Ecommerce Link Building and SEO plays a crucial role in driving traffic and increasing visibility for online stores. One of the key components of E-commerce SEO is effective link building tactics.
Whether you run an ecommerce website, or online retail store or are involved in e-commerce marketing, this guide will provide link-building strategies to enhance your E-commerce visibility and SEO.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Boosting E-commerce SEO with Backlinks
- Effective Ecommerce Keyword Research
- Types of Link-Building Strategies
- Reverse B2B Outreach
- Use of High-Quality Images and Visuals
- Collaborating with Influencers and Bloggers
- Utilize User-Generated Content
- Guest Posting on Relevant Websites
- Create Shareable Content
- Get Product Reviews
- Repurpose Ecommerce Product Images
- Monitor and Disavow Toxic Backlinks
- Leverage Competitors’ Backlinks
- Partnering with Niche Influencers
- Best Practices for Ecommerce Link Building
- Strategic Link-Building: The Final Stretch in E-commerce Growth
- FAQs
- Related Reads
Introduction
In e-commerce, it’s not enough to have a great product; you also need to ensure that potential customers can find your online store. That’s why e-commerce SEO is essential. E-commerce SEO involves optimizing your ecommerce website for search engines and building quality backlinks to improve your website’s visibility.
Imagine an online store selling hiking boots online. They have a great website and quality products but they struggle with low traffic. So, building strategic links to their site from external sites is essential for these reasons,
- Links signal trust and authority to search engines helping companies rank higher in results pages.
- Securing links from relevant sites like hiking clubs, trail sites, outdoor magazines, and camping blogs helps ecommerce businesses for trusted authority and search for boots online.
- Links bring in qualified traffic, boosting brand awareness and conversions.
- The anchor text used on these links can optimize business visibility for searches like hiking boots. Optimize anchor text but do not over-optimize.
- Links shared on social media by influencers expose businesses to new audiences. These links act as a word of mouth for the brand.
- Link building provides more entry points for customers to find the business’s website while researching boosts across the web.
So, an ecommerce link building strategy is essential for retailers selling specialized products like hiking boots. The links provide trust and visibility that help in sales. Let’s delve into various link-building strategies and techniques to boost your ecommerce website’s SEO.
Boosting E-commerce SEO with Backlinks
For any online retail business, a backlinking strategy is important for improving SEO and driving more traffic to their E-commerce store. Backlinks are from other websites, signaling to search engines that your content is valuable and authoritative. Further below are reasons why building backlinks helps boost e-commerce SEO,
- The more high-quality backlinks your E-commerce site has, the more search engines will trust your store and rank you higher. So, build quality links for effective ecommerce link building tactics.
- Not all backlinks have the same SEO value. Links from authority sites in your niche are ideal. Links using your target keywords also boost rankings for those terms. The anchor text used in backlinks provides contextual understanding for search engines about the e-commerce site’s focus.
- Too many low-quality links from unrelated sites can damage your E-commerce SEO. Use ethical strategies to build relevant, high-value backlinks.
- Backlinks directly influence search rankings by associating trust and relevance with your online store. This is why link building is a crucial e-commerce SEO tactic.
Effective Ecommerce Keyword Research
Before starting your ecommerce link-building campaign re-building journey, it’s essential to conduct effective keyword research specific to your E-commerce niche. Effective Keyword research provides the foundation for an effective Ecommerce link-building strategy.
Targeting your search google the right keywords can help you identify link-building opportunities and create content that resonates with your target audience. Below are the steps used in identifying an effective Ecommerce keyword research,
- Research product, category, and brand keywords that customers search for in your niche.
- Analyze competitor websites to find keywords they rank for. Aim to target similar terms for your link-building and content creation.
- Identify long-tail, low-competition keywords that attract highly-targeted traffic to complement popular keywords. Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to a point of purchase.
- Use keyword research to create targeted content assets like blog posts, guides, and visuals for link-building outreach.
- Adapt target keywords to changing search trends and seasonality.
Types of Link-Building Strategies
Let’s explore some effective link-building strategies for ecommerce websites.
