Find high DA link opportunities in your local area
-
Hi, part of my link building strategy is ideally going to be from outreach to local businesses. I run a local service business operating in multiple locations (with no physical base). I have created local landing pages on which I'm showcasing local businesses and photographers (relevant not in terms of industry but location). Its my intention to show off their business as best I can, then get in touch to say "hey, we love what you're doing with X product/service, check out our site here [link]. We'd love it if you could link to us etc etc". Assuming that this is a valid strategy, what is the best way to find locally relevant sites with the highest domain authority?
-
I'd invest some time in becoming a power house social media user. It has an easy to understand metric (# of followers) that can be leveraged to get people interested in you. If I retweet your message to my 15,000 followers, I'm doing something that could benefit you a lot. You might get your potential partners reaching to you.
-
That makes total sense Miriam yes. Really appreciate your help as obviously didn't want to invest a ton of time and effort into generating the wrong content. Thanks!
-
I admire how you are trying to think of creative ways to connect yourself to other businesses. If the other local businesses were home-service related, like:
-
Window washers
-
Chimney sweeps
-
Gutter cleaners
-
Landscape maintenance companies
-
HVAC
..or similar services that surround maintaining a clean, functional home, then I could see you featuring them as a bonus service to your clients. You might even come to co-promotional deals with some of these (10% off your cleaning service for a month + 10% off a chimney inspection). In this scenario, there is a common thread tying all of the businesses together, that I'm just not seeing in the idea you are considering about wedding photographers and home cleaning/other startups.
Being a startup may galvanize the business community, but is unlikely to be seen as a desirable commonality by consumers. So, best advice here, you've got to find connections that make sense in terms of both geography AND industry. Going with other home service-related businesses would be natural, and provided the content you create is meaningful (not just a list of links) could prove useful to consumers who might feel confidence in businesses your company recommends if they trust your business. Hope this helps!
-
-
Again, great ideas Miriam, though just to clarify though, I was thinking (in my capacity as a start-up local business) of featuring other start-up local businesses that I think do a great job, not because we clean for them. Additionally I was think about getting local photographers to provide great images for each of our local landing pages (think airbnb do this?). Basically because its a great way of getting top notch original images without pinching them. From the photographers point of view, we clean for hundreds of young professional couples who, during the time we clean for them, get married. If they had originally seen a local photographer mentioned as supplying the images for our site (we have a carousel of images right at the bottom of the page where they can feature multiple images and a brief paragraph about the work they do - almost all do weddings obviously)...
I think your clean bathroom idea could work really well from a social media point of view, so will have a think about that. Let me know if you think the proposed coverage of 'local start-up heros' on each landing page has no legs - I also thought that such entities would be more likely to be social, and as they are local, THAT in itself would be relevant.
Cheers!
-
Hi Cleanily,
Thanks for coming back with further info. You are right ... from a public perspective these good features of your business aren't really going to be a jumping off point for connecting you to other businesses. Sometimes, cleaning companies have something particular about the way they operate (like green practices) that can hook them into a larger web of businesses with similar goals/customers, but in your case, things look pretty standard.
You could do features of businesses you clean locally, but honestly, I'm not seeing big connection between someone learning that a cleaning service cleans X restaurant and people wanting to then eat at that restaurant, or for the restaurant wanting to link to your cleaning website because you've featured them. That's just not a natural flow.
Thinking ...
You know something that always gets me? Businesses with dirty restrooms. My gosh, I really, really don't like that. Not to mention, there are groups of people that are in the position of urgently needing to find a restaurant while away from home. These might include:
-
Travelers
-
People with medical conditions (IBS, ulcerative colitis, bladder troubles)
-
Families with small children, out on the town.
These people often find themselves at the mercy of gas stations, which are often appalling.
This may be kind of an off-the-wall idea, but what if you did some sort of social outreach mapping out the cleanest restrooms in the towns you serve. You have some inside information on this, because of which businesses you serve (that is, if you clean their restrooms) and you could expand on that surveying/photographing local restrooms, make a map and award the top restrooms the 'Brand Name Cleaning Company Stamp of Cleanliness' or something like that. I don't know if the businesses that are featured might be excited enough to link back to you, but you could generate some social mentions. It would associate your brand with both the local area and with cleanliness (things you want). You might even make it onto local blogs/local news with this promotion.
Interestingly, dirtiness made it into a recent survey GetFiveStars took of things that cause customers to complain. Another found that 80% of patrons would avoid a restaurant if it has a dirty restroom. And, you have only to search the term yelp restaurant dirty bathroom to see how repelled consumers are by a lack of cleanliness. In other words, it's something people feel very strongly about and your business, as an authority on cleanliness, might possibly step in and provide some help.
