Ask most agencies what local link building is and you get a list of directories. Ask Apurva Bose of Overtake Digital and you get a description of showing up.
Bose On Real-World Business Relationships
“local link building transcends mere online interactions; it’s fundamentally about establishing and nurturing real-world business relationships within the community.”
— Apurva Bose, Overtake Digital
He is specific about the shape of the effort: “putting the brand and its representatives out there, engaging in networking, and participating in various events, not limited to one’s immediate business niche.” That last clause matters. The link value comes from the parts of the community that are not your competitors.
And he names the mechanism we build events around: “It could mean getting involved in charity events or community networking activities, which necessitates consistent presence and engagement.”
Why An Event Compresses A Year Of Networking
Bose’s approach works. It is also slow: coffee by coffee, event by event, over quarters. A community cleanup does the same relational work in a single morning because everyone is standing in the same field at the same time with a shared reason to be there.
He also warns about the failure mode. Bose notes the limited value of email into community organisations “due to the high volume of emails these organizations receive,” and recommends “a more direct approach, like phone calls or personal visits.” An event is the most direct approach there is: you are not asking for their attention, you are giving them something to attend.
The Partners Who Link Without Being Asked
Our observation, not Bose’s. The organisations that publish a link after an event, unprompted, are almost always the ones with a page to update: the chamber, the city parks department, a school with a service-hours requirement, a church with a bulletin, a local paper with a community column, and any business that sent staff.
The ones that never link, however warm the relationship, are the ones with no website worth the name. That is not a failure of the relationship. It just means the value shows up as referrals instead.
Six Listings To Submit Before Event Day
The city or county events calendar. The chamber of commerce calendar. The regional volunteer aggregator. The local newspaper’s community listings. The parks or public-works department page, if the site is theirs. And the sponsoring businesses’ own news pages.
Submit all six at least two weeks out, because several are moderated weekly rather than daily, and a listing that goes live the day after the event is worth nothing to anybody.
The Recap That Collects Everything
Bose’s caution is worth repeating here: this “requires active participation from the business owner to ensure authenticity and effectiveness in building those crucial local links.” A recap written by someone who was not there reads exactly like a recap written by someone who was not there.
Publish it within a week, name every partner, link to each of them, and send it to all of them. That is the asset the whole morning was quietly building.
More in why local event links beat bought links and how community cleanups supercharge your link profile.
See IRL event marketing for how we run them.