Leveraging the authority of a blog to boost pages on a root domain.

[Davey_Tree]

Hi!

Looking for some link building advice. For some background, I work for a company that has over 100 locations across the US. So we are deeply involved with local SEO. We also do a ton of evergreen/ national SEO as well and the spectrums are widely different for the most part. We also have a very successful blog in our industry. It really is an SEO’s dream. I do not even need to worry about a link strategy for this because it just naturally snatches them up.

I’m trying to find some unique ways to utilize the blog to boost pages on my main root domain, more specifically, at the local level.

It is really hard, besides the standard methods for local link building, to get outside sources to link to our local office pages. These pages are our bread and butter, and the pages we need to be as successful as possible. In every market we are in, we are at a disadvantage because we have one page to establish our local footprint and rank, compared to domains that have their entire site pointed at that local area we are trying to rank in.

I’ve tried linking to local office pages from successful blog posts to attempt to pass link juice to the local pages, but I haven’t seen much in terms of moving the needle doing this. Are there any crafty ideas on how I can shuffle some internal linking around to capitalize on the blog’s authority to make my local pages rank higher in their markets?

Thank you!

-Ben

[MiriamEllis]

Wishing you luck, Ben, and totally see how scaling can be difficult, particularly if some of the managers are a bit tech-wary. Little by little, more companies are becoming aware of the need for local expertise that can be translated into marketing outreach. If you can get this business on track with that, you'll be doing them a big favor.

[Davey_Tree]

Thanks Miriam!

The community outreach approach is always on our radar. Because of the nature of each office being in a different area with different managers and different philosophies, this is really hard to scale. There are some managers that still want nothing to do with digital, which shows how old school some of these guys can get. I am going to check out that tool you suggested for sure. If I can present them with everything they need to know, I will have a much better chance of convincing them. Thanks again!

[Davey_Tree]

Thanks, Sean I will check this out!

[MiriamEllis]

Great topic, Ben! Thank you for bringing your question here.

Coincidentally, I've been working on a document regarding scenarios like this one. Unfortunately, it's far from ready for publication, but I can share some suggestions with you.

1. Does each location of the business, or at least each region, have something akin to a local community expert? If so, this is the person you need to be in contact with. If not, you'll have to do this research yourself. Find out what the major events of the area are (fairs, expos, conferences, events, concerts, workshops, celebrations). Next, find out what the most cherished and most influential local entities are (schools, organizations, associations, teams).

2. Now that you have this data, determine where the opportunity lies for a specific location of the business to sponsor, host, speak at, attend or otherwise support these happenings and entities. This could run the gamut from supplying the charcoal for the 4th of July BBQ, to sponsoring a little league team, to offering a scholarship at the community college, to hosting a seminar on a topic relevant to your business. Be SURE the landing page for the location showcases this information.

3. In return for participation and philanthropy, request that online recognition links to the desired landing page. If the local news, local bloggers or other community media can be nudged to promote the company's giving/involvement, and they are linking to the homepage instead of the landing page, follow-up and request that the link be edited to go the page that features your own story about what the business is doing (again, be SURE this exists on the city landing page).

4. If all these seems like too much work, given the scale of your client, I recommend you check out ZipSprout's sponsorship tool, which does much of the research for you.

Hope this helps!

[TucsonAZWebDesign]

I found this article on KissiMetrics blog to be quite useful as far as internal linking is concerned. Not sure why he dubbed them the "7 commandments", I'm pretty sure it was 7 deadly sins and 10 commandments but... whatever lol:

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/commandments-of-internal-linking/