Maybe you won't go with this idea, but maybe the brainstorming process will help you think of something similar. I'm honestly not seeing a huge opportunity for some of the more standard linkbuilding relationships one can often turn to, so, in cases like yours, something outside-the-box can be required.
I'm going to ask one of my team members to pop in to talk to you about assessing DA using Moz Pro to answer the other part of your question.
-
-
Hi Miriam, thanks again for getting back, yes I do have Moz Pro...in terms of the actual service we provide there are a few things I suppose, though in terms of actual cleaning I would only be saying the same as any other company:
Things which are differentiators:
1). We have built a custom platform which allows our cleaners to start and finish each job via our app, in addition to allowing cleaners to receive messages/instructions.
2. This means back office can tell if the cleaner is late/doesn't show at all or leaves the early late. Their start and finish locations (and times) are also recorded.
3. Customers are automatically charged (as long as jobs have been completed correctly).
4. Customers have the ability to meet a local cleaning manager or book online. This puts us somewhere between an 'on demand' service and a traditional agency. 'Almost on-demand' I guess.
-
Hmm, housecleaning. Thinking about that.
In the meantime ... a couple of questions:
-
Do you have Moz Pro?
-
Is there anything particular about your cleaning service ... like green housecleaning or some other distinguishing factor?
-
-
Thanks Miriam, that is useful in focusing efforts. The problem is that since my business (house cleaning) could be relevant to pretty much anyone, I've had a hard time coming up with creative correlations which would foster engagement. Also as we do a small amount of commercial, quite a large number of bars, restaurants, or basically any space which needs cleaning would be relevant. Furthermore, a local audience would also be interested to a degree, in reviews of the aforesaid I guess. We do currently rank highly for quite a few locations and could therefore demonstrate value to people we reached out to. What I was trying to find was some means of filtering out local businesses (rather than manually) with high local DA, given that so many would be relevant.
-
Hi There!
I agree with this advice from Chris, "identify local businesses that compliment yours and delve into ways you can jointly generate interest."
In terms of seeing DA, do you have the Moz Bar installed? That will show you the DA of any page.
I would also suggest that you think of this topically. Think of a topic/keyword that relates to your industry/geography and look it up in Google. See what is ranking well in Google for that term and then see if there is a chance to build a relationship with the highest visibility players, if they are of high quality (i.e. not dumb spam ranking well) and could be related to your business in some way.
The relationship is very important. For example, let's say yours is a dog walking business. You might see a natural relationship between your business and:
-
Local vets
-
Local obedience trainers
-
Local pet supply/feed stores
-
Local Canine Companion-type organizations
-
Local programs that take dogs to visit elders, people recovering from illness, etc.
-
Local dog parks
-
Other types of local parks where you are allowed to take dogs on/off-leash
-
Dog-friendly restaurants and lodgings in the area
-
Local colleges offering veterinary courses
All of the above meet the related geography/industry criteria and could be featured to add meaningful content to your website that might be helpful to your dog-loving audience. If you write excellent content, including reviewing these places/services, photographing them, and engaging the business owners where appropriate for an interview, you will be creating a valuable resource that the businesses may well link to. There may also be some opportunities in that quick list of mine for co-promotional events between your business and another local business.
This approach makes much more sense than a dog walker attempting to correlate his business with chiropractors, autobody shops or window washers, just because they are local. Ask yourself: is my audience looking for pet-related services going to be interested in what I'm building? If so, the relationship makes sense. If not, likely best to skip it.
You might also get some good ideas for meaningful outreach here: https://moz.com/blog/using-the-barnacle-seo-method-to-prove-local-community-awareness
Hope this helps!
-
-
That sounds a bit simplistic to me. My first questions is what value are you providing these local businesses that makes it worth them linking to you? Just a landing page? On your site? Will those pages rank? Most certainly not above theirs.
There's nothing wrong with building community and contacts within your local area of business but spend your time on something that's actually of value to them and, ideally, a common audience. Don't be discriminant; identify local businesses that compliment yours and delve into ways you can jointly generate interest. I If you focus on stuff their audience will tune in to, those other local businesses will be more receptive to joining you online. It's all about the audience anyway, right?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How valuable is non-local organic traffic for local business?
Hey friends! I work for a local digital marketing agency in Greenville, SC – serving primarily local small businesses. Over the past six months, we've increased our monthly organic traffic by almost 100%. The majority of this traffic is coming to blogs we've written over the past year on industry topics and trends. I love seeing our traffic increase, but it hasn't necessarily translated to more quality leads. Conversion numbers have largely remained the same. I think one reason is that a lot of this traffic isn't local. Here's my question: as a local business, how valuable is content that ranks well and drives organic traffic, when the traffic isn't local, and from users we would never work with? A lot of this content has earned links and grown our authority, so I suppose we've seen benefit, but I'm struggling to convince myself that it's really that valuable. I know local content is key, but it feels like what we want to educate on isn't searched locally. Would love to hear your thoughts! Thanks!
