Link building has long-term effects. It attracts traffic—then interested prospects, then customers—as you grow an audience that supports the product or service you sell.
In other words, it gives someone what they need and a reason to stick around.
But to make link building for ecommerce website work, you must understand your marketing and business goals. Then you can create content that serves those goals, instead of just giving your audience something to pass the time.
If you’re building links for your business, you also need a strategic framework so you can get the most out of your time and hard work.
In this article, we’ll take you through simple (and yet effective) link building tactics that drive traffic, sales, and revenue.
You might focus on just one or two, or you may use all of them. As you read through the article, see which of these you can apply to your ecommerce business.
Let’s get started.
How Does Link Building Help To Boost Ecommerce Business?
Each backlink (link back to your site) is like a vote of confidence. They suggest to search engines like Google that another site vouches for you.
Link-building, on the other hand, is the process of getting other websites to link back to your ecommerce site (as many as you can provided they move the needle).
That means if you have a good and stronger backlink profile, the better your search performance.
On top of that, there are many benefits of link-building for e-commerce:
- Improved rankings of your content on Google
- Faster indexing of new product pages
- Increased brand awareness of your eCommerce website
- Introduction of your products & brand to completely new audiences
- Consequently, an increased number of purchases and higher ROMI
As you build your links, it’s important to ask yourself; “would the person reading the page that has linked to you be interested in the content they’d see if they clicked the link?”
If your answer is yes, you qualify for the next section.
How To Do Link Building For Ecommerce Websites?
When it comes to link-building for Ecommerce, there are many different strategies available.
The first and perhaps, most important is to make sure your internal linking is up to date. The second is to create content that people will want to connect back to.
…think about visuals, infographics, lessons, guidelines, well-thought-out articles, and data.
For now, let’s talk about internal linking and then other strategies later.
What Is The Internal Linking Strategy For Ecommerce?
Point blank here. Link building for ecommerce sites can be a hard nut to crack.
Why? Because, in the nature of human beings, not many people are willing to give away links (especially free ones) to product pages, which as a result, leads to conversion and profit.
So what do you do? Show yourself some love…start building and maintaining your internal links.
They can help improve the user experience, the site structure, and the SEO performance of your ecommerce site.
A good internal linking strategy should include the processes you’re going to use to create and optimize internal links on the ecommerce site:
- Choosing the right anchor text
- The right destination pages, and
- The right link placement to achieve the desired goals.
- It can help users navigate the website and find the products or information they are looking for.
- It can help search engines crawl and index the website and understand the relevance and importance of each page.
- It can help distribute the link equity or authority from external links to other pages of the website.
- It can help increase the conversion rate and the average order value by cross-selling and up-selling related products.
Some of the internal linking strategies for ecommerce are:
- Featuring popular or new products on the homepage or other prominent pages.
- Creating brand landing pages that link to multiple categories or products related to a specific brand.
- Displaying related products or product recommendations on the product detail pages.
- Adding a “view products from this brand” or “view more from this collection” option on the product detail pages.
- Creating a blog or an article section that provides useful content and links to relevant products or categories.
- Creating buying guides or comparison charts that help users choose the best product for their needs and link to the product pages.
Internal links are good when it comes to ensuring that your leads, prospects, and customers stick around.
However, if you want to get a whole new set of traffic that has the potential to give you a dedicated audience, then you have to build external links.
That’s what we want to talk about in the next section.
What are 5 Simple E-commerce Link Building Tactics?
Although link building for ecommerce websites is among the most difficult to do, to your surprise, there are still some low-hanging fruits that you can leverage—even if your business is small.
#1. Use the product feedback technique
No matter how good your product is, it’s not obvious that people will care about it. So, it’s entirely up to you to start conversations around your product so that the other parties can take it up—and this tactic will help you out.
This strategy is where you find listicle blog posts ranking for queries like “best [product type]” —that you’re not featured—and then offer them your product in return for feedback.
Do not mistake this for a link-building scheme—that will attract penalties. You’re basically offering a product in return for honest feedback. But the twist is always that, if they like your product, they can easily link to your product or service.
Here is how to do it:
- Brainstorm product categories of products you sell
- Search Google for listicles where you’re not featured
- Pitch your product for feedback
#2. Pursue unlinked mentions
This ecommerce link building tactic involves having a third ear in the SERPs, hunting down mentions where your brand or products are mentioned (but not linked to), and writing to the authors to request them to link back to your site.
This strategy is pretty easy because of the following reasons:
- The authors and webmasters are already familiar with your brand or product.
- The bloggers already, most likely, like your product.
#3. Pitch guest post updates
One thing about the internet is that things keep on changing. For example, what we knew about “helpful content” before the end of 2022 is not the same today—Google made new updates to their algorithms which saw a shift.
Changes happen so fast that sometimes bloggers and webmasters cannot catch up.
But this presents you a good opportunity to build some important links by offering them a free update on their content and in the process you add a link to yourself.
Here is what you need to do:
- Brainstorm on your target sites (they should be relevant to your products or services)
- Carry out your research and see what blog posts would need an update (target something that could make a trend)
- Pick one that has a good profile link (better still pick something with potential)
- Pitch—continuously
#4. Publish curated statistics pages
One thing that is not going to change is the position of data, facts, and statistics throughout society. It’s common for humans to want to prove a point and back it up with reputable data.
