Illustrated Link Building Tutorial #2: Chambers of Commerce
Joining your local chamber of commerce may provide you with business advice or opportunities – but it can also give you links for your site.
Let’s take a look at a random chamber of commerce in the US: the West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce.
They have a business directory – which I assume contains the businesses that are members. Here’s one of the categories in their directory:
“Pooch Academy Dog Training, LLC” is the link to their site. Pretty good anchor text, too. That’s actually the only business that features in that category, but it’s certainly not the only animal training business in West Des Moines.
Lutzhaus Kennels are actually located in West Des Moines. If they would join the West Des Moines Chamber of Commerce, they could get a link from the above page in the directory. Now, they may have their own reasons not to join – maybe the $200 membership fee (at the minimum – it rises according to number of employees) wouldn’t afford them any other benefit, so the expense isn’t worth it. But if you have other reasons to join your chamber of commerce, count this as one of them. And if you’re already a member, make sure you’re listed.
Other local business directories can also be helpful. Staying in Des Moines, the Greater Des Moines Partnership for businesses provides similar benefits.
They too have a member directory – but this one doesn’t seem to provide the same SEO link benefits. (*This is a bonus SEO tip, that goes beyond link building.) Here is the page you get when you click on “Member Directory.”
It’s a search form. You need to pick categories and type in text in order to get to any listings. Google’s bots that crawl the web do not fill in forms. All the pages with the business listings (including the links) are therefore invisible to Google. So if a link to you is behind a form, Google can’t see it. Additionally, if you have pages on your site that are behind forms and not accessible any other way, Google can’t read those. Something to bear in mind…
So go find your local business chambers and organizations and get some links!
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June 9th, 2011 by Aviva B
Posted in Illustrated Link Building Tutorial, Link Building
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