That time an agency owner told me to stop chasing backlinks

Ran into a guy who runs a boutique SEO shop at a local meetup in Portland last spring. He straight up told me that for small local clients, I was wasting time on link building and should focus on Google Business profile optimization instead. I ignored him for 6 months and kept pitching backlink packages. Lost two clients who went with cheaper competitors who did exactly what he said. Finally tried his advice on a new client, got them ranking on page one for 4 keywords in 8 weeks with zero links. Anyone else had success skipping backlinks for local SEO?

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jamiekim4mo ago

Honestly, dropped link building for local clients last year and it was the best SEO move I ever made.

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kim_patel894mo ago

Best SEO move" is a strong claim but I gotta push back here @jamiekim. Backlinks still give you a huge moat against competitors who can just copy your GBP optimization overnight. Without them, you're one Google algorithm update away from losing everything.

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