Google Is Crushing Anchor Links: The New Local SEO Link Strategy (2026)

Joy Hawkins, welcome back to the podcast. You uh you have one of the most widely recognized and acclaimed local SEO agencies. And so this episode is going to be just a crash course crash course episode on your top ways local businesses can build links. And the first question is just the obvious question. It's when a local business asks, "Do I still need links in 2026?" What is your honest answer? You absolutely do. I would say though that has changed a lot in the last few years. Um I think that the top ways that people should go about getting links, what I would have told you three years ago is different than what I would say now. Really? Yes. So what would you say three years ago and what would you say now? Yeah. So three years ago I actually did this like really in-depth study on which types of links actually drive rankings, right? because I wanted to know if we could actually measure the value of links. I went on this huge like journey. It took me three years to to kind of confirm it all. Did tons of testing and I landed on I think it was like four criteria. I'm doing this for memory so hopefully I can remember all four. But one of the criteria was anchor text and I was like you know if you have anchor text you are going to crush it which is for the record sort of still true sort of just has an asterisk beside it. So one of the top link building methods that most agencies do was guest posting. And guest posting always had anchored links. And so at that time I would have been like yes these are the things that if it has an anchor it will move rankings faster which is still true but the caveat is in the last 3 years the core updates have been hammering sites that get anchored links and they're doing it so much now uh to the level where like you know before you'd be able to I'm going to make up some numbers because I actually don't know the exact number but let's say you could get away with like a hundred of them or like 50 of them. Now it's more like 10 or five. I don't even know like the number has shrunk so low. Yeah. So, so if you are a plumber and you want to rank in Denver and your anchor text is plumber Denver, you used to be able to get a whole bunch of anchored links with that keyword and then you would sort of the top and you would uh you know reap all the benefits. And that is still true except now the core updates are just catching people faster and faster. And I'm seeing that they don't just wipe you out. Like this is where there's been some debate because I hear a lot of people say they're like, "Oh, it just neutralizes the links." I don't know. I've seen trends that are so dramatic that I'm not sure it just neutralizes the links because I'm tracking a few cases where it's worse than where they were ranking before they got the links, which makes me think it's actually a negative ranking signal at a certain level. Again, this is very much theory, but this is what I'm seeing. So, anchored links are now terrifying to me. [laughter] I'm like, yeah, the limit that I would get now, it's like five. I don't know. It's really low. I I I don't like getting them at any large quantity. So, three years ago, you would have said exact match anchor text links like let's let's go for it. Let's go hard. I didn't have a limit on them. That being said, never I never did link building a scale. So, I was never getting hundreds to be clear, but like now I'm like, okay, we need to put a cap on this. Like there needs to be a hard cap on how many you would get and how often and this type of thing cuz the volume thresholds are lower and lower and lower and it's scary. And like the last year of updates was brutal for small businesses. I have never seen core updates impact small businesses like I did in 2025. So, um, we kind of were immune to them for the most part in local SEO. And the last one that just happened in December, I've actually seen it wipe out tons of sites. Like when I say wipe out, I mean like all their pages hit like sitewide. I have never seen that for a small business until last year. Um, so this is supposed to be this is supposed to be a link building episode, but now I have to ask what kind of sites we're getting wiped out. Yeah. Well, it's related to link building to be clear. I think there's two theories. Two theories that I've landed on. Um, one is related to content, the other is related to links, right? And I think it could be both because I doubt it's just one thing. But certainly some of the sites that I've looked at because I've looked at quite a few that have been completely wiped out. Um, and most of them were doing link building practices at scale, most with anchor text. uh a lot some of them got, you know, caught up in um PBNs and things like that. So, they had not only like a lot of links, but those links have a lot of links and their bad links and um that kind of connection. Um but it like when I'm saying wiped out, I mean like those horrible graphs we saw with the helpful content update. I've seen that on small business sites. So, uh small businesses I've seen this on are home services uh and lawyers. So, uh, several home services, cleaning companies, electricians, uh, I think I looked at a what was it? Roofer the other day. Um, because we just I just audited a site that had this. And then I think three lawyers I've seen, but I've also, if we trust the age, I've also seen like dozens of others. I'm like putting in uh, sites that I know are being worked on by companies that heavily do this type of link building. So, I'm curious to see what they and I mean, so many of them were just like tanking in December. Wow. This method of marketing is so effective. I had to make sure it wasn't against Google's rules before I kept doing it. It's a form of SEO I call compact keywords. Whereas most SEO focuses on putting up articles to answer questions, how, what, when, compact keywords focuses on putting up dozens of pages that sell to searchers who are actually looking to buy. These pages rank on Google and convert so much better than normal that when I discovered this years ago, I couldn't believe this was allowed. It's less work, too. The average Compact Keywords page is only 415 words. Compact Keywords