Grubhub's Link building strategy when launching in new a city

• In 2007, Grubhub raised $1.1 million and time to expand to New York;
• Every day, thousands of Americans search for food delivery on Google so ranking on top would mean high intentional traffic;
• SEO is the key growth channel and to rank high they needed backlinks;
• The strategy was to offer incentive to local press:
  • Grubhub would go to local press and offer to give their readers $10 off their first order;
  • All the local press had to do was link to the new city's page which explained the discount;
  • After a while, the new city's page would build enough local links and it would rank 1st;
  • The "link juice" then flowed downstream to each city's specific food pages, helping them climb the search results.
• For every new market to enter after, Grubhub replicated the process again.

Ref:

• Grubhub's link building strategy