How to do local link building the right way

Last updated: April 2026

If you’re marketing a local business online, earning quality local links isn’t just good for local SEO, it’s good for business, too.

So what is local link building?

Local link building is the practice of acquiring links from other local websites. For example; local news sites, other local businesses, local bloggers, or local directories. The key thing with a local link is that it should come from a site that is location-specific to your own area of operation.

This is where it differs from traditional SEO link building. Generally, with traditional link building, while relevance is key, you may be going after hundreds or thousands of links from huge websites, which can be a much more difficult task. The key to building local links is building relationships in your local area, which may feel like a much smaller task.

Does link building affect local SEO?

Simply put, local link building is well worth investing time into. And that’s beyond the impact on search.

For starters, links from relevant local sources are regularly mentioned as a local ranking factor. That means that getting relevant links can improve your site’s ranking in local organic searches and your Google Business Profile in the Local Pack. As the above table shows, ‘link signals’ are one of the biggest ranking factors for the local organic results.

Other benefits of local link building

Building awareness is an often-overlooked benefit of earning local links. When potential customers or clients begin the research and discovery phase of their journey, they are looking for answers, resources, education, data, opinions, and insights from sources they know, like, and/or trust. Earning links to your site/pages from these sources can be a remarkably effective way to get on their radar.

How do I create a local backlink?

Acquiring local links from business directories and review sites is really ticket-to-entry local link building for awareness. In terms of deciding which sites to prioritize, start with the directories that appear most prominently for relevant awareness search queries.

In addition to directories, other ‘local links for awareness’ options include:

• Local blogs (contributing and commenting)
• Local news
• Local community forums

Free Course: How to Master Local Link Building

How many local links do you need?

There’s no definitive answer to this question—links are just one piece of a larger puzzle. You may regularly find sites with a handful of links outranking those with thousands.

Nine local link-building strategies

Building local links for business is also about “getting out there” in your local community. It’s been said that the best links tend to grow from building great relationships.

1. Find local sponsorship opportunities

2. Get involved with local events

3. Consider offering scholarships

4. Look at local community sites

5. Support your local charities

6. Connect with local creatives

7. Create local case studies

8. Create an ongoing column with your local paper or news site

9. Apply to speak at local events

Four traditional link-building tactics to help build local links

1. Look at your competitor’s links

2. Link reclamation

3. Track brand mentions

4. Content marketing and digital PR

Dos and don’ts of local link building

Almost all local SEO experts agree that link building is effective for boosting local search rankings. Google also confirms links help improve your local ranking.

• Don’t prospect local links based on proxy domain metrics.
• Don’t ignore NoFollow link opportunities.
• Don’t ignore linkless citations and mentions.
• Don’t obsess over the anchor text.
• Do prospect local links for relevance.
• Do go hyper-local.
• Do use crawlers to identify link opportunities.
• Do use competition-informed prospecting.