, the better. On some platforms, you can also collect reviews; positive reviews are important for good rankings, and they also increase conversions and improve your brand image online.
Here are some of the tools we use to obtain local and niche backlinks for our clients.
1. Whitespark
We use Whitespark to research where our clients’ competitors are getting their backlinks, so we can obtain backlinks from those sources as well.
However, we go beyond that and get additional backlinks for our clients to help them beat the competition. Our strategy is “match and exceed.” Not only do we match the backlinks of competitors, but we also find and fill as many backlink opportunities as we can to give our clients the best chance for success.
Of course, all that is done within reason. We don’t target low-quality backlinks, but we instead focus on high-quality backlinks that will boost our clients’ sites.
Using Whitespark, we compare your existing citations with your top competitor citations, so we don’t waste time on sources you already have links or citations from. We also look for the easiest opportunities first — we can filter by submission difficulty and focus on easy backlinks first for quicker results.
Every week, Whitespark runs an automated campaign search to look for new opportunities, so you’ll never run out of new growth opportunities.
2. BrightLocal
BrightLocal is another tool we use to discover the best citation opportunities. Using BrightLocal together with Whitespark allows us to explore additional opportunities, as per our “match and exceed” strategy.
With BrightLocal, we can help multi-location brands and chains find local citations for each of their branches on both key sites and smaller, lesser-known blogs.
Both BrightLocal and Whitespark have well over 1,500 sites each to get backlinks from, which is a lot more than most other popular services. For example, Yext, which comes at much higher recurring costs, gives you less than 100 sites to submit to. You may want to find a Yext alternative.
BrightLocal and Whitespark may have some overlap, depending on the niche you are in. However, you won’t have to worry about duplicate citations, as both tools look for duplicates and citations you already have to avoid that problem.
In addition to citations, we can use BrightLocal to submit your site to data aggregators. It covers three major aggregators: Data Axle, Neustar Localeze, and Foursquare.
We use data aggregators to get your site listed on top directories, such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, Bing Maps, Google Maps, Yahoo, and more. We do this for all of your locations. By combining manual citations to hundreds of sites with data aggregators, we get the best results.
3. D7 Lead Finder
Using D7 Lead Finder, we find hundreds of link opportunities in your area at a time. Nothing beats getting links via manual outreach, and D7 helps us find the most targeted opportunities for your business. We reach out to each of them via email to offer guest post services in exchange for a link.
D7 shows us which local link opportunities have the best reviews and the highest rankings on Google. While we try to fill as many opportunities as possible, D7 helps us find the best ones, so we can deliver better results.
Guest blogging is one of the best ways to get high-quality links. Citations in yellow papers and on random websites can help, but Google values solid content. Here are just some of the reasons you need to do guest blogging:
- It boosts your site rankings: Getting high-quality links from real content is important. When an informational blog post links to your site, it shows Google that your site offers valuable information, too. Also, if you manage to get links from sites with high DA rankings, your SEO rankings will go up as well.
- It helps with local relevance: Relevance is important for backlinks. Getting links from sites that discuss your niche and/or area will help Google understand what your content is about and rank your site accordingly.
- It drives local traffic: Backlinks from local sites can help drive local traffic and increase sales.
- It gives you credibility: While getting citations in directories is important, you will get additional social proof and build trust when an influential blogger links to your site from a blog post, even if you contributed to that blog post.
4. Ahrefs
Another tool we use for local link building is Ahrefs. You may have heard of it; it’s a popular tool used by expert SEO marketers. One of the things we use Ahrefs for is to monitor your competitors’ websites and see who is linking to them.
If your competitors are getting links from specific high-quality sites, there is often a way for you to get links from them as well, either by submitting a guest post or through other outreach methods. By ensuring you cover all the sources your competitors are using plus additional sources we find via tools like D7 Lead Finder, we give you a leg up on the competition.
Ahrefs is also excellent for other SEO purposes, such as for finding high-volume local keywords relevant to your niche but with low competition. While building links is important, you also need to target keywords that are easy to rank for but which bring in a lot of traffic.
Wrapping it up
Those aren’t the only local link-building tools out there, but they are the most effective. The four together make a powerful combination that will help you drive traffic and improve your rankings. View our full link-building catalog to see how we can help catapult your company’s growth.
