Do you have a customer report showing the nearby town names and how many customers are in each of them? If not, start working on that. Naturally, if you don't have a computerized point of sale this might be a serious challenge.
When considering link building strategies, it's always good to develop a relationship with other local non-competing stores and link your websites together somehow. Relationships with popular local businesses that also have active websites would be your best target, like the pizza place, popular bakery or even the local pub. The local newspaper would be the ultimate relationship.
But let's extend this further out beyond your own town. Using the customer report mentioned earlier, you could also establish relationships with the popular local businesses in towns that have a high density of your customers.
What's a high density? You would have to make that determination on your own. We would suggest a serious look at any town with more than 50 customers in it, and a very seriously determined strategy at any town with more than 100.
You might have to do some real footwork on this, or you could just ask your customers. Perhaps like this, "You live in Centerville right? What are the local popular places in your home town?" The customer could give you the name of the places. After that, you should investigate if they would be willing to trade links with your website.
Although this Daily Gold Nugget is not giving specific directions on link building, we do want to advise you that you should not have a single page with all your traded links. Instead, you should scatter them around your website randomly. Tell the other business where you will place their link, and specifically ask them if you can be on the page of your own choosing too.