1. Reverse B2B Outreach
Reverse B2B outreach involves actively reaching out to businesses in your industry to build relationships and earn backlinks. It involves drawing potential customers to your business by creating link-worthy content and resources that compel the target audience to reach out to you.
The goal of reverse outreach is to attract qualified prospects and have inbound lead generation through content that represents business expertise. 60% of marketers say that inbound (SEO, blog content, etc.) is their highest quality source of leads.
The key steps in reverse B2B include identifying relevant sites like suppliers, manufacturers, and wholesalers who would find value in linking to your Ecommerce store.
So for that, your outreach email should demonstrate familiarity with your brand and the purpose of the idea based on them.
Provide useful resources and discounts to incentivize them to link back to your website. Also, provide guest posts on B2B blogs and include contextual backlinks to related products on your ecommerce store. Publish interviews, quotes, and testimonials from business partners and link back to their websites.
The relationships and links gained from high-quality sites in your niche can significantly boost your site’s authority and rankings. Utilize the skyscraper technique which is a link-building strategy to improve existing popular content and replicate the backlinks. The key to successfully executing the Skyscraper technique is email outreach.
Use social data to connect with individual followers and start sales conversations. This is an example of the Socedo app reaching out to businesses in their industry to build relationships and earn backlinks.
2. Use of High-Quality Images and Visuals
Engaging visual content attracts links from other websites. Create infographics, charts, and diagrams using data from your industry and link back to your store site. Then,
- Publish product images and product videos to encourage links from content sites.
- Ensure visual content is designed and optimized for easy sharing across blogs and social media.
- Include your target keywords in titles, captions, and alt text for images to maximize SEO value.
- Leverage user-generated visuals like customer photos and videos of your products in use.
Visual content allows you to highlight your product expertise while also attracting high-quality backlinks.
Ikea created an interactive furniture buying guide with infographics, allowing other sites to embed it for links.
3. Collaborating with Influencers and Bloggers
Influential bloggers and social media personalities can drive huge amounts of referral traffic to your E-commerce store through backlinks. Identify relevant influencers in your niche by reviewing their content and audience. One of the benefits of influencer partnerships is to increase the brand’s visibility.
In that way, Micro-influencers often offer the best value. Offering free products to influencers in exchange for reviews, product mentions, or dedicated posts. Sponsor influencer content through paid partnerships and ask for backlinks to your site within the content. Build relationships with influencers by engaging with their content and collaborating repeatedly over the long term. Utilize influencers across social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok in addition to blogs.
MVMT Watches gifted free products to micro-influencers in the watch niche in exchange for reviews. MVMT’s micro-influencer marketing has been successful, with sponsored videos reaching over 1 million views on YouTube.
4. Leverage User-Generated Content
User Generated Content (UGC) like customer photos and reviews can be a great source of organic backlinks. Encourage customers to post photos of your products on social media and tag your brand. Share customer content like product reviews, unboxing videos, and tutorials from your social accounts to generate backlinks. Offer incentives for user-generated content creation like featured placement on your site or discounts for contributing content.
Proactively seek permission from customers before re-sharing their website content or social media posts. Repurpose the best user content across your own blog and social channels and link back to the original creators. User-generated content provides authentic endorsement of your products while letting you build organic, relevant backlinks.
In 2012, COCA COLA launched their ambitious UGC campaign named ‘Share a Coke’.
5. Guest Post on Relevant Websites
Publishing guest posts allows you to gain contextual backlinks from authority sites related to your e-commerce niche.
Identify blogs, magazines, and niche sites that accept contributed content from brands and experts. Pitch guest post ideas that provide unique value for the target audience like “The 5 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Buying Hiking Boots”.
Ensure your author bio includes a link back to your e-commerce store or relevant product category pages. Stick to high-quality sites with good domain authority and traffic to maximize SEO gains. Also, build long-term relationships with publishers by contributing consistently over time.
Guest posting expands your brand’s reach while building relevance through strategically placed links.
6. Create Shareable Content
Viral content that gets widely shared on social media and websites provides link-building opportunities. Create content formatted specifically for high sharing potential such as lists, memes, gifs, and quizzes. Promote your viral content through internal channels and relevant online communities.
