What I like to call “dummy links” are links that you can get with a little commitment of resources, but without having to think too hard.
You’ll need to earn some good links (from other, relevant sites to your site) if you want to rank well in the local search results. If you’re in a semi-competitive market, that is. If you’re trying to rank for “Tulsa taxidermist,” you’ll probably do just fine without.
Too many business owners – and their marketing companies – think local SEO is just a matter of citations and on-page optimization and your Google My Business page and maybe getting a few reviews. What gets overlooked is how much overlap there is between “local” SEO and classic organic SEO. Links affect not only your rankings on the map, but also your rankings for search terms for which Google doesn’t show the map.
In my experience, links are usually the main reason that big ugly corporations fare better in the local search results than they should.
Still, most people who know links affect their visibility never really try to get them. Business owners don’t know where to start, don’t want to pay for work with long-term payoff, or don’t want to invest much at all. Marketing companies don’t know what to do, either, and don’t want to bill their clients for work that takes thinking, that has only long-term payoff, and that maybe doesn’t look as good on paper as “Built 50 links this month!”
I’ll assume you’re different: you’ll do what you can to get relevant, non-spammy links, if you just know roughly what direction to go.
That’s why I’ve put together this list of doable, straightforward link opportunities:
https://goo.gl/tLl6Dl
They’re link opportunities that may require a few minutes of research on your part, but that don’t require you to think, “OK, so what do I write, and then how do I do outreach to try to get someone to read the damn thing and link to it?”
They’re also not the types of links that any dolt could buy by the thousands on Fiverr or Upwork or ODesk – the kind Google usually likes for about a two months before putting your site in the box.
I’ve listed real-life examples, where possible.
Are there other ways to earn high-payoff links? Of course. (Here’s an excellent resource.) Building an audience and becoming an “authority” is great. Assuming you’ve taken care of first things first, I’ll be the last guy to try to talk you out of that.
The point is you don’t have to try something that takes years or that has a steep learning curve, just to get the kinds of links that can help your local visibility.
Grab 10 link opportunities from the list and try to execute on them over the next few months.
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Any other good “dummy link” opportunities you can think of?
Any questions?
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