A plumbing business in western Sydney came to me stuck at position 4 in Google Maps. Their Google Business Profile was well optimised. They had solid reviews. They were posting regularly. On paper, everything looked right.
The three businesses ahead of them had thinner profiles and fewer reviews. What they had were local backlinks: links from their local Chamber of Commerce, from a suburb business directory, from a local trade supplier’s website. Six targeted local backlinks later, my client moved from position 4 to position 2 for their main service keyword. Nothing else changed.
This post covers how to build those kinds of links yourself, without paying an agency.
What is local link building?
Local link building is the process of getting other websites to link to your website, where those links come from sites that are geographically or topically relevant to your business.
A backlink from the Parramatta Business Chamber is a local link. A backlink from a US marketing blog is not. Both are backlinks, but only one tells Google that your business is embedded in your local community.
For local search rankings, specifically for Google Maps and the local 3-pack, relevance and location context carry more weight than raw link volume. Ten highly relevant local backlinks will do more for your Google Maps ranking than 200 generic directory submissions from offshore sites.
Why do local links affect your Google Maps ranking?
Google’s local ranking algorithm weighs three factors: relevance, distance, and prominence. Backlinks directly influence prominence. When reputable Australian websites link to your business, Google interprets that as a signal that your business is known and trusted within the local market.
According to Whitespark’s annual Local Search Ranking Factors research, link signals are consistently among the top five factors for local pack rankings. This includes both the quality of your backlinks and the authority of the domains linking to you.
For most Australian small businesses, the backlink profile is the weakest part of their local SEO. They’ve claimed their Google Business Profile. They’ve listed in a few directories. But they’ve done no active outreach. That’s where the gap is, and where the opportunity sits.
What makes a good local backlink?
Not all backlinks improve your search visibility. A low-quality link from a spammy link farm can do more harm than good. A high-quality local backlink has three characteristics:
- Relevance: The linking site is related to your industry, your location, or both. A link from your local tradie association beats a generic web directory.
- Authority: The linking site has genuine credibility. Check Domain Authority (DA) using a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush. Any Australian site above DA 20 is worth pursuing.
- Location signal: The linking site mentions your suburb or city, or is itself a local publication, business organisation, or community directory.
The goal is not hundreds of backlinks. For most local businesses, 10 to 20 high-quality, highly relevant local backlinks will move the needle more than volume alone.
6 local link building tactics for Australian small businesses
Step 1: Get listed on Australian business directories
This is the starting point for any local link building strategy. Australian business directories are indexed by Google and pass genuine link equity when they include a link to your website.
The directories worth prioritising:
- Yellow Pages AU (yellowpages.com.au)
- True Local (truelocal.com.au)
- Word of Mouth (womo.com.au)
- StartLocal (startlocal.com.au)
- Hotfrog (hotfrog.com.au)
For tradies, Hipages and Oneflare both pass backlinks alongside their lead generation function. For tourism and hospitality businesses, the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse (ATDW) is worth the submission process.
I covered the full list of directories worth targeting in my earlier post on Australian business directories for local SEO. If you haven’t worked through that list first, start there before doing any outreach.
Step 2: Join your local Chamber of Commerce
This is the most underrated local link building tactic I use with clients.
Every major Australian city and most regional areas have a Chamber of Commerce. Annual membership typically costs $200 to $500. Almost every Chamber maintains a member directory on their website, and almost every Chamber website is a .com.au or .org.au domain with genuine local authority.
A link from your local Chamber at that price point is one of the best-value local backlinks available to a small business. It also adds legitimacy in Google’s eyes because Chambers are reputable, Australian community institutions with long-standing domain histories.
Search for “[your suburb or city] Chamber of Commerce” to find yours.
Step 3: Sponsor a local event, school, or community group
Sponsorships regularly produce backlinks because the event or organisation lists their sponsors on their website with a link back to each sponsor’s site. Local football clubs, school fetes, charity runs, and community festivals all take sponsors.
The link you get is typically from a .org.au domain with strong local relevance, which is exactly the kind of backlink that benefits local SEO.
This works best when the event audience overlaps with your customer base. A mortgage broker sponsoring a first-home buyers expo is a strong fit. A dentist sponsoring a local fun run is a reasonable fit. A plumber sponsoring an out-of-area trade conference is not.
Budget for this separately from your SEO spend. Treat it as community involvement that also happens to produce a quality backlink.
Step 4: Reach out to local media
Australian community newspapers and suburb-focused online publications are genuinely link-worthy and more accessible than most business owners assume. Publications like local Murdoch community titles, Fairfax regional papers, and suburb-specific news sites all need story content.
