One of the keys to search engine optimization (SEO) in Kitchener is building links.
Whether you’ve got a small business in Forest Heights or you’re running an agile tech startup from the downtown core, you’ll need high-quality links to your website if you want your digital marketing efforts to succeed.
You might be a local business trying to attract customers from Kitchener (and even Waterloo). You might be an e-commerce company servicing all of Canada (and beyond). It doesn’t matter. If you want to rank higher and get potential customers to find your business on search engines, you need other sites to link to yours.
We’re going to teach you how to build those links.
How to build links for your Kitchener business
A link from another website to yours is known as a backlink.
You need to earn backlinks from reputable websites if you want your company to climb the ranks.
Here are three techniques to help you build those backlinks:
Write guest posts
One of the best ways to build links for your Kitchener business is to find people who want articles, then write articles for them.
For free. (Kind of).
In the articles you write for them, you’ll include a link to your own business. This link might be found in your writer’s bio at the bottom of the page, and it might be included organically in your content. Your approach will vary depending on the site you’re guest posting on and what their guidelines for guest posting are.
There are so many different ways for you to find guest posting opportunities—some will be on websites relevant to Kitchener, and others will be on websites relevant to your industry. We’ll teach you more about how to find guest posting opportunities in the “Conducting outreach” section.
Write good, meaningful content
Great content is key to making it to the top of the search engine results pages.
In part, that’s because high-quality content tends to keep readers on your website for longer and because it gives Google and other search engines context for your website.
The other main reason is that websites that are relevant to your website are more likely to link to your content if it’s, well, good.
A lot of these links can be earned naturally—you post an article you’ve written on social media, that article gets shared, it makes its way to another website in your industry, and they link to it.
Sometimes, however, it’s okay to ask for a link to your content. There are a number of ways you can do this, which we’ll go over in the “Conducting outreach” section.
Avoid spammy or suspicious links
It’s easy to earn links if you don’t want to put a lot of effort in. There are plenty of websites that will offer to make backlinks to your site for pennies! Cheap and easy—who could resist?
Don’t do this. Buying links is against Google’s terms, and it will penalize your site if it finds out you’ve engaged in link-buying.
Additionally, you may find websites that are full of links to other sites. These websites may have poorly written content that looks like it was written by an AI created 10 years before ChatGPT came out.
Don’t ask for links from a site like this. They probably have an incredibly poor Domain Authority, and the backlinks they provide may be considered toxic.
Conducting outreach
There are a number of different strategies your Kitchener business can use to reach out to other websites and build backlinks. Here are a few of our favourites:
Broken link building
Using tools like Semrush, find broken links to your competitors’ web pages. From there, you’ll contact the owners of the sites hosting the broken links and ask them to link to your website instead.
You’ll need content that slots in well as a replacement for the content they were linking to. Sometimes, it’s a good idea to build a web page for the purpose of conducting a broken link-building strategy.
Finding guest posting opportunities
There are a few ways to find guest posting or guest blogging opportunities. One way is to search for keywords that are relevant to your industry (or websites that focus on Kitchener) and then use the + operation with those keywords to find places accepting guest submissions. Here’s what it might look like:
“Kitchener + write for us”
“Brewery + guest blog”
“Mountain biking + contributor guidelines”
You get the idea—something relevant to your industry + something relevant to guest blogging.
Another great method is to use tools to see what backlinks your competitors have earned and to see if those sites are accepting guest posts.
Asking for backlinks
Sometimes, simplicity is best. You can just ask for a link.
Find content that’s relevant to your business. Read it, and see if one of your articles could provide a more in-depth explanation of a topic they touch on briefly.
Then, you’ll find their email address and send them an email asking them to link to you.
The best way to do this is to write a custom email.
Include the name of the person you’re emailing, tell them why you liked their content and why you think they should link to you. Let them know that you’re a business owner in Kitchener, Ontario. Thank them for their time (they may get a lot of these emails).
Make sure you’ve got a fun subject line. Infuse your personality into the email. Above all, be candid in your email—don’t make anything up!
Have us build links for you
The work of building content, finding a website you want backlinks from, then prospecting that website for backlinks is incredibly time-consuming—and there’s no guarantee you’ll get it right.
Let us handle it for you.
We’re an SEO and online marketing agency that has helped companies in Kitchener just like yours skyrocket in the search engine results pages through our backlink-building techniques.
That means more eyes on your website and more potential customers.
Interested? Call us for a free consultation today.
Jacob Kettner is the owner and CEO of First Rank Inc., a digital marketing agency based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He currently sits on Manitoba Chamber of Commerce Small Business Advisor Council which assists people grow their small businesses in Manitoba.
