I help a neighbor of mine out with his small business website and I am trying to improve his search rankings within our geographic area. One of the things I am struggling with is how to build backlinks to a small business like this. It is a lot easier with a blog and changing content but this is a static informational site for his business. I have submitted the site to business directories, google local, bing local, yahoo local, yelp, and other business directories. Is that the only thing I can do? I don't have a budget to buy links, just looking for some genuine advice that can help.
Maybe build some blogs about the biz on free blogging sites? I wouldn't worry about dup content in this case, all you care about is for Google to notice the backlinks... You could write one article and spin it with thebestspinner.com (free) and post on a few dozen free blogging sites for quick backlinks..