is a 13-hour deep course on getting sales with SEO. A customer recently said, "Each lesson is dense with information. You're giving years worth of experience boiled down into 15 to 30 minute lessons with no filler or fluff. I feel like I'm gaining a new superpower. Compact Keywords is about setting up an SEO funnel that brings you sales for years and years and years. It works with AI. It's less work than traditional SEO and it makes way more money. You can get it now at compactkeywords.com. Back to the podcast. It scared me now. So, I am not a fan of anchored links anymore unless you do like one or two, but doing them at any level of scale like even in press releases for example. This is a conversation I had with um some of the press release guys that we um get press releases from and I was like, would you do an anchored link in a press release? And um several of them said, "Yeah, like go for it. Like no big deal." And then some of them were like, "No, don't do it at all." And so we I was like, "Okay, I'm going to meet in the middle. I'm going to do like one with an anchored link. I don't even do one anymore." I'm like, "Nope, no anchor links in press releases. Like don't do it because you get put out to like hundreds of sites." Um and it's at this point too much of a liability. Wow. Where do you get press releases from? Okay. Oh man, you're testing. So we have three services that we are using. One of them is Randy the News Guy. Uh, the other one I think is AB Newswire. Sorry if I'm butchering the name. I think that's who he is. That's it. Okay. There's a third one that we just started using and I don't know yet uh if I like it or not, but I think it should probably pan out. Um, but I'm I'm a big fan of like having multiples because their distribution's different. So, um, I think it was AB Newswire that gets you in USA [clears throat] Today, which I was like so excited about. You can pay to add that on. I was like, uh, yes, please. Yeah, you can. And and A Newswire is cheap. Yes. It's the Oh my gosh, the difference in pricing. Like we actually want to test one of the like thousand ones. Um because like Bruters, I haven't tried them yet, but I was like, hm, if I had to do something really important, maybe maybe it's worth it. I don't know. We'll see. It's interesting what you were saying about local businesses. So, not not doing mass link building. So, so if you're a local business, you actually don't need to get that [clears throat] many links. No, exactly. But like it's crazy because I've been just watching over the years and we have a client that I used during that three-year study um who bought like 400 links. They had a link building agency who was building links for them and they were pretty much all guest posts mostly sent to different blogs. And I mean when I first started this looking at it you would see if you look back like 5 years in age you'd see this giant increase for when they started the link building. is it was really really high and then it starts to go down and now if you look today it's like gone. Like all their traffic from these pages is like neutralized. Um so they've pretty much hit rock bottom now by the end of last year. Um whereas like 3 years ago they were still floating in the middle like they were definitely declining but they still had some rankings. And I looked back and I was like okay are they going to ever get these like rankings back? Like even if I was to do let's say a disavow which for the record I'm testing that. It's the first time I've actually done one in like a decade. Um, but I was like, what if I disavowed these? And I look at their patterns and I'm like, there'd be no point for this particular site because they never ranked before they got the links. So, they're not going to go back to ranking even if we try and like tell Google we don't want the links. So, I'm testing the idea of filing a disavow because I again have heard some things from people and I'm like, if you have a site that's penalized for links on an algorithmic level, does filing a disavow actually help you? I don't know the answer to that because I've never dealt with a sitewide penalty before uh the last year. So, I'm going to hopefully have an answer to that by the end of the year. Maybe we'll have to talk about that later. I would love that that actually. Um, so we were talking about uh you listened to this episode with Charles Float and uh and David Quaid uh and and so one of the things that Charles Float said was that it seems like um manual actions or penalties are becoming more permanent. Yeah. Yeah. He says he doesn't even get them anymore. Um, so I I asked him if I was okay to share this because I was at his mastermind. There's a lot of things shared there that I'll think they want us talking about, but like one of the things he shared was um that he doesn't get manual actions anymore and he used to get one a day and he hasn't had one in like years. So I'm like if anybody would know this, it would be him, right? Um, so I was like, yeah, like when you're working casino sites and some of the stuff that he has to deal with, it's wildly different than what I deal with in local SEO. But I can't remember the last time I saw manual action either to be honest. Uh but he as someone who got them regularly said he doesn't get them anymore. Did he say what changed in this room? Uh no. Well, I think it's just Google is tackling it algorithmically. So this is where I've actually started using the word penalty. So when I'm talking to these business owners who got just completely neutralized by the December core update, I'm like, you've been penalized. Like I'm actually comfortable saying that because before it was like, oh, it's not a penalty. It's just like an No. I'm like, no, no, no. All of your pages got hit. Your entire site got hit. only things that survived for these uh for this group of sites I'm looking at was their um their branded traffic. So the branded traffic is still fine. Still ranked for the brand name, their homepage, whatever ranks for that and their Google business profile. So this is another kind of thing I was chatting with Lily Ray about on the podcast that we're releasing where I interviewed her and I was like, "Did you know that core updates don't impact