More often than not, they’ll run to Google and perform a simple search to confirm or trash a point. If they feel inspired, they’ll want to mention it in their blogs and other publications, as a result, they attract backlinks.
For that reason, publishing a list of curated statistics related to what you sell is a simple way to attract relevant backlinks to your site.
#5. Get listed on the “where to buy” pages
If you’re familiar with SEO basics—especially types of keywords. In that case, you’ll understand that before your customers go out to buy a product or service, they’ll first conduct a search about it and the location.
In fact, according to 99firms, approximately 46% of all Google searches have to do with location.
So what does this mean? This is a big impetus for ecommerce businesses to adapt their marketing approach towards pitching for links from such pages that list third-party products.
That’s it. Those are the hanging fruits for you. But there is more about this in the next section.
What are 7 Effective Link Building Tactics for Ecommerce?
Let’s do some small housekeeping here. There are so many ecommerce link building tactics, but the strategy is one—give value.
If you want to get high-quality backlinks (for your ecommerce) from highly authoritative sites, you need to ensure you publish helpful and exceptional content for the target keywords.
It’s that simple: if you want backlinks that can drive sales, then give people content that can place you as an authority in your business.
For example, if you’re selling medicinal products, you need to write content that offers exclusive information about the products, previous studies on their impact on the targets, and so on.
That way, you not only get to be trusted for your products but you also attract journalists and bloggers who are able to give you more backlinks.
Instead of generalizing the discussion, let’s get into the 7 tactics.
#1. Publish High-Quality Blog Content for Specific Keywords
We’ve already covered this in our introduction, but there is no harm in closing the dots.
Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue.
Brands generate content to facilitate the interaction between people (whether current or prospective customers, employees, or clients) and their products or services.
It’s always a good idea to attach your blog to your online store. That way you get to benefit from the backlinks your blogging efforts get to generate to your store.
A good example is if you’re selling mountain bikes in your store and create an article on your blog giving your audience tips on keywords like “How To Adjust Gears on Your Mountain Bike.”
#2. Become a Source Through HARO
Today the world is not short of journalists constantly looking for expert opinion and information to include as sources for their stories and reports.
HARO gives you an opportunity to help these journalists with your industry knowledge. If they like your work, chances are they can quote you in their articles. When they do, they will likely link back to your ecommerce website.
#3. Create Linkable Assets
Humans process information visually, so why not communicate with prospects through imagery?
In fact, on social media visual assets such as infographics are shared three times more than other content types. And it gives you more opportunities to acquire relevant and high-quality backlinks.
For example, if you’re selling household items like curtains, you can create stunning infographics about curtains. If they can be able to attract the eyes of the bloggers, you can be guaranteed product exposure and a backlink.
#4. Resource Page Link Building
Resource pages are dedicated pages on a website that link to helpful content on a specific topic.
If you want to build some exceptional backlinks for your ecommerce site, here is what you need to do:
* Search for resource pages that are relevant to your industry. Basically, look for something that takes the following shape:
- “[topic] roundup”
- “[topic] resources”
- “best [product]”
- “ultimate list [topic]”
- “useful links” AND [product or service]
- “[product or service] useful resources”
- “[product or service] resources”
* Review your existing content to find pieces that add value to these resource pages.
* Reach out to the website owner, propose your content for their resource page, and explain why it would add value for their readers.
#5. Ask Partners to Link to Your Site
If you’re a reseller or retail ecommerce seller, you may want to find stores where to purchase your products and ask them to include your store among their outlets—link to your site.
If you’re not sure where to start, your partners are a Google search away. Try something like “[product] + online directories.”
It will give you a decent list of sites that you can reach out to and pitch about your products and ask them to link to you.
#6. Organize a Creative Digital PR Campaign
If you love your product or service, you definitely have to promote it. And lately, digital PR can help you generate a decent profile of backlinks.
If you launch or plan to launch a product, why not reach out to major news outlets with a press release and let them publish it?
It doesn’t sound easy as we’re putting it—but it works. You don’t have to go at it alone, there are tons of freelancers and agencies with solid relationships with such outlets who can help you do a press release for your products (at a cost of course).
At the end of the day? It can create a ton of backlinks, traffic, and sales.
#7. Create And Promote Video Content
Video content is a great way to showcase your products, tell stories, educate your audience, and probably entertain them.
Turns out, video content can also rank well on Google and YouTube, and generate more engagement and shares on social media.
To leverage the impact, you can create different types of video content, such as:
- Product reviews
- Tutorials
- Testimonials
- Behind-the-scenes
- Viral videos
…and host them on your website or YouTube channel.
To get the most out of it, you can also reach out to relevant bloggers, partners, influencers, or media outlets and ask them to embed your video on their website or share it with their audience.
This can help you build relevant links that can drive traffic to your website or YouTube channel
Final Thoughts
Link building for ecommerce is difficult but that doesn’t mean you stop.
In fact, the strategies and tactics we’ve discussed in this guide give you have been curated to put you and your business ahead of the curve.
Before everyone else knows about the backlink strategy for ecommerce (discussed above), just go out and start utilizing them for guaranteed links that drive traffic, sales, and revenue—if you use them creatively.
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