How to reach the top in local search – Part 3

14. Dec, 2008 1 Comment

In part one of this series, we looked at keyword research, and in part two we looked at onsite optimisation. This article will deal with “offsite optimisation”. Offsite optimisation is the process of making your website an authority. The way to do this is to get other websites to link to your website. Google sees incoming links for your website as a vote of your website’s popularity.

There are numerous ways to get links to your website.

  1. Asking businesses or organisations related to yours
  2. Submitting your website to directories
  3. Have great content that people naturally link to

Lets have a look at those three points.

Asking related organisations for links

Here are some examples of some related organisations you could ask to link to your website.

  • Professional bodies you belong to
  • Suppliers
  • Buying groups
  • Customers
  • Organisations that have complementary services
  • Local tourist information/chamber of commerce

Submitting your website to directories

Not all directories are equal. There are major directories, local directories, themed directories, spammy directories, paid directories, free directories, and directories with varying shades of all of the above.

The directories worth submitting to are major directories, local directories and themed directories. Here is some lists I’ve compiled during my travels.

There are a few major directories that you should list in. These directories are very large or spend considerable ammounts marketing themselves or both. If you do nothing else, submit your site to these!

Major directories include:

After the major directories, you will want to list in local directories. To find local directories, search “[your location] directory”. There will be more of them than you think!

After the local directories, you will want to get links from themed directories. Here is a list of directory directories that you can submit to.

Don’t bother submitting your site to off topic, spammy directories. It’s a waste of time.

Have great content that people naturally link to

This is the best type of link, and also the hardest to get. Building a blog and posting information and opinions is a great way to get people linking to you (so long as you have an opinion and information worthy of posting).

Tips to keep in mind

  • Slow and steady link building is much more effective than building a bunch of links in one week and then forgetting about the link building campaign. When I am linkbuilding for clients, I do x numbers per week over a period of months.
  • You should create a system for your link building. Have a follow up system where you can check to see that links you’ve built are active
  • Track your progress. Don’t just track the links you build but also track your traffic and rankings.

Summary

While not an extensive guide by any means, this article concludes the three part local search series. I’m confident that if you follow these guides, your website will do well in search engines. I’ve used the methods outlined here to great success, and I’m sure you can too.

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  1. How to reach the top in local search - Part 2 » Lukevdp - 14. Dec, 2008

    [...] This article is part two of a three part series. If you haven’t already, read part one: keyword research before reading this article. If you know about onsite optimisation and want to skip forward, you can go to part three: link building. [...]