How Backlinks Effect Your Local Business Google Map Ranking

Local businesses can achieve rankings on Google in two ways.

One is organically.

These results are the last to display within a Google search page. Before these come what Google terms as the snack pack which is the top 3 results of the Google Maps listings.

These spots are highly favored by many local businesses because of where they are located at within the corresponding Google search page.

How to Achieve Top Ranking Results on Google Maps

There are many factors that go into ranking high on Google Maps including:

How well you optimized your Google My Business page.
Website factors including original content and schema markup.
The number of targeted citations that you have built.

In fact, Local MOZ (a leading authority for local business rankings on Google) does a yearly report on all the factors that lead to local businesses being able to rank high on Google Maps. This is always a very long article with tons of related content and has always included backlinks as an important part of the equation.

DEFINITION

Define Backlinks: A clickable link that leads viewers from one page to another.

Most Common Types of Backlinks

There are three typical ways of creating backlinks.

External to Internal
Internal to Internal
Internal to External

All 3 of these play an important part of success when it comes to building backlinks with your project.

A critical part of what Local MOZ does can be found in the percentages applied to the various local ranking factors. It is here that we find backlinks commanding more than 20% of the total Click To Tweet which is extremely significant.

Why Backlinks Are So Important to Ranking on Google Maps

When looking at backlinks Google is assessing the value of your authority within your niche.

If your competitor has 100 highly targeted backlinks and you only 10 then this is going to adversely affect your ability to take over their position when it comes to overtaking their spot based on backlinks.

HOT TIP: Not all backlinks are created equal. Further, there are some backlink sources that can create more bad than good. If your 10 links are highly favored by Google while your competitor has 100 unfavored links, then everything else being equal you could win in the backlink building game.

What defines the most favored types of links for Google Maps will be the topic of an upcoming article. Here our focus is to come away with a clear understanding as to why backlinks themselves are so important in the eyes of Google.

With that said let’s take a deeper look at the three typical types of backlinks that can be created.

External to Internal Backlink Building

These links are from a 3^rd party outside of your website that point to a given location within your project.

An example could be an ad that you have placed on Craig’s List (a popular free ad network) that leads to a page talking about one of the services that you have for sale.

The above is just one of a plethora of ways of creating external backlinks. The point is that it is from an external source that leads to an internal page within your website.

As you build out these types of links Google’s assessment of your authority within the niche you are targeting increases substantially. However, it is only one of the three types of links that your local business needs to be concerned about.

Internal to Internal Backlink Building

Next up are links from within your Website which point to various parts of your project.

There are numerous ways and reasons that internal link building makes sense. Two of the more prominent ones that I like to focus on include pointing all posts to the heart of your site and building category silos.

Typically speaking those entries which are part of your website navigation is part of the heart. Also, the root domain is part of the heart unless you are using your blog roll as the root.

HOT TIP: You can identify which page is the root of your domain by the page not having anything after the .com, .org or .net. For my site, the root would be https://ViralTNTeam.com while all other pages include a backslash with words that follow like this: https://viraltnteam.com/local-business-owners-youtube

The other type of internal link structure that I like to focus on is known as category silos. These are pages within your site that all deal with a specific topic. I’ve spoken a lot about different aspects of using categories in my recent articles. Go to this LinkedIn article for precise details about how to put your category silos together.

NOTE: This is the first time that I’ve used the word “silos” within this topic though it is exactly what you are creating when you group related articles together into one category.

Internal to External Backlink Building

As links go these are quite often the ones most overlooked no matter if your project is locally or more globally focused. They can also be some of the most important types of links you can create.

Here’s why:

Google wants to give special recognition to sites that are more informative than salesy. By you linking out to external sources (even your competitors) you are displaying the level of authority that should be granted to you within the niche.

These types of links are created within your website and point out to properties external to your Website. In an upcoming article, I will speak of the advantages of these links being locally targeted. For now, your important take away is to create them. I recommend 2 or 3 per page.

Concluding Thoughts About Backlinks and Your Google Maps Rankings

In this article, we have identified the 3 most common types of backlinks and how they work within your local project.

They are:

External to Internal
Internal to Internal
Internal to External

As you engaged in building these links (if done correctly), they will have a direct impact on your ability to rank at the top of Google Maps. Click To Tweet

What questions do you have about what has been covered today?

Feel free to ask them in the comments below.

What thoughts, concerns, ideas, and suggestions do you have when it comes to building your local business backlinks?

Share your views in the comments below.

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Guy Siverson

Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at ViralTNTeam

My mission is to deliver high quality online marketing information that you can easily grow your business by. Please use the comments below to ask about points I missed, provide further thoughts of wisdom or request new topics for me to cover. Thanks in advance. I look forward to being your one stop shop for all things related to the online marketing niche.