If you’ve been paying attention to SEO gurus online (or read our own blog posts, such as this one on boosting storage SEO with backlinks), you’ve come across the idea of backlinks.
They’re an important part of your website’s search performance.
But how are you supposed to get backlinks?
While we’ve given some advice on link-building before, I wanted to drop a few concrete strategies here for you sourced largely from Darren over at WhiteSpark.
Let's take a look at how these strategies are relevant to the self storage industry!
Citations (or directory listings) are extremely common. You probably even have a few you don’t know exist.
If your business is listed on Yelp, Yellowpages, Facebook, RentCafe, or one of many other online directories, that’s a citation.
Citations are an easy way to build links and get many other self storage SEO benefits, to boot.
These directories are an easy way to get backlinks for self storage because you can usually just sign up to get your business listed for free. Make sure the link to your website is correct, and you’re good to go!
For the best results, try to get some good reviews on those directories, too.
Relevant links from LOCAL organizations and businesses is one of the best ways to build links for storage.
Our industry is hyper-local. It’s even more local than other types of local businesses.
Your local bookstore or favorite Mexican restaurant might want to attract customers from all over the city. But a storage facility? In most cases, you’re only realistically marketing to people within a few miles.
This is a major reason why local, relevant backlinks are so impactful.
Search for business associations in your area, reach out to the local chamber of commerce, and get yourself listed wherever possible with a link to your website.
Want to get a great backlink AND show support for your local community?
Sponsor a local organization or event.
The best part is that many of the people interacting with these local organizations and events may be perfect candidates to rent from you, so you’re not only getting a backlink but also some new valuable leads.
Here’s a handy tip from WhiteSpark:
Go to Google and type “intitle:sponsors [your city]” into the search bar (make sure to replace [your city] with your actual city).
This returns pages based in your city with the word “sponsors” in the page’s title. What this does is provide you a whole pool of organizations and events to sift through for the ideal sponsorship opportunities for your self storage facility.
I recommend choosing the ones that are most relevant and that already link to their sponsors’ websites.
Some examples of relevant organizations or events include:
The great part is that you can either sponsor them financially or offer to work with them by providing free storage space.
If you’re really feeling desperate for links (and I wouldn’t judge you), there’s always the option of leaning on who you already know.
As a local business owner, it’s very likely you know many other local businesses.
Why not leverage those relationships?
Reach out to business owners on your contacts list and see if any would be willing to swap links with you. This would benefit both businesses and cost nothing!
Linkbuilding is crucial.
Each link from another website to your website is basically a vote of confidence in your site and business.
Google sees this and uses it to help judge whether it’s worth showing your business to a searcher.
If your links are coming from locally relevant sources, that’s even better. It’s now a vote of confidence from a highly relevant voter, helping Google understand even better that your website (and your business) is worth showing to people searching in that area.
While these link-building tactics are a bit more manual than paying a service to get you a bunch of spammy links, they also have a greater chance of success.
Get out there and start building some local links!
Here are some of my other favorite posts to check out!
At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
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