Local SEO | | brooksmanley3 -
"We" or "I" for a small local healthcare enterprise?
Hi all, SEO newb here (or possibly rookie!). I'm a health professional and run a small, new specialised healthcare business targeting a local area (15 miles max). My product as such is the service I provide. There is a grand total of one employee, that of course being me! My SEO goal is phonecalls made and subsequent bookings as opposed to sales. Prior to joining here, I just looked at websites that provide a similar service and blindly assumed that a "We" approach to writing content was the accepted norm for presumed professional appearance. On reflection however, not only are most of these employing a team, most are in areas much more metropolitan than I operate in (I operate in a medium sized town where almost everyone knows everyone else by about 1 degree). In addition, I have run into a few difficulties with this however when writing content/incorporating keywords. Now I am about to re-write my "About Me" section I'm having a real challenge using the aforementioned context while sounding personable and like-able. Does anyone have any advice or experience re the correct context to use, in regards to the difference in CTR's and bounce rates etc in a small one-man enterprise that offers specialised services to the local area? Many thanks!
Local SEO | | UkPod1 -
Local SEO & Google Maps Question - 1 Company with Multiple Google Pages
Hey Mozzers! I'm working with a client who has 2 websites (different URLs completely), which one is for all parts and the other is for accessories only. They have multiple brick and mortar locations throughout the US and have done a nice job creating Google My Business pages for each and all verified. Their question is will it benefit them to create and verify another GMB page with same address, but place in "Suite B", a new phone number and apply the other URLs for the accessories site. The business name would also be different, but similar meaning Business 1 = ABC where as Business 2 = ABC Accessories. Their goal would be to try to have both rank or display to improve their local SEO. In theory it sounds like it will work given NAP would be satisfied within the GMB, but wanted to get the Moz community thoughts on this first before moving forward. Look forward to the replies. Patrick
Local SEO | | WhiteboardCreations0 -
Happy Local New Year from Miriam
First, I want to thank all of our awesome community members here who continuously post interesting, tough and good Local SEO question in the Moz Q&A forum. I love chatting with you all, and I hope you'll keep asking away, giving us all the opportunity to muse and learn together. I think 2018 is going to be challenging and fun, and have a few thoughts on that I'd like to share, hoping you'll reply with your own tips and predictions. In the new year, I believe: Quality is going to further solidify as the most apparent differentiator of local businesses, giving those companies with the most considerate and excellent service and policies the upper hand. Memorably good customer service will drive the high-star reputation and word-of-mouth marketing that leads to success. Small local businesses have an advantage here, in their agility to implement the most genuine home-town excellence, but bigger brands can strive for this, too. From skilled phone service, to adequate in-store staffing, to employee training, to dedicated management of all online local assets, to initiatives that make a lasting, positive impression on consumers, quality is the key ingredient to loyalty, which is what every local business should most pursue in 2018. Speaking of loyalty, I would especially advise SABs to leave no stone unturned in earning it. Google's LSA program will be a serious disruptor of business-as-usual in this sector, changing the makeup of local SERPs and striving to become the middleman in the service industries. SAB owners won't love having to rent back their customers for a fee to Google, so developing Google-independent streams of leads and repeat customers will be vital in any city where LSA rolls out in the coming year. Serving in a smaller town? Begin working on Google-independence anyway, particularly via word-of-mouth marketing so that you have these streams running in advance, should LSA move beyond the more densely-populated areas. While developing Google-independence, don't overlook Google opportunities that are still free. I think Google Posts was the most interesting development of 2017, and there has been some anecdotal evidence that weekly use of this form of knowledge panel microblogging may give a small ranking boost. Be an early adopter and take advantage of that. 2018 may be the year in which Google finally cracks down on two things: keyword stuffing of the business title and review spam. I'm sure they're tired of the complaints surrounding the former and if Google's commitment to identifying quality remains in place, sooner or later, they have got to deal with this false signal of relevance the same way that have with EMDs. As to the latter, Google's increased focus on reviews over the past year is apparent in the sheer number of emails they are now sending out regarding them. Also fascinating to see that we're closing out 2017 with third-party reviews finally reappearing in Google's local products, after years of absence and trouble with the FTC. Overall, Google knows that their review corpus is dependent on consumers trusting it, and better spam detection methodologies and better/faster response to review spam reporting has got to be on their to-do list. This could be the year! For local businesses, protection lies in abandoning any type of spammy practice (from keyword stuffing to self-reviewing). And, being proactive if you are the victim of review spam. Report it. Raise a polite but firm hullabaloo. Let Google know you hold them to reasonable standards of accountability in their role as public arbiter of brand reputation. The best Local SEO agencies and local business will dig deeper into the history and tactics of organic SEO than ever before. We need to understand Hummingbird, RankBrain, and matching content to the buyer journey with the best of them. We need to master not just linkbuilding, but the relationship building that makes it most authentic and of most lasting value - and this is an area in which local businesses have a massive advantage over virtual ones, in that we can actually meet our neighbors face-to-face to build beneficial bonds. And we need to get a real handle on the technical side of SEO, understanding how site structure, handling of the robots.txt file, and the management of indexation and accessibility issues impact us. When we put high-level knowledge of all these considerations together with our Local SEO know-how, we can be successful in new, exciting ways we may have overlooked in the past. Oh, there's so much more I could say about the interesting things I see coming in 2018, but I'd love it if you'd talk now. What do you see in our industry's near future? I'd love to know. And let me take this opportunity to wish you all a fun, exciting and prosperous new year!
