As small businesses often compete in competitive industries, it is important that you give your website a fighting chance of ranking well within local search engine results.

In order to increase the authority of your website you need to obtain high quality back links pointing towards your website.

You therefore need to build links from high quality and authoritative websites that are related to your industry sector and that choose to link to you in a natural way. 

Through offering high-quality content marketing in order to receive a back link pointing back.

Back links can make the difference between ranking on the first page of Google or the 10th page.

Although back links are not a ranking factor that solely determines your place within the search engine results, they are still an important part of the ranking signals.

It is rumored that the major search engines such as Google have over 200 ranking signals, but many regard back links as a very important aspect in determining a websites authority, and how much that information can be trusted.

For more information, about what makes up the SEO ranking factors, why not have a read here : SEO ranking factors.

What sort of Back Links should a Small Business be looking to obtain?

A small business should be looking to obtain relevant back links that send out a clear signal that they are linked to by trusted and respected businesses, or other online resources of high worth and quality.

You may therefore belong to an industry body or association, you could write a piece of content for such an organisation and look to obtain a Back Link in return.

This will show you as an authority within that industry. You may choose to obtain back links from local news sites that are high in quality or to obtain back links from your suppliers.

Whatever back links that you obtain you must make sure that the websites linking to you are high in quality.

That is they offer a good user experience to their users, and they have the purpose of providing information to people and not for search engine optimisation benefits alone.

You should never pay for back links, by paying for back links you are unnaturally building your back link profile and this can look spammy and the major search engines are able to pick up on this.

The best form of building links is to create high-quality content, and let people naturally link to your website or blog, because they have found the information of worth and they may wish to show their own users this content because they think that will interest them. Creating high quality content, in order that it is so good people will want to link to it, is called in SEO, creating link bait content, perhaps your interested in reading more about this. Creating link bait for seo.

There is a common misconception by the uninitiated to Seo that the more back links the better, this is simply not the case!

Low quality back links are likely to be discovered by Google Penguin updates, and your website is likely to be penalised if it is found to manipulate the search engine rankings through low quality or spammy back links.

Are local back links important?

Local back links are very important if you wish to increase your visibility locally.

There has been in recent years major changes to local search results partly due to Google’s Pigeon update.

Google’s Pigeon update looked and picked up on local trust signals, such as reviews, citations and local back links to determine if you are an authority within your area.

Sometimes a lot of local businesses participate in local activities but do not leverage this through back links and get some real seo value, from their offline work.

If you can obtain a back link from local website, then this will help define your business as a local business within that particular area. So the more back links from local trusted sources / websites, will signal to the search engines, that you operate in a certain area.

How can I leverage Back Links from existing business relationships?

Quite possibly you may have a business relationship with a supplier or a trusted business associate, you may want to write an interesting blog post which talks about this relationship.

Blog posts can contain company information which your audience will find of interest and by exchanging back links you open the possibility of having high quality back links pointing to your website.

With that said you must be careful with how you build links, that it is done in a natural way and that the links have purpose to your target audience, and have not just been created with merely an Seo tactic in mind.

Google’s algorithms are very clever in terms of spotting manipulative practices, on your website and it could be potentially viewed as if you are building back links that flout Google’s guidelines, if you participate in low quality link building techniques. If you are unsure about how to build links then why not check with an SEO consultant, or check your guidelines with the search engine you are trying to optimize for. Googles, Webmaster Guidelines.

You should keep in mind that you need to build high quality and relevant back links, and at the center of this you must concentrate on providing a good quality user experience.

Therefore the links pointed from your website or to your website should have the user in mind in guiding them towards something of worth and interest to them, and not just for Seo value.

If you participate in practices such as low quality link practices, which are designed to manipulate the search engine rankings then you are likely to be penalised by the Google updates such as the Penguin updates.