Anyone running a small business has been informed one way or another about local seo, and what it can do for your business. Anytime seo is being discussed, backlinks tend to work their way into the discussion. Backlinking is an important part of seo, and some would argue that it’s the most important. Whatever you’re opinion may be, you need to understand that backlinks for local businesses are not the same as backlinks for most other seo campaigns.
A brief history of backlinks.
Most marketers that use seo as a main source of their traffic will take on an extensive backlink campaign in order to have an edge over the competition. At one time, the more backlinks you had to your site the higher your site would rank. This was important to anyone in tough battle over the number one spot on the results page. Luckily, those times have past and the amount of links pointing to a site is no longer a major ranking factor.
Now, instead of just the amount of links, the relevancy of those links is considered. This was due to an update implemented by Google to enhance the user experience while using their search engine. It was one of the best moves Google could've made. No matter what anyone else tells you, the penguin update not only enhanced user experience but it helped honest marketers to reach the audience they couldn't reach before, due to spammy sites that were gaming the system.
When you’re running a local seo campaign the backlinking you do should be done for an entirely different reason. You should use backlinks for a traffic booster instead of an seo boost. While backlinks still offer added seo power, it’s not the main thing Google looks for when ranking a local site.
Now you know what backlinks are used for when being implemented for a local site. Therefore when an seo company is talking to you about your linking strategy, you can be sure to let them know just how much you’re willing to invest in it.
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