Place strategic links back to related products within shareable content to increase referral traffic. Monitor links generated through viral content and double down on what resonates. Viral content pairs entertainment with relevance to earn high-quality links at scale.
Not only does it serve as a fantastic method for creating a distinct visual identity for your brand, similar to the approach taken by GILI, but User-Generated Content (UGC) goes beyond that. It fosters social sharing by cultivating a more profound connection between your brand and your audience. This shift moves away from conventional sales tactics and instead embraces an approach that generates enthusiasm for the lifestyle your products and services endorse.
7. Get Product Reviews
In-depth product reviews result in valuable links from high-authority affiliates and review sites.
Identify reputable sites that review products in your e-commerce niche and share their submission guidelines. Follow up respectfully if your products aren’t selected for review or offer to send free samples to incentivize reviews.
Encourage satisfied customers to review your products on retailer sites, affiliate blogs, forums, and social channels. Respond professionally to all reviews, positive or negative, to build trust and credibility.
Link internally to positive product reviews from related categories and product pages to boost conversions. Proactively seek authoritative product reviews as it enhances your e-commerce site’s reputation and earns quality links.
DJI sent drones to review sites like Dronethusiast, DroneGear and Digitalcameraworld to get reviewed and linked to.
8. Repurpose E-commerce Product Images
For ecommerce brands, high-quality visual content like product images can make or break their online presence and customer experience.
Product photography offers visual link bait that can be repurposed to earn links. License high-res product images to other websites for a fee, with links back to your ecommerce store. Allow select media sites to feature your product visuals in buying guides, roundups, and galleries while citing your store. Create recurring affiliate promotions where product images are shared on partner sites along with affiliated links back to your store. Contextualize product images with useful advice and tips to make them more shareable. Repurposing product visuals taps into the marketing potential of your e-commerce assets.
Wayfair allows media sites to use their product images in buying guides with affiliate links.
9. Monitor and Disavow Toxic Backlinks
Maintaining link hygiene is equally important to build links for e-commerce SEO. Set up alerts to regularly monitor new backlinks pointing to your site. Investigate suspicious links from low-quality, unrelated sites using analytics. Disavow toxic backlinks that violate Google guidelines or appear promotional. Watch for tactics like negative SEO used by competitors to hurt your rankings. Continuously refine your backlink profile to meet Google’s evolving quality standards. Monitoring backlinks protects your site from penalties and maintains your hard-earned link authority.
Ecommerce businesses can utilize broken link building that takes advantage of broken pages on the web. 66.5% of links to sites in the last nine years are dead. It involves finding a dead page and asking linkers to swap the links to a working page on your site. The key to broken link building is providing value to site owners by fixing their broken outbound links with relevant working links to your site.
This is an example of monitoring and disavowing toxic backlinks using Semrush for the website “Seoquake”. Finding their toxicity score will help to identify the spammy links and disavow them for improved rankings.
10. Leverage Competitors’ Backlinks
Identify link-building opportunities you may be missing out on within your shared niche by identifying where top competitors are getting high-value links from. Utilize strategies that competitors use to earn links from the same websites. But, avoid directly copying competitor links at scale, which can appear manipulative.
Competitors’ successful link-building tactics can fast-track your e-commerce SEO growth. Outreach to high-authority sites your competitors have links from but you don’t yet.
Hubspot identifies sites linking to competitors like Marketo and reaches out to get links. Using tools like Ahref helps to identify sites that competitors have reached out to get links.
11. Partner with Niche Influencers
Micro-influencers can be useful partners for your brand, especially if they possess small but engaged audiences in your product niche. To discover relevant influencers, you can search for hashtags related to your products. However, it is important to vet influencers for genuine interest and expertise in your niche before reaching out to them.
You can send free products to micro-influencers in exchange for reviews and dedicated social media posts, but it’s important to develop long-term partnerships by maintaining relationships beyond one-off content collaborations. When suitable, you should compensate influencers appropriately for their audience reach and influence with paid partnerships. Micro-influencers attract targeted and loyal audiences, which can boost awareness and backlinks for niche Ecommerce stores.
Swedish watch company Daniel Wellington connected with micro-influencers in fashion and gave them discount codes for readers.
Best Practices for Ecommerce