local pack rankings?" And she was like, "Oh, I don't think I did." And I was like, "Yeah, I can tell you with certainty they don't because local pack rankings for all these businesses still bonkers. They're fine. They're great. Nothing really. Really? Wow. The ones that were hit. Oh, they're fine." So, this is where I was like talking with some of my um VPs the other day and I'm like, "So, theoretically, if anchored links help local pack rankings, because we know they do on a smaller scale than organic." And I'm like, "And you don't get hit by core updates with local pack rankings?" I was like, "What if you just built a ton of anchored links for your local pack rankings and know that your site's going to tank organically and you're going to get hit, but your local pack rankings will thrive." I was like, "That could work." But honestly, on a flip side, like, who knows if Google ever is going to change that. And I would not want to be the person to do this. As much as it sounds great, uh I don't ever want to explain to clients why strategies we did got them penalized. So if Google decides to flip that switch at some point and starts to penalize local pack rankings the way they do with core updates, then I just I don't want to be in that boat. So I would say don't do it. But that was something that went through my head. I was like too dangerous. Yeah. And I'm not one to go with the dangerous route at all. So yeah, very very different than Charles. I think he'll experiment with things I wouldn't touch. Uh, so so like in terms of like links that work for local SEO specifically, what what moves the needle most like local news, chambers of commerce, niche directories, local partnerships, guest post, something else? Yeah. So the two that I would go to are definitely niche. So niche on either a local level or an industry level, but probably more on an industry level. uh what we see is uh in certain industries there are quite a few niche type sites that still rank very well. So that's like the primary indicator on if it's a good link or not. Like in the legal industry we have a lot of lawyers. I can tell you right now like lawyers.com, fine law, super lawyers, like some of these they rank really high in the search results. They outrank lawyers. You absolutely want to be on those sites because the search results tell you they matter. Um and then I would also put in the same bucket award sites. Uh, award sites are something that I am uh kind of obsessing about lately because of LLMs. So, this is not something that I see really impacting like traditional Google results, but if you want to be featured in AI, which is all over Google and creeping in very quickly into local search results as well, uh, we often are seeing AI overviews at the top now that are actually suggesting specific businesses. So, you know, again, a year ago it would have been like, oh, it's for mostlyformational queries. It was like, you know, how to unclog your toilet. you'd get an AI overview and it would tell you how to do that. Whereas now, you search things like best lawyers or best personal injury lawyers or best plumbers, whatever, you're getting AI overviews actually answering those queries. And for those, winning awards almost seems to trump out your Google reviews, which is kind of wild. Um, I have seen Google ranking sites or businesses that have like a average rating of like two or three for a best query, which would never happen in the local pack. Um, and when I look, it's like, oh, they won this award, they won that award. So, we're starting to focus more on like getting more badges and awards, which are links, but you got to kind of think of it as like it's not just the link, it's the badge, it's the mention, it's the words. And Google at this point, and this may change, cannot tell if it's a quality award or not. So, like seriously, there are some awards that are hard to win and actually mean something. And there are some awards that, let's be honest, they're paytoplay. Google's at this point in time from what I can see can't distinguish between the two at all. Can you talk about how local businesses can get these uh award mentions and links? Yes. So this is something that I actually it's so easy like it's it's again it's probably not going to be this easy forever. So I will put a big asterisk here. Um when you like so what I'll first do is I'll go to like chat GBT or AI and I'll be like tell me what awards or recognitions company ABC in Dallas, Texas has won. And it'll tell me where they're already listed. And then I will ask it again like give me some other sites or opportunities of awards they don't have that maybe this guy has or that guy has and I'll throw in competitor names. And it's done like a phenomenal job giving me all kinds of sites and all kinds of awards that competitors have. Um and a lot of them are like like I was doing this for a lawyer in Tampa that we work with and like couldn't get over there was I found like five or six sites that I didn't even know existed in Tampa that give out like local awards to Tampa businesses. Wow. And a lot of them are like vote based. So, you know, it's your typical nominate your business, send it to all your friends, [laughter] go on their vote. Some of them are definitely pay to pay. Like I look at the site, I'm like, all you have to do is like pay a fee and then you're in. And depending on how many other people pay the fee, you're almost a guaranteed win, which is ridiculous and probably shouldn't work, but it does. So, I'd say this is probably not going to work forever, but while it does, I don't see any harm in doing it. Yeah. Yeah, I even wonder how something like that would be detected. Like these like weak awards that don't mean anything. As I can tell you right now from some of the ones that we've done with clients, they they cannot tell. I've used the weakest, stupidest sites and awards and it still helps. Um so yeah, at this point in time, just having a best of anything, um if somebody says you're the best and it's listed on a website, a third party website, uh it'll likely have some value. I do think Oh, sorry. Sorry. a good Yeah, it does have more value if that site ranks organically because then obviously you get the traffic from that too. But if you're