The key is pitching a story angle, not a promotional piece. A story angle: “I’ve worked with five businesses in [suburb] this year and noticed the same local SEO mistake costing them customers.” That’s a story. A press release about your business opening is not.
The honest trade-off: Most outreach pitches don’t land. Expect to send 8 to 10 pitches before one story gets published. When it does, a backlink from a local news domain is worth the effort. Local media domains typically carry DA 30 to 50, and the location relevance is hard to replicate any other way.
Step 5: Partner with complementary local businesses
If you’re a landscaper, the local garden supply centre knows your customers. If you’re a mortgage broker, local real estate agents know your customers. Complementary businesses already have websites, and a mention or feature on their site is a natural, relevant local backlink.
The pitch is straightforward: offer to write a short guest article, or propose a mutual feature. Most business owners respond positively because it’s a genuine value exchange. Keep it to businesses that are complementary, not competitors, and make sure the link is embedded in real content rather than a paid listing.
Step 6: Claim industry-specific directories
Beyond the general Australian directories, most industries have their own listing sites that carry genuine authority.
Examples:
- Tradies: HIA (Housing Industry Association), Master Builders Association state chapters
- Health: HealthEngine, HotDoc, Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) register
- Legal: Law Society directories (by state: NSW Law Society, Law Institute of Victoria, etc.)
- Finance: ASIC’s Financial Advisers Register, FPA member directory
- Tourism: ATDW, state tourism body directories
Search for “[your industry] association Australia” and look for member directories. If you’re eligible for membership, the listing is worth the joining fee both for the business credibility and the backlink.
How long does local link building take to show results?
Expect 3 to 6 months from your first new backlinks before you see movement in your local search rankings. Google needs time to crawl the new links, assess the linking domains, and re-evaluate your prominence signals.
If you build 5 to 10 quality local backlinks within a 3-month period, you will typically see some ranking movement. For competitive keywords in large cities like Sydney or Melbourne, backlinks alone won’t get you to position 1. They’re one signal among several. But for most small businesses in less competitive suburbs and regional areas, even a handful of quality local backlinks can produce a meaningful shift.
Once you’ve done the work, the best way to confirm it’s having an effect is to track your rankings properly. My post on how to track local SEO results yourself covers exactly what to monitor and which free tools to use.
Common mistakes Australian businesses make with link building
Buying cheap backlink packages. Services that sell 50 backlinks for $49 deliver links from offshore spam networks. These won’t help your local rankings and may trigger a Google manual action. Avoid them entirely.
Chasing domain authority over relevance. A DA 40 link from a US tech blog is less useful for your local SEO than a DA 15 link from your suburb’s community website. Location and topic relevance matter more than raw authority for local search rankings.
Treating it as a one-time activity. Your competitors are building links too. A backlink profile needs to grow over time. Doing one round of outreach and stopping is not a strategy.
Ignoring your existing network. Most business owners already have relationships they haven’t activated for links: suppliers, clients, professional associations, business networking groups. These warm contacts are far more likely to link to you than a cold outreach target.
FAQ
What is local link building?
Local link building is defined as the process of acquiring backlinks from websites that are geographically or topically relevant to your business location. These links signal to Google that your business is embedded in the local community, which influences your Google Maps and local search rankings.
Does link building still work for local SEO in Australia?
Yes. Whitespark’s Local Search Ranking Factors research consistently places link signals in the top five ranking factors for local pack results. For Australian small businesses, the opportunity is significant because most local competitors have weak backlink profiles.
How many backlinks do I need to rank locally?
There is no fixed number. For most Australian small businesses targeting a specific suburb or city, 10 to 20 high-quality, locally relevant backlinks is enough to produce meaningful ranking improvement. Quality and relevance matter more than volume for local search.
Can I do local link building myself, or do I need an agency?
The tactics in this post — directory submissions, Chamber of Commerce membership, sponsorships, and partner outreach — don’t require specialist tools or technical skills. You can do all of them yourself. Where an agency adds value is in digital PR outreach at scale and in identifying high-authority link opportunities through tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush that you may not find manually.
You now know which local link building tactics work for Australian small businesses and which ones to avoid. The harder part is doing the outreach consistently over months, not just once.
If you’d like me to look at your current backlink profile and tell you specifically where your gaps are and what’s worth pursuing, book a free call. I’ll give you specific, actionable feedback on your link building opportunities during the call itself.
Jay Ong is a local SEO expert based in Sydney, helping Australian small businesses rank higher on Google Maps and attract more local customers.