Article By Bogdan Krstic
Fact-checked and written by a human ✔️
What moves in the needle in water damage SEO? What’s the “secret”? Why is my restoration website not ranking on page one?
You’ve done it all. You’ve watched the videos, optimized your pages, written the content, and waited for months… but your site is still buried deep beneath your competitors. Why?
There is this thing in SEO that everybody loves to have but hates to work for – backlinks.
Yes, backlinks matter, especially in competitive areas. So regardless of what your uncle says on Twitter, if you’re not seeing any success with your SEO in the past few months, perhaps it’s time to build some links.
Don’t worry, it’s not as hard as you might have originally thought.
Today, we’ll cover link building for restoration companies. Let’s go!
Prepare for Some Hard Work
Link building isn’t easy. Also, many people get it wrong by engaging in different tactics that could devastate your website’s rankings.
So called PBNs…
These are VERY risky to implement, especially if you’re doing it like 99% of businesses out there.
I mean on setting up garbage websites and linking to your site. If Google finds out you’re doing this, say goodbye to your rankings.
If you want us to cover what these are and how to spot competitors’ PBNs, leave a comment down below and we’ll create a separate video based just on them.
Moving on, this is also a very time-consuming process and results don’t happen overnight. Link building is a living, breathing being. This means that you constantly need to work on it.
Who Needs Link Building
There is a high chance that you don’t even need to build links for your website. If you’re in a small area with very little competition, you could probably rank without any backlinks.
Emphasis on PROBABLY…
Even if you’re in a medium sized city and your competition is doing a poor job at their SEO, you could still get away without link building.
However, if you’re in a big city with a lot of competitors who are working with marketing agencies, you’ll probably need to add link building to your SEO arsenal.
Getting Started
Before you start, you need to ask yourself – is your site worth linking to?
Many site owners miss this. Ask yourself – would you, as a webmaster with an established online presence, link to your current website?
If you can’t seem to figure it out, ask yourself different subquestions:
- Does my site load quickly?
- Is it easily navigated?
- Design?
- Is my content worth checking out?
- Are my services worth it (reviews, testimonials, etc)?
Creating link-worthy content
Many people debate whether blogging is worth it for local websites or not.
If you don’t mind spending additional time learning how to create good blog content and ranking nationally, you can try it.
If you manage to rank your blog posts or at least bring enough traffic to them, links will come naturally.
The key thing to focus on is creating content that’s actually worth linking to.
Low hanging fruit – citations
Citations are online mentions of your website. Think of social media networks and directory websites like Yelp and HomeAdvisor.
These are the easiest to set up. You probably have a Facebook page but may not have a Youtube channel or an optimized Google My Business profile.
You should also set up listings on at least 50 directory websites. If you don’t have time for this, outsource the process to companies like CitationBuilderPro.
Citations aren’t as influential as backlinks but they will still give your website some “juice”.
Reach out to your existing network
Contact people you might be working with – plumbers, insurance brokers, equipment vendors, realtors, etc.
Think of how could they benefit from linking to your website and present that benefit to them.
Don’t just ask people for links, there always has to be something in it for them. Otherwise, they’ll not pay attention.
Backlinks are connections
In case you haven’t got it until now…
How to build backlinks? Build connections. The best way to build connections is to provide value and be helpful.
Learn the best practices for reaching out to other website owners, engage in different communities, and over time, you’ll build connections with other businesses, organizations, and institutions that will link to your website.
When building your connections, it’s important to be human. People notice spam from miles away. While you can leverage software and human resources for outreaching, if your prospects notice that you have automated your outreach, they’ll ignore you.
Wanna connect with other water damage business owners and learn digital marketing together for free?
If your answer is again YES then join our Facebook group. Inside the group, you’ll be able to connect with us and other business owners from your industry only, ask questions, download free learning material like our SEO checklist and other cool stuff.
What are you waiting for? Join our tribe!
Resource link building
Search for agencies and organizations relevant to your industry and location that link to commercial websites like yours from their sites. These sites usually have these resource pages named “Links”, “Resources”, etc.
Once you find them, reach out to the web editor and ask for a link. It’s important that – again – your website is worth linking to.
How do these pages look like?
Here’s one example we found in just a few minutes of searching:
Get active in forums
This a great way to build relationships. By being active in forums and helping other members, you’ll slowly build authority.
If people see you as an authority, they’re more likely to link to your website.
Which forums should you join?
You could join forums relevant to your industry and/or location. You may also want to check if there are any government forums you could join as well. Links from government websites are incredibly powerful.
Local newspaper
To get featured in a local newspaper, you’ll need to have a compelling story. Otherwise, journalists won’t be interested in featuring you or your business.
If you’ve done something great for your community, try submitting your story to local news outlets.
Note that you’ll need to follow up with your local journalists a few times after the first email.
Engage in roundups
Another way you could get featured on media websites is by engaging in roundups.
The biggest media brands in the world use HARO – a website that enables journalists to connect with sources and feature them on their companies’ websites.
Sign up as a source, it’s free. You’ll receive 3 emails per day featuring all roundups journalists are working on.
Engage in roundups you believe you could stand out in.
Conduct roundups yourself
Reach out to other experts and influencers from your industry or relevant industries and come up with an interesting topic that could attract writers and readers.
You can post your article on your blog and have participants share it on their social profiles or link to it from their blogs.
This method is also great for getting free content to publish on your website.
That’s all for today! There are a million more ways to build links but these are a great starting point.
And for most local businesses, more than enough to move the needle in the search results.
Need more help? Just join the damn group! Seriously, you’ll find free digital marketing learning material inside and you’ll be able to ask whatever questions you might be having.
Bogdan is a restoration SEO expert with over 3 years of experience helping businesses grow. He is passionate about the restoration niche because of how underserved it is, and RepairSprout is the business he started and works on with joy every day. When he is not helping restoration companies grow, he works out, takes long walks, and watches Suits, which is completely ironic given how rarely he dresses up in a suit himself.