just looking for the AI um mention, then it doesn't seem to matter too much. And then you can make a uh you can make a blog post saying that like we got the award for the best soand so and uh yeah, this was shown in like Glenn Olop's like best listical study on hrefs. Yeah. Well, that's just the thing, right? Once you get the award, you got to share it everywhere. You got to post everywhere. you got to put it everywhere. Put put put it in your ads like put it anywhere to get that thing traffic and then that's where you really see kind of the magic happen, right? Um so it's uh it's just a thing that you're allowed to brag about and um you can do that any way possible just to get more traffic to the awards page and get more visibility and all that kind of stuff seems to help with uh with LLM. And as long as a site looks nice, people don't know if the award is is meaningful or meaningless. They really don't know. Yeah. No, I could tell you. I mean, I know only because I work in marketing, but like if I didn't, I wouldn't know. It's crazy. How about How about local news? Uh, not something we've done a whole lot with to be honest. Um, so I haven't really tested this either way. Like we definitely do like media mentions for clients. It is the hardest link building type to measure though. I can't tell you if getting mentioned in, you know, a couple different articles by journalists really moves rankings. when I was trying to figure out uh which types of links I could actually measure each link uh earn media was one where I was like I couldn't measure it I'm like I know this probably helps but we put it as like one of the lowest priority type of link building because it kind of helps to get the site authority but you really can't track it like you can't go to a client be like because of this link I got you XYZ happened whereas you can do that with like an award or other things because you'll actually see especially AI you'll actually see it quote the award so like it's really easy to explain to the client, hey, you're here because of this because LM's quote their sources. So, um, that one is kind of easy to measure and show results with. The one cool thing about local news is you can create relationships with journalists, so you can continually get like stories and and a b a bunch of these stories can actually pass meaningful referral traffic for sure. And and on that note, I I can't forget to mention Reddit. Reddit is one again that I wouldn't have mentioned 2 years ago, but that is one where we are actually doing an effort now getting our clients on Reddit um in the non-spammy way. I will say there are two different approaches to Reddit and I am very against the whole buying of mentions which is what everybody's doing. Um and I can say as somebody who moderates subreddits, it is so annoying and I have banned so many people from commenting like please don't come and spam our subreddit. But like every day I'm like getting like these people that are like, "Oh, I use XYZ and they were awesome." Like they are so easy to spot. And then yeah, that that is what most companies are doing to get featured on Reddit. We're doing the slow approach where it's like, "No, you actually have a user profile where you know you're you're answering is ABC law firm or ABC Plumbing Service or whatever." And it takes a very long time to get traction, but uh long term that will actually stick. And I think the long-term value is there, but it's very slow. Not an easy quick win. I remember I remember you talking about your Reddit strategy last time you were on the show and you were saying, you know, we just try to give very helpful advice using the brand name and then eventually we have we get top of- mind awareness. Somebody needs a lawyer and they think of our law firm, something like that. Well, we want the threads to rank on Google, too, right? So, you want to be there and mentioned and part of that conversation when they rank. problem is you can't go to Google, see what threads rank, and then go comment on them. Your comments will just get deleted, right? So, you have to be ahead of it, go to the threads you think are going to eventually rank on Google, you know, comment on those as they're happening. So, it's it's harder than some traditional like SEO strategies. Um, we are seeing traction from it, but like I said, it's slow like and we are seeing people that are like, you know, asking and we're able to actually even get leads from Reddit, but it takes a long time. It is not fast. You will not get leads the first month you do it, the second month you do it even. Like I I tell people like probably at least a year, maybe two for the payoff. Wow. Wow. I know. Again, because I'm doing it for my own business and I can tell you from been being from being active on Reddit now for almost two years. We are like I think we landed our first client from Reddit uh in the last few months and um I've been on there making quite a bit of an effort for a while, but I think if you ask me two years from now, I'm going to have a much higher number than that. I've seen you I've seen you on uh the SEO subreddit and I've made because I I I love like these interesting um roundup posts on the SEO subreddit where somebody asks for a thought and then you have all these like diverse thoughts and just interesting ideas and I've shared a bunch of your comments on the SEO subreddit and and I see with you I think it's with your name right or it's with Sterling Sky or with your name I can't remember but I've yeah shared you well and the thing that I can't measure and I don't know how you'd ever conclude this but we are very visible on LLMs. Like we get a lot of traffic from AI. Um we get a lot of leads from AI I should say and a lot of sales from AI. Our closing rate on leads from AI is way higher than other sources. Um so I can't tell you if that's our YouTube or our Reddit. I don't know. Probably a combination of both. But because we are so active everywhere, it's hard to isolate. But I can tell you with certainty that like that's the other problem that with attribution is people are like, "Oh, I got a lead from Reddit. Great. Was that really worth? Well, I'm like, well, what about all your AI leads? Because those are probably also impacted