The most common mistake in multi-location link building is treating the company as one entity. Every regional newspaper mention, every chamber of commerce listing and every local sponsorship gets pointed at the homepage, and the geographic signal dissolves.
Structure it per branch instead. Each location needs its own prospect list drawn from its actual catchment: the regional press, community organisations, local suppliers, event calendars and industry bodies operating in that area. Each of those links should point at that location's page, not the homepage, because that is the page a reader following the link would want.
Consistency matters as much as volume here. Where business details differ between sources — an old phone number, a former address, an abbreviated street name — the value of those references is diluted. Auditing and correcting existing listings frequently produces more movement than adding new ones.
Regional sources are also considerably cheaper than national placements and far harder for a competitor to replicate at scale, because the relationships are genuinely local.
Put this into practice
Run an Link Gap Scout analysis on one of your commercial pages, then compare the content gaps against your current roadmap.