Link building means deliberately earning backlinks. Some links arrive on their own when people find your content useful. Link building is the effort to make that happen more often: creating things worth linking to, and making sure the right people know they exist.
Why it still matters
Links remain one of Google’s main ways of judging which sites are trusted. Two pages that are equally good on paper are often separated by the links pointing at them. For local businesses, links from local news, community organizations and industry associations also reinforce that the business is real and established.
Tactics that work
For local businesses
- Chamber of commerce, business association and trade body memberships
- Sponsoring local teams, charities and events that list sponsors on their sites
- Supplier and manufacturer “find a dealer” or “certified installer” pages
- Local news coverage: expert comments, seasonal advice, community stories
- Reputable directories relevant to your industry
For content-driven sites
- Original data and research that others will cite
- Useful free tools, calculators and templates
- Digital PR campaigns aimed at journalists
- Broken link building: offering your page as a replacement for a dead link
- Unlinked brand mentions: asking sites that mention you to add a link
- Selective guest posting on genuinely relevant sites
A local example
Coastline Plumbing doesn’t need hundreds of links. A realistic year might bring a dozen good ones: the Austin home builders’ association, two water heater brands’ installer directories, a sponsorship page for a youth soccer league, a news story quoting their lead plumber on preparing pipes for a freeze, and a neighborhood association’s list of recommended trades. Each is relevant, local and hard for a competitor to copy.
What to avoid
Google’s spam policies treat these as link schemes:
- Buying or selling links that pass ranking value
- Excessive link exchanges (“link to me and I’ll link to you”)
- Private blog networks (PBNs)
- Large-scale guest posting with keyword-rich anchor links
- Automated programs that create links
Tactics like these can lead to Google ignoring the links or, in serious cases, a manual action.
Common mistakes
- Measuring success by the number of links instead of their relevance and quality
- Mass outreach with generic templates that get ignored or marked as spam
- Building links only to the homepage when service and content pages need them too
- Stopping after a burst of effort; steady link growth looks and works better
How to manage it
RankThat’s Backlinks feature shows your backlink profile, new and lost links, link building prospects and broken links, and the competitor tools show which sites link to competitors but not to you. Track growth in referring domains over time.