by Reddit. But like being able to prove that is difficult. You know what's interesting? I actually I saw I think it was AdWeek that said that now YouTube is getting cited more in AI search than Reddit is. Yeah. I mean, YouTube, Reddit have always been at the top, right? So, who cares which one's like they're they're number one, number two, or at least in the top five both of them at all times, right? Depending on which study you read. So, I I do think it's important to be on both. The the kicker is like when you think about a small business, for a small business to get in YouTube because we now offer that as a service as well and I can tell you've been doing this for a few months now and like so many businesses are like, "Yeah, I want to do it." And they even some of them will even say they're going to do it and then they don't because it's so much work, you know? So much work to convince a small business owner to start recording videos, get them edited, have something interesting to talk about, like all of those things. Whereas Reddit is a little easier uh because, you know, Yeah. a little. You need karma. You need an account. You do need an account. Yeah. Um, but that's one of those things where I think the barrier to entry for Reddit for a small business is a little lower than YouTube. So, we've had a lot more businesses take us up on Reddit than we have on YouTube at this point. So, um, I'm hoping they both stay at the top and, you know, you don't have to be both, but YouTube is hard for a small business. There's very few takers. The thing is, so this was one of the the first time that Barry Schwarz came on the show, he said to me, we're talking about Reddit and he's like, "Oh, you know, parasite platforms come and go. It was Yahoo Answers. It was Quora." And the thing is like I could see Reddit in the next couple years actually not having as much just dramatically less influence than it has. But who owns YouTube? I like I can't see the influence that YouTube has going away anytime soon. That's true. YouTube is way more stable um as a platform. Reddit's interesting though because it's been around for so long. Until it had this massive Google visibility, I can't say I ever heard anybody talking about it. So, if that massive Google usability goes away, that could be bad. But I think what's going to keep it is like the number of branded searches for Reddit is wild. Like you I'm sure you've heard SEOs talk about how like people will say to put in a query and then put Reddit at the end of the query string and that is why, right? Cuz Reddit is the one place on the internet that is safe for the most part from AI, right? You know, if you're talking to uh somebody on Reddit, you are most likely, and I realize there's exceptions to this, but most likely you're talking to a human, you're getting advice from real people. That's not true about LinkedIn. It's not true about Facebook. Like, all these other social platforms are just littered with crap. And Reddit, because they're so heavily human moderated, is still immune from that. So, if Reddit keeps their quality up, I don't think they're going to die. But it all is based on that. That's why users want Reddit because they know that they're actually getting nonpaid for uh answers. Did you know that Dig relaunched with the original co-founder of Dig, Kevin Rose, but also a co-founder of Reddit? So, DIG is one, again, I'm I'm not holding my breath on that one. I think they were pretty spammy back in the day. They they don't adhere to any of the stuff that's making Reddit thrive. Like, you need human moderation. That's what you need for a community platform to stay well well done. And I know this because I've run a platform for years. We have the local search forum, right? So, we have a forum and like I can tell you, I pay people to keep that thing good and to keep spam out. And if I didn't pay people to do that, it would be garbage. Um, like every other forum on the internet. So, um, that is the thing with Reddit. You have to keep that human moderation up. So, I don't know. Here's hoping they continue to do that. Yeah. If a business has almost no link building budget, like no budget or Yeah, no budget. What is the first three link building plays that you would prioritize in the first 90 days? Oh man. Uh probably just ask your friends if you can um be listed on their website as a recommendation. Any other businesses you network with? I mean that's that's generally like one of the easiest. Um but it is hard to go get anywhere because if you don't have budget, it's going to be time, right? Um and I would say definitely um getting on all of the niche sites. A lot of those again are free to register for, but some industries don't have them. So I will say there are some industries where this this concept doesn't exist. Like insurance is a good example. The insurance industry, there are like no insurance specific sites that you can get listed on as an insurance agent that matter. There's tons for legal. Uh there's a bunch for home services, but a lot of them are turning into paytoplay. So like Home Advisor, House, some of those like big ones. Um, I've heard that, you know, if you're not paying, they're not really like very good and your your listing itself won't get much visibility on the site if you don't pay for it. Oh, local park partnerships. That's like the top one. Yeah. Yeah. Local like other businesses that you know, um, charities again. Well, that's going to cost money. I was like, if you donate to charities, that can be sometimes a way that you can get um, links. Oh, man. That's tough. It's way it's way harder than you think. Maybe local news, even though you said it's hard for you to track results from local news. I mean, that's that's one where you might not really have to pay. Well, again, local news sites don't want to talk about you unless you have something newsworthy, which I can tell you most small businesses don't. So, that's where most of those are paid like ops. A lot of times when I see people uh get mentioned in local news is because they did a press release, but just paid, right? So, maybe AB Newswire would be a good one for people budget because that one's cheap like you said. Um, but yeah, it's tough. It's It's not as easy it