How to Get Backlinks for a Local Business

How do I get backlinks for a local business?

Earn them locally: sponsor a team, event, or charity; join your Chamber of Commerce and trade associations; swap links with complementary local businesses; pitch local press and podcasts; and get listed on local “best of” and resource pages. Focus on relevant, real-world relationships — and never buy links.

A backlink is a clickable link from another website to yours, and it’s one of the ways Google decides which sites to trust. For a local service business — a plumber, a dentist, a law firm — you don’t need thousands of them. You need a modest number of relevant, local, honestly earned links. This guide walks through the tactics that work for a small business without a marketing team, and the one shortcut that will get you in trouble.

Why backlinks matter for a local business

Backlinks are a genuine local ranking signal. BrightLocal’s summary of the local search ranking factors consistently lists link signals among the influences on both the local pack — that box of three businesses above the map — and local organic results. They matter less than they did a decade ago, and less than Google Business Profile and reviews, but they still act as an authority layer that lifts everything else you do.

They also affect whether your pages get found at all. Ahrefs studied billions of pages and found that 96.55% of content gets no traffic from Google, with a clear positive correlation between the number of sites linking to a page and the traffic it earns. Most pages that go nowhere have no links pointing at them. A handful of quality local links is often what separates a page that ranks from one that sits invisible on page five.

There’s a newer reason too. AI assistants like ChatGPT and Google Gemini increasingly answer “who’s the best electrician in Denver?” by weighing which businesses the wider web treats as credible. Real mentions and links from trusted local sources feed the same reputation signals, so link building quietly doubles as AI-visibility work.

“We stopped chasing random directory links and just sponsored our kids’ soccer league and the local food bank. Two real links from sites people in our town actually visit moved us into the map pack faster than a year of anything else,” — Dana Whitfield, HVAC company owner (illustrative).

How to get backlinks for a local business

Work through these tactics roughly in order — the early ones are the easiest wins and build the relationships the later ones rely on. None of them require a marketing budget, only a few hours a month.

1. Sponsor local events, teams, and charities

Local sponsorships are the most reliable link source a small business has. Sponsor a youth sports team, a 5K, a school fundraiser, a food bank, or a community festival, and the organizer’s website usually lists sponsors with a link back. These links are genuinely local, genuinely relevant, and hard for competitors to copy. Bonus: the goodwill is real, so you’re building reputation and links at the same time. Search “[your city] + charity run sponsors” or “[your town] + event sponsors” to find who already does this.

2. Join your Chamber of Commerce and trade associations

Almost every Chamber of Commerce lists member businesses with a link, and so do industry associations — a contractor’s trade body, a dental association, a bar association for lawyers. These are high-trust, locally relevant citations and links in one. Membership usually costs a modest annual fee and often comes with networking that leads to more links down the line. Add your regional business improvement district or a “shop local” alliance if your area has one.

3. Partner with complementary local businesses

Find businesses that serve the same customers without competing with you — a plumber and an electrician, a wedding photographer and a florist, a gym and a physiotherapist. Offer a genuine “trusted partners” or “who we recommend” page on each site that links to the other. Because the relationship is real and the referral is honest, this is not a manipulative link exchange; it’s two businesses vouching for each other. Keep it small and relevant — a dozen fake reciprocal links across unrelated sites is a pattern Google’s SpamBrain flags.

4. Earn local press and news coverage

Local newspapers, city blogs, and neighborhood news sites are always looking for stories, and their links carry real weight. Give them a reason: a milestone (ten years in business, a new location), a community angle (you fixed a nonprofit’s roof for free), a local expert take on a seasonal issue (a plumber on frozen pipes in January). Send a short, specific pitch to the reporter who covers business or community news. One feature in a local outlet is worth more than fifty directory submissions.

5. Get listed on local resource and “best of” pages

Plenty of local sites publish “best plumbers in [city]” roundups, neighborhood guides, and resource lists. City tourism boards, local parenting blogs, and community hubs often keep pages of recommended services. Find them by searching “best [your service] in [your city]” and “[your city] + resources” or “recommended [your trade]”, then reach out to the author explaining why you belong on the list. Being genuinely good — with reviews to prove it — is what gets you added.

6. Use HARO-style journalist requests and local podcasts

Services that connect reporters with sources — the platform formerly known as HARO, now Connectively, plus Qwoted and Featured — let you answer journalist questions in your field and earn a link when you’re quoted. Filter for local or industry-relevant queries you can genuinely answer. In the same spirit, offer to guest on a local business podcast or a niche show in your trade; most publish show notes with a link back to your site. Be a useful expert, not a salesperson, and the links follow.

7. Turn existing relationships into links

You already have link opportunities you haven’t asked for. Suppliers and manufacturers often keep a “where to buy” or “certified installers” page. Vendors, franchisors, and software you use may have partner directories. Trade schools you graduated from, professional certifications you hold, and clients who’d happily write a testimonial can all link to you. Make a list of every business you pay or partner with, then ask each whether they’d add you. Most say yes because it costs them nothing.

What NOT to do: don’t buy backlinks

The one shortcut to avoid is paying for links. Buying links, “guaranteed rankings” packages, mass link-exchange schemes, and cheap “1,000 backlinks for $50” gigs all violate Google’s spam policies on link schemes, which name exchanging money for links that pass ranking credit as a direct violation. Google can respond with a manual action that tanks your rankings, and its systems increasingly discount manipulative links automatically before they ever help you.

Paid placements aren’t always forbidden — if a link is an advertisement or sponsorship, it just needs a rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" tag so it doesn’t pass ranking credit. The line is simple: pay for exposure and relationships, not for ranking signals. A single earned link from your Chamber of Commerce is worth more, and safer, than a hundred bought ones. Chasing volume over relevance is how small businesses end up with a penalty they didn’t see coming.

Free and paid ways to find link opportunities

You can do all of this for free. Your best research tool is Google itself: search operators like “[city] + sponsors”, “best [trade] in [city]”, and “[competitor name] -site:competitor.com” surface sponsorship pages, resource lists, and sites that link to your rivals. Google Search Console shows the links you already have for free, so you can see what’s working and find similar sources.

Paid tools speed up the research. Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, and BrightLocal can show which sites link to your competitors — a shortcut to finding local pages that already link to businesses like yours. If you want the wider local picture in one place, ScoutRival runs an SEO audit and score, monitors your competitors across their website and social channels, and checks how you show up in AI answers across ChatGPT and Gemini, then turns findings into a daily to-do and one-click content. Full disclosure: ScoutRival is our tool — and to be clear about its limits, it is not a backlink-building service or an outreach tool; use a dedicated tool like Ahrefs or BrightLocal for link research and prospecting. Plans run Free, Starter $29, Pro $89, and Agency $149/month. For the wider strategy, see our local SEO guide for 2026 and the full SEO topic hub, and for the tools themselves, our roundup of the best SEO tools for local businesses.

Backlinks are only one piece of local ranking. They pair naturally with consistent local citations — mentions of your name, address, and phone across directories — and with the broader playbook for beating a bigger competitor in local SEO, where relevance and reviews often matter more than raw size.