Local SEO | | MiriamEllis11 -
I am ranking for local broad terms, but I am not ranking when geo-modifier is included.
I have noticed that my rankings for broad terms have dramatically improved in the area I service. But, when I put the broad term in my search query with a geo-modifier I notice I am still not ranking even though my domain authority and page authority is higher than the competitor who is ranking. Why might this be? I am not penalized, or have a manual action. I am also featured in more hyperlocal niche directories.
Local SEO | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Local SEO for B&B - Attracting International Customer
Hi Guys, Hope the MOZ expert community will be able to help me 🙂 What would be the best way to manage the SEO for a Bed and Breakfast ? As the B&B is in a touristic place in France attracting lots of German, American and British tourists, the website will be in French, translated in English and German. It will be set up under a .fr extension and using wordpress multisite for each languages, so it will look like this: French: www.mydomain.fr English: en.mydomain.fr German: de.mydomain.fr They'll roughly have the same content for the business part, but they'll have different articles on their respective blogs. Now my questions are: If I sign up to Google my business (http://www.google.com/business/) Would I be able to translate all my business descriptions, separate the reviews per language, use google+ for different language? If not, then should I sign up for the French version of "google my business" and then open 2 separate G+ pages for the English and German version ? Can I open 3 different "google my business" account for each language but with the same google account, same telephone number and same business address ? Should I actually "translate" my business name and create 3 separate website so I can open a "Google my business" for each, but then they'll still have the same address and phone number ? Basically, I want to find the best solution for people around the world to see the content in their own language (reviews, blog post...) and also show up on map listings for google.com /.co.uk / .fr / .de etc... Other social media: Facebook: should I have one page and target the English language for each post in English, etc... Or should I have 3 facebook page in each language ? Should I have 3 pinterest accounts, or should I create 3 boards for each language so I can describe each pictures in proper language Miscellaneous Don't hesitate to give me any other important tips that I should think about before launching ! After being an employee for many years, I want to rock my own business 🙂 Cheers
Local SEO | | LELOnic0 -
Question about Multi-Locale/Lang Sitemaps
If you have one site with multiple language and locale variations how best should one approach the sitemaps. Here is what I believe the options to be: sitemap_index.xml which includes all of the difference lang/locale sitemaps on the site create 1 main sitemap that includes the rel=alternate href lang for ever alternate page to the main US version. Do the sitemap_index.xml for all the other sitemaps and also include the rel=alternate href lang in those separate ones as well. I have these in this order because it goes from least to most work....Thoughts folks?
Local SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt0 -
Significant organic traffic increase from outside of my service area
I run a local service based business. About 6 months ago, I updated my homepage title tag to incorporate the phrase "near me" (I performed other optimizations as well). Over the last few months, I've noticed increased traffic, calls and online bookings from different areas around the country. I was perplexed, I thought I may have mis-targeted my ppc campaign. After some digging, I found out that my home page ranks #2 in the organic listings for a couple core service keywords with the "near me" phrase added. Of course, my bounce rate, from these visitors outside of my local area, is pretty high (65%). Also, the majority of these visitors are using mobile devices. I see an opportunity here to possibly provide relevant information to the searchers, based on their geographic area. The problem is that, I can't risk modifying my website for the sake of this "out of area" traffic. If I were to provide a page to a visitor based on their ip, could that be considered a black hat tactic? I don't want to do anything that will compromise my core business. Any advice will be welcomed.
Local SEO | | CWG75750