used to be. Like, you have to put money behind link building for the most part. Um, and you can overdo it. That local business one that I mentioned, I actually am doing an audit right now on a home service business that has been mentioned on like dozens and dozens of sites in his industry that are all local businesses. I haven't talked to the guy yet, so I don't know how he got these links, but he's never paid for link building or and he's done it all himself. And I'm like, it's not natural. He got slammed for the record. Like totally annihilated by the December core update. But I'm like, these don't look natural having dozens of anchored links from other people in your industry. But I don't know how he did it. So that is an interesting one where I'm like, yeah, you could definitely get a bunch of links from other businesses in your area or in your industry if you know them. Just be careful with the anchored ones. Um, don't do that at scale at all. the uh well the good thing is if for businesses that don't have a massive or a big or even any link building budget like you said you don't need a lot of you don't really need a lot of links to even succeed in the first place but also like if you are an insurance business like if you are in a business where uh links are more expensive or yeah link acquisition is more expensive there's like a reasonable chance where you might also have more of a budget to afford it. Yeah. And if you have time to be clear, like if if you have time but not money, then spend that time growing your social audience because that will make those profiles better. And I do think that your social profile is becoming more and more important. Google's including them more and more if you actually get traction on social media as a ranking signal. So that's a big asterisk, right? So I interviewed this plumber uh named Roger Wakefield on our YouTube channel and he told me that when he got famous on YouTube, basically his started videos started getting like traction. he started going viral, he saw his rankings on Google climb like crazy and he wasn't doing any SEO. And I've seen this happen before. Um, so I do believe that social signals are important for ranking, but only if you actually have people, you know, commenting, liking, viewing your stuff. You have to have all those other kind of um, UGC, user generated content signals in order for it to matter. Most small businesses don't have that. But if you have tons of time on your hands, then maybe go get that. Chase that and then you'll see more of an impact from that. But it's very time consuming. Time is the equalizer. Yeah. So it's just like if you're looking for like a cheap no time link building tactic. I don't even know if I have one other than maybe like reviewing other businesses and like that was that's a tactic that again not reviewing other businesses. So like let's say for example you are uh opening a real estate practice, okay? And you're you're starting your business as a realtor. you probably have an insurance agent that you use for your business, right? So, you could offer that insurance agent or review say, "I'll give you a testimonial you can use on your website." And then most testimonials will link back to, you know, the business. So, you can do that and I've seen that work a handful of times where people actually go and do this. Um, and you probably also have, you know, a landlord. Uh, you also probably also have other business types that you've had like a lawyer you probably had to hire just, you know, maybe help with incorporating your business or whatever. Um, so any of those professional services, you can leave them a review and you can ask them like, "Hey, feature this on your testimonials page." Um, and we I've had minor success with that. Like usually, uh, you won't have everybody take you up on it, but you should get a handful if you if you offer it to, let's say, 10 businesses, you'll probably end up getting a few links from it. Wow. Wow. That's a cool tip. What's the What's the biggest mistake small local businesses make when they start like quote unquote doing link building? Is it getting exact match or is it something else? They just don't know enough about links to know what to do and not do, right? So, everybody just has this idea that links help, which is wrong. I'm like, no, actually links have the power to either help or hurt you. And I don't think enough people understand that because anybody I talk to that has been penalized from links, they're like, "Oh, I just, you know, I I knew links mattered." And they just, it's like I feel like knowing the difference of a good and a bad link is not an easy thing um to analyze. Even my own team, the ones that don't do link building here, have like struggle to know what's a good and a bad link. And our link builders got it down. But it's very specialized. It's like I think of it almost like going to a doctor to get an analysis, you know, like the more experience you have, the more sites you've looked at, the clearer you'll have and be able to say like, well, that's a bad link, that's a good link. And you can't just trust metrics. People that are like, oh, the DA was high. That doesn't matter at all. Like at all. You could have like a 99 DA authority site tank you. Like, so the DA metric is the stupidest thing ever. Don't look at that. But that is what most people do. They look at DA, they think the link helps, and then they buy a bunch of them, and then they're crying like 5 months later. What should they be looking at? Oh man. So, the biggest metric that I was using was organic pages in hrefs. It was a sign of the site's health in general because the more the higher that number, the more pages on that site rank on Google. So, that is the metric I used to use. That being said, that metric doesn't matter at all if you care about LLM visibility. So, we've had some sites like award sites I was talking about, they would fail miserably in that metric and they are still working just fine. I've had sites where they actually fail a spam score in Hrefs and getting an award from them just helps just fine for LM. So, LM is like a different beast. Um, but organic pages is probably the one I would look at the most for link building. And then again, anchor anchor