Local SEO is never a straightforward process, but it can be made a little easier with the use of local backlinks.
Local backlinks exist in order to increase your organic search engine rankings.
They are more than articles and blog posts that link to your website and help you gain more organic traffic due to the fact that your content is being shared by other local websites within Malaysia.
This will often translate into better quality links for you as well, which will raise your position in Google’s algorithm.
What is local link building?
Local link building is the process of publicly linking to your website from other websites within the same country as it is, in this case, Malaysia.
With Google’s move to making search results more local and relevant to their searchers, it would be sensible to gain support from local websites as well.
For example, if you own a website about database design or programming languages and you are based in Malaysia and want to improve the quality of your site’s competency.
Then you can perform local link building with the local SEO Malaysia link building techniques here.
You would tell other local websites that have a database or programming language-related articles that you want to truly enhance your web page by linking to it.
You might hear someone referring to these as the niche links.
The Basics of Local SEO Link Building
Local SEO link building can be as easy as contacting your local press and letting them know that you have created a website for their city or state.
Use your creativity to find other ways to increase the amount of links that you have on your website.
There are many different types of link-building techniques, but it is crucial that you use high-quality links in order to succeed at local SEO link building.
Make sure you avoid these local SEO mistakes though.
We have 9 local link building strategies that are proven to be effective for local SEO.
Why “local backlinks”?
If you were to think about SEO link building in Malaysia, then you might first think that you need to be a Fortune 500 company in order to build links.
This is not always true, as there are many smaller local businesses, particularly in the field of web design and marketing that can still perform local SEO link building successfully.
Local link building may not be just for larger companies.
Smaller enterprises tend to get lost in the shuffle of smaller local businesses.
To stand out, you need to put yourself out there and market yourself as a part of the community.
Create a strategy for your link-building campaign as these are your off page SEO strategy as well.
You need to do this in order to ensure that your website is successful.
You can easily spend a lot of money on SEO services for link building, but you do not always get what you pay for.
While pay-per-click advertising may be more effective at securing links for your site than spending hundreds or thousands of Ringgit on SEO experts that may not really be proficient at all.
The importance of local backlinks is that you need relevancy and locality for your local business and achieve some gain in terms of SEO.
And of course, you need publicity and visibility as well.
Most of the time, it makes sense that the local SEO is much easier than other forms of SEO, because of the fact that Google and other search engines are now offering “local results” which makes it easier for local business owners to gain more customers.
Now, let’s get on with our 9 Solid Local Link Building Techniques & Strategies below.
#1. Sponsoring Local Business
As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you are going to have a choice between paying to get your name out there or you are going to pay for other people to get your name out there.
Sponsoring a local business that is related to your niche makes the perfect match.
You are helping a fellow entrepreneur and your brand is getting more publicity.
Whether you are accepting sponsored links or are trying to acquire one, make sure you follow these best practices.
#2. Local Press Backlinks
Local press is the most effective way to get your company and site out there.
A local business owner or entrepreneur may not have the budget for a full-fledged marketing campaign but they can easily get their local business out there by getting links from their local media.
Make sure that your press release link back to your site.
An article about your company or service should be just right.
It is important to get your message across and it is best to get your message out in an original way.
Convey the message that resonates with the local audience and word will spread by itself.
#3. Featured on Local Review Sites
You might have heard of Yelp, ConsumerReports, or even Trustpilot.
Those are globally recognizable review sites that help local business owners get publicity as well as get local backlinks from their website.
You can actually make it your goal to get your name out there on those websites, register your business and ask your customer to leave some awesome reviews there.
This will be the killing link-building strategy.
As for a local review site, you can always try out [https://my.openrice.com/en/klangvalley] for your restaurant or food-related business.
The sky is the limit, you can always Google and search for a relevant site and sign up with them.
#4. Post on Job Posting Websites
A link is a link, isn’t it?
Negotiate with job posting sites to allow you to post your current openings on their website.
They will, of course, want you to link back to your website.
Not only do you gain a link from these posting sites, but a suitable candidate can also receive more information regarding your company or business as well.
You are going to get a suitable candidate for your position and they will receive a referral fee from you.
Everyone wins!
Jobstreet, Monster.com.my, and my.hiredly.com (formerly WOBB) are some of the Malaysian hiring portals that you can sign up for.
#5. Collaborate With Local Influencers & bloggers
You are going to want to collaborate with as many local influencers as you can.
An influencer is an influential person that goes beyond his or her traditional role.
Collaborate with the local blogger by sponsoring your service or product to them and ask for a genuine review.
You can even take it a step further and become a blogger or a reviewer with the same goal of promoting your favorite website and business.
A lot of people make money through blogging so you will have a lot of competition but you will have all the credit if your blog is getting more views.
#6. List Your Business In Local Directories & citation
Local directories are going to be your link-building home base.
These are going to be the most important way for you to get local backlinks from high ranking authorities and basically for free.
Make sure that your listing is complete with all the right information and citations so that you can maintain a consistent local SEO presence.
Don’t always just depend on one directory, do lots at once.
Yellowpages, Businesslist, Expat.com, and Hotfrog are some to get started with.
#7. Find Broken Links & Mentions
Make it an everyday practice to search for broken links and mentions on your business name.
Broken links are nothing but a doorway to opportunity and it is going to be the easiest link-building strategy ever.
You are going to want to contact the webmaster and let them know about the broken link so that you can replace it with your own through a local backlink from your site.
As for the mentions, you are going to want to see if anyone mentioned you or your business but did not link to you.
We used Google Alerts to monitor all the web activities by typing in your keyword.
You can create an alert whenever there’s a mention on your keyword and Google will send you a nudge in your inbox.
Reach out to the particular party and simply ask for a link back.
#8. Get Social Bookmark Links
These may sound old-school but they are still relevant.
The important message here is to get things rolling.
Social bookmarking sites are always going to be a great way to get your site and business out there for free.
Sign up on sites like Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon, and even Facebook.
Build a complete profile and submit your website into the category you want but most importantly start submitting and vote for other websites.
This will always get you high-quality links back to your site.
#9. Involve and Contribute to Local Forums
Local forums are always going to be a great way to get your name out there.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a plumber or an electrician, it is still important to be able to connect with people that might be looking for a service or product for their problem.
You are going to want to build up trust and authority within the community of the forum.
But make sure that you visit the forum often and provide valuable insights or information to users’ problems.
Solve their problems or concerns and they will solve yours in return.
There are still some forums that have high activities or involvement from supportive users in Malaysia.
The ones that we used to hang out with are Lowyat, Malaysia Watch Forum, and Cari.
Or you can simply create a Facebook group and gather all the enthusiastic and generate loyal followers.
Keeping Track of Your Links
Now that you had generated and garners some links, it’s time for you to keeping track of them.
You could use the help from some paid tools like monitorbacklinks, or Buzzsumo.
But I had created a backlink monitoring tool that is free by using Google Sheets.
Make sure you check out my resources here and you can replicate them for your own use as well.
Why keeping track of your links are important?
You need to track your links in order to ensure that your links are still relevant and they are still existing.
It’s important to keep track of them in order to ensure that you can get rid of the bad links or spammy links as early as possible so that you can create a better, relevant backlink strategy later on.
See who is linking to your website, what is the type of link and anchor text used, do they have no-follow links, do they have images in their hyperlinks, or even download files.
By keeping track of your backlinks you will be able to differentiate the good from the bad and ensure that you are getting higher quality backlinks that can help with local SEO.
But, how do I know where are the links coming from?
Well, you can either register a free ahrefs account, verified your domain, and let ahrefs did the rest.
In your dashboard, you should be able to see your projects which are your domain or website.
Click on the Backlinks column, and you’ll be able to see all the live backlinks.
Copy those referring pages and paste them into our backlinks checker.
Or you could just download all the links that are being discovered using Google Search Console which I like to utilize these free Google tools.
You will be surprised by the numbers of the links here but I still prefer the free ahrefs method.
[Bonus] How to Find More Local Link Opportunities
Now that you have local backlinks from authority sites, it’s time to find out where else we can get more local links from.
Well, there are still a lot of ways for it but you might need to put in some time with this one.
Outreaching is one of the most effective ways to gain link opportunities though it is very hard to achieve success with.
Local content marketing is an important aspect of our link-building strategy as well so you might want to start researching how businesses can create quality content and share it through other channels.
Keep your friends close and your enemy closer
– the art of war
Another way of acquiring quality links would be to spy on your competitor.
See what they are doing and try to gain the same advantage and bridge down the gap.
Monitor your competitors’ backlinks for relevant backlinks opportunities as well.
Conclusion
The above are some of the most effective ways to get local backlinks or inbound links as well.
There is still a lot more than you can do to get backlinks but it does require time.
As much as that being said, you need to throw these techniques into action and find out which ones work for you.
People will always be quick to tell you that “content marketing is the best strategy,” but as we’ve seen, it might not be the best strategy when it comes to local SEO and backlinks.
With that said, content is still important and relevant if done correctly.
People will not link back to you if your content is not worthy.
So what are you waiting for?
Get started on building your backlinks today.
It will take time but once you achieve success with this strategy, your rankings will follow suit.
While these are a great way to begin, JustRank and I certainly hope that you will be able to accomplish your business’s goals locally as well.
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Resources:
- https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091?hl=en
- https://www.brightlocal.com/blog/why-you-still-need-local-links-in-2020-and-how-to-get-them/
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/guidelines/link-schemes
- https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2021/07/link-tagging-and-link-spam-update
