With the recent mass confusion over unnatural link warnings in Google’s Webmaster Tools, I noticed that loads of small business owners were frantically asking questions about what they should do.  Let’s say that the worst case scenario happens and you lose your search visibility in Google. Wouldn’t it be great if that didn’t completely cripple your business because you had such great local visibility? That’s just one reason why local links are becoming more critical than ever.

Why Are Local Links Important?

Most importantly, local links can bring you relevant and converting traffic.

Additionally, local links are a critical part of a diverse profile. Links from good local sites like your Chamber of Commerce aren’t likely to get devalued and the sites don’t tend to change hands every year or become totally spammed up (only to then get devalued or deindexed.)

Local links can also help form in-person relationships that can lead to bigger things such as strategic business partnerships, grant opportunities, and networks for finding new employees or work.

Who Needs Local Links?

Honestly, anyone who has a business with an online presence could benefit from local links. However, the people who need them the most are people whose customer base is local to them.

If your goal is to bring in business from your surrounding area, whether you’re running a pizza restaurant or selling life insurance policies, having links on respected local websites is a great way to do it.

What if I Don’t Usually do Business Locally?

This one is one that I’m guilty of, as we don’t tend to work with local clients.

I recently had a conversation with a Google local representative who said that she thought my business profile could be better optimized. Not seeing any real reason to do this, I pushed back a bit until she finally made me realize that if there was even a chance that someone was looking for us in order to come by and try to work with us (as a client or an employee), it would be better to give them the information he or she wanted right there in the profile. I realized then that I’d been ignoring some really easy local visibility platforms.

I don’t currently do much local work but who’s to say that I shouldn’t, or that a local client wouldn’t be a great opportunity? I realized that not taking advantage of something just because it was local and didn’t benefit me at the time was the kind of shortsightedness that I’d fuss about if a client was guilty of it.

Types of Local Links

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There are many different types of local links:

• Search engine local sites (Google Places, Yahoo Local, Bing Local)
• Business organizations
• Charities in surrounding area
• Chamber of Commerce
• Local news publications, TV stations, alternative newspapers
• Radio stations
• Local business directories
• City websites
• Local bloggers
• Business partners
• Universities, colleges, trade schools: list internships, employment available
• Meetups and sponsored networking events

Getting Started

When conducting link queries for local, use a variety of qualifiers along with your keyword(s) of interest, to start off.

• Neighborhood
• ZIP code
• City
• County
• State
• Region
• Country (if you’re really small…tip: don’t try this in the USA please.)

I’d also check add the names of any local colleges or universities, big trade schools, major local employers, etc. and even try things like “made in X city” to find more local search potential.

Then move on to adding more keywords like meetups, business associations, leadership, alliances, events, and anything else that pops into your head.

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