By now, you’ve likely realized the value in showing up in Google when people near your business search for the goods or services you provide. That, in a nutshell, is local Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
There are numerous tactics to approach local SEO, including reviews, NAP registries, landing page optimizations, and video—and all are important—but there’s no getting around the power of local links pointing to your site.
How Do I Get Links to Improve Local SEO?
Since paying for spammy links is a bad idea, and betting on a feature story in The New York Times is a tad ambitious, link building is decidedly hard and often tedious work. So what can a small business do to get these quality local links—and even have fun in the process?
Are you ready to learn this amazing Local SEO secret that also combines branding, content marketing, social media, and business development all in one amazing package?
The Ultimate Cross-functional Experience: A Real Life Event
It’s hard to remember, but the promise of social media was to put real life online, not the other way around. Hosting an event also allows you to leverage the all-too-neglected art of networking to introduce you, your staff, and your fans to potential new customers in the community.
Assuming you have a website with a blog (if not, here’s an affordable solution), events help you transform your website into a hub of local activity and engaging content. It’s a lot of legwork, but in our opinion, events are the biggest bang for your buck.
Below are just a few of the many local SEO benefits of hosting an event:
- Drive local web traffic to your website for more information
- Build your community email list through a registration form on your website
- Incorporate your favorite cause, which distributes your website to its network to learn more
- Invite local bloggers and newspaper staff to participate
- Invite representatives of authoritative industry blogs to participate
- Publish event photography and even video on your site and share on social media and via email
- Invite other businesses and organizations to get involved, and help share your event link
- Request that your venue helps spread the word by sharing the event link to your site
- Post your event link on local community calendars
- Feature interesting locals and organizations on your blog before and after your event and encourage them to share the link via social media
- Add event content to your Google+ Page to signal relevance
- Request Google, Yelp, etc. reviews after your event
Every time someone Likes, Shares, or Retweets content pointing to your site, that’s powerful local SEO. Even better if your sponsors, partners, and fans link to your site directly from theirs.
Events are clearly nothing new, and it takes time and energy to pull it off. They’re also a ton of fun, and if you think of them as covering pretty much all your marketing bases at once, it’s a no-brainer.