Ask most local SEOs for their anchor text plan and you’ll get a list of city-plus-keyword phrases. On Unscripted SEO, Semantic Links founder Bradley Benner made the case that this is precisely the pattern that gets local sites into trouble — and that the safer, stronger play is an anchor formula built almost entirely from the brand itself.
The 90% rule: brand and compound anchors
Benner’s team places off-page links for local businesses at volume, and roughly 90% of the tier-one links they build use a brand anchor or a compound anchor — the brand name plus one more entity. That leaves only a small slice for anything resembling exact-match keywords. The point is not caution for its own sake; it is that brand and compound anchors are what actually build the entity associations a local business needs to rank and to get cited.
Our job as SEOs now is not about pushing metrics. It should be about creating associations, strengthening those associations, and helping — forcing the models and the algorithms to recognize those associations. That’s our job.— Bradley Benner, Unscripted SEO
For a local business there are three entities that matter: who the brand is, what services it provides, and which areas it serves. A compound anchor packs two or three of those into a single, natural-looking link — which is exactly the kind of local and offline link building that reinforces a business as a real entity rather than a keyword target.
The four anchor shapes to rotate
The brand + service + location anchor formula
Build your tier-one anchor mix almost entirely from these four shapes. Benner’s own on-air example of a compound anchor: ‘McAllister’s tree service.’
Brand
Just the business name — ‘McAllister’s.’ The workhorse anchor. It is unimpeachably natural and it feeds the model a clean brand entity every time.
Brand + service
‘McAllister’s tree service.’ Ties the brand to what it does, associating your name with the service category you want to own.
Brand + location
‘McAllister’s of Cookeville.’ Binds the brand to the area it serves — the association that powers local visibility.
Brand + service + location
‘McAllister’s tree service in Cookeville.’ The full semantic triple in one anchor — who, what, and where in a single link.
Rotating across these four shapes keeps your profile looking like something a real business earns while still packing every link with entity signal. You almost never need a bare exact-match keyword anchor to do that job.
Pair every link with a citation
Here is the move that makes local link building do double duty. Benner defines a citation as a brand mention plus at least one piece of NAPW data — Name, Address, Phone, Website. When your brand or compound anchor sits inside content that also mentions the business by name with a NAPW data point, the mention satisfies the language model and the link satisfies the backlink side. One placement, two signals.
He splits citations into two types, and the unstructured kind is currently the faster lever for AI search visibility:
Structured vs. unstructured citations
Both build entity associations. Right now, unstructured mentions are the quicker win for showing up in AI answers.
Structured citations
Strict NAP(W) listings in directories — the big directory sites and industry-specific ones. Consistent, foundational, and expected of any local business.
Unstructured citations
Brand mentions with a data point appearing in the wild — press releases, branded assets, and blog mentions. Benner says these influence AI and LLM search visibility more than almost anything right now.
Press releases specifically
Put a brand reference on high-authority media with a news-style freshness factor that the LLMs like to cite — a fast way to earn both a citation and, often, a relevant link.
Put the local anchor + citation method to work
A repeatable local entity-building loop
Map your three entities
Write down the exact brand name, the services you want to be known for, and the locations you serve. These are the only building blocks your anchors and citations should use.
Build your anchor mix around the 90% rule
Plan tier-one links so roughly nine in ten use a brand or compound anchor, rotating across the four shapes. Reserve exact-match keyword anchors for the rare case where nothing else reads naturally.
Lock down structured citations first
Get consistent NAPW listings in the major and niche directories so your foundational entity data is clean everywhere the models look.
Layer in unstructured citations
Earn brand mentions with a NAPW data point in relevant, local, or high-authority content — blog features, branded assets, and community write-ups — so each placement carries both a mention and, where natural, a link.
Use press releases for freshness
Publish newsworthy updates through press channels to land brand references on high-authority, fresh properties the LLMs favor when they cite local businesses.
Keep the placement genuinely relevant
Every anchor and citation should live in content and on sites that are actually about your service and area. Relevance is what turns a mention into a recognized association.
This is why community-driven placements work so well for local brands: a sponsorship writeup or a community cleanup link naturally carries your brand name, your area, and often a NAPW data point all at once — a compound anchor and a citation in a single, unimpeachably legitimate mention. Stack enough of those, built on the four anchor shapes, and you are doing exactly what Benner says the job now is: creating the associations, strengthening them, and forcing the models to recognize your business as the real, local entity it is.
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