text is the big one that you should be looking at. You don't want a large number of those, period. Yeah. What's what are some link link opportunities local businesses overlook just because they seem too obvious or too boring? I think press release is a big one. I know I've already mentioned it, but like press releases, I think, is one that people are like, "Oh, that's stupid or that doesn't work." Actually would have been in that camp a couple years ago for the record because we tested press releases many years ago. Uh concluded they didn't do anything. Um, that's changed. Again, I think it's more about the LLMs really like them. Um, and I also think it's about how you do them that matters, how you structure them, who you use, what you talk about, all that's the the the devil's in the details, right? So, it's not the tool that doesn't work, it's the person using the tool. Um, so I I think press releases is probably one that we use a lot that I wouldn't say automatically clients want to do it. They're like, h, but they they have a very high success rate. Yeah, I love press releases. I mean, I actually I want to hire somebody to because like with AB Newswire, you can pay $500 and get I think it's uh 83 press releases for a year. 82 or 83, I don't remember, but like each press release is around six bucks. And like there's any any business has something that you can put out like two press releases a week for like okay, let's just take like my brand. Okay, I uh breached episode um I don't know 985 of the podcast. put out a press release. Uh, I went viral on Instagram, put out a press release. Um, I put out a new article, put out a press release. Things are just going well and smooth. Put out a press release. And like, uh, or or new partnerships. There's so many different things that you can do press releases for. And the thing about press releases, too, is they go away after a couple of days. So, you like it's helpful to have a steady stream of them. I don't know if I would do them that frequently for a small business only because again the more you link build at scale the more likely Google's going to catch it and I think Google's rule of thumb they don't want you link building period doesn't matter what kind of links you get they do not want businesses link building so the key with link building is to do it under Google's radar so that they don't actually catch it and volume is something they catch so I do think that referring domains for example that's another graph I look at in hrefs if you see sites that have like a very high rising referring domains trend That's a problem. Like that is means the likeliness Google is going to be like, "Oh, they're buying links or they're paying." And when I say buying links, I really think all link building is buying links. Just to be clear, like anytime you're hiring an SEO company, they're getting you links, you're buying a link. Let's just call it like a spade a spade. Like everybody is buying links. So when that happens and Google can detect it, I think there's a larger chance they're going to try and neutralize it because they really don't want businesses doing this. So I don't know if you put out press releases. What if you put out a press release without a link? You don't need a link. You could just use a brand name. I don't know. I mean, time will tell, right? I think this is one of those things. I know a lot of people that are doing press releases all the time. And so far, seems okay, but I don't know. I will tell you, I have seen uh a press release be responsible for a site getting mailed for an algorithm update. But again, anchored. It was anchored. So, I don't know without the anchor if it would have done the same thing. Um, but it was part of it was not the only type of link they had, but it was one of the ones and the page they linked to in the press release and the keyword that was used as an anchor got destroyed. So, um, yeah, that that is one I have seen, but um I would avoid anchored anchored links in all cases for press releases. Generally, generally, I'm with you. I like one of the criticisms that I get on this podcast is that I tend to play it too safe. Like, oh, Edward, you're always interested in like playing it too safe. But it's like I'm I'm doing SEO for like the long haul. Like I'm investing in a brand for many cuz that's where you get the compounding is where you get the greatest successes that like people can't even believe and I don't want to mess with that. There are some agencies right now that I can only imagine are crying. Like honestly like given what I'm seeing from site trends and I it's pretty easy to tell like who their clients are. A lot of them have testimonial pages and stuff and I've done enough analysis looking at sites and I'm like I wouldn't want to be these guys, right? So, you don't want to be that agency where down the line you get screwed. And I think it again widely depends on how much risk you're willing to take. But I'm I'm the same camp as you. I don't like taking a lot of risk because I don't want to wake up after a core update and have a bunch of clients got hit. It's and seeing seeing how bad it can get now realizing that like you can actually have a sitewide hit as a small business. That scares me even more. So, I feel like I'm like going back further into like the little white hat quarter where I'm like, h I don't know. This is scary. Um because again, like there's lots of other things you can do on your site that have no risk. So, it's like why not do those things? If those things still work, why do the risky stuff? You don't have to. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So, I have two more questions. Um this last this second last one kind of interesting. How about multilocation businesses? So, what should they do differently when building links? Should they push links to the brand to individual location pages to both? Yeah, I would say individual location pages just makes the most sense, right? So, you would want to have all your um directory listings and things of that list that. Now, I I will say I'm I'm in the camp that I don't think you need a ton of citations. So, I don't think you need to go build 500 citations for every location. Um I care about the the core ones that matter for every business. That list has shrunk dramatically. like it's like Facebook, Yelp, BBB, I don't know, there's like 10 maybe that I would say are worthwhile for every business and then go into your niche ones that actually rank on Google and that's it. And for those ones certainly build to the location page, I will say that um one thing that is we are seeing matter more with AI on Google specifically is how your business name is listed. So if there are inconsistencies in how your business name is listed, especially on your website, so not so much thirdparty citations, mostly your website can be a big problem um with AI. So that is the one field that seems to matter more than it used to. But I'd say it's actually more like an internal signal, if that makes sense. Like people who've rebranded or have slightly different name variations on their websites, you want to make sure that's all consistent. What extent? So, what if you're like sometimes you refer to yourself with LLC, sometimes you don't. It literally I I saw it. So, again, we're testing some cases right now and this one that we have is wild. It was a all caps versus not all caps thing. Yeah. And I was like, this is so crazy. Uh, and again, I'm hoping to publish this once I have a few more examples cuz this was one example. I don't like publishing things with one example. I want to try and repeat it a lot. But this one example was crazy. Uh, Google does this thing now in the US. I don't know if you've seen any AI powered local packs, but it's about 8% of queries have them only in the US, only on mobile. And uh they will create a like a ghost listing. I I got to name these things. And like it's like a listing that will say your name, but it won't have your reviews, won't link to your website or anything like that, and they're not able to match it to your Google business profile cuz something's mismatched. So, it's like really weird. And we see this all the time for businesses where we get these like blank kind of ghost things. we've had to have for clients. And so that's where I'm seeing the mismatching be a problem. But it seems to be more based on your site than third parties. I would definitely clean up the third parties and I would do it to the point again of the ones that matter, the ones that actually uh are being referenced or being or ranking for your brand name. All right, last question. Kind of like a summary question for this whole episode. If you had to design design a simple repeatable link building system and maybe you already have one that a local business owner could actually stick with, what would that process look like monthtomonth? Yeah, I think we have like five or six different link building strategies that can be done multiple times. Uh let me try to shoot these off by memory. Um writing for other uh businesses is one. Uh, again, probably not something you can do at scale, but uh, you know, if you're a realtor and you have a mover company or something, a lot of times those two are very wellrelated, you could write for them um, on their uh, website and that is a much better solution than guest posting, which is way easier and easier to scale, too. But again, I don't do that at all anymore. Um, writing for a single thirdparty publisher can also be good. Um, so if there is like if let's just say for example you you have a Medium account and you got a lot of following on Medium then likely your articles will actually rank on Google. So that can be a good outlet if you're in that situation. So writing for others uh earn media is definitely still on our um playlist. So connecting with journalists uh getting quoted um that can be good long term if you get like a few of those. We've had some clients that have been like in you know Martha Stewart's blog or like home and healthy living kind of things. Um, so those kind of links are good and there isn't really a limit to them and they're not usually anchored so they're pretty safe. Press releases, I don't know what I would say my cadence for this is probably I think the most we've done is like once a quarter uh for small businesses. Um, and I don't know beyond that. It's a big question mark for me. Uh, what else? Uh, if you acquire another brand, that's another big thing that we get uh for small businesses. So acquiring other brands, we are very picky about how what we do with that site, where we point it, what page to point it to. There's a lot of thought that usually goes into that. Whereas I've actually seen people do acquisitions where they forget about the site and I'm like, "Guys, this is like an SEO gold mine here. Um, I don't know of what else I'm missing. I think those are the main ones. Thank you so much for coming on the show." And awards. Oh, I didn't mention awards. Oh, awards. Yeah, awards. Sorry, I tried to repeat myself, but yes, awards. For for people who aren't already following you, where should they where should they check out your stuff? I mean, Sterling Sky is everywhere. So, our YouTube channel is probably our biggest focus right now. Sterling Sky on YouTube. Uh, we're on Reddit, so local search subreddit. We have our website, which is sterling sky.ca. I'm on Facebook. I'm on X. I'm on every single social platform you can imagine. Uh, so pick pick your favorite and you can find me there. Joy Hawkins is everywhere. She's also on another episode of this podcast. So you check out her first episode, too, which was a really I don't remember. What did we talk about? I don't remember. A lot of stuff. A lot of your first It was your first one, so it's probably just like general like your strategy, how it's different from other strategies. That was It was a good one, though. Um and I think it did pretty well as I think it did pretty well as well. It was one of the more popular guest episodes. Anyway, yeah, thank you for coming on. Um for people who watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcast, thank you so much for listening. This is episode 979 of the Edward Show. You know what? Joy Hawkins joins the show. If I was putting out a press release two times a week, this would deserve a press release if There you go. Yeah, if I was if I was doing it two times a week. And uh yeah, to everybody, I will talk to you again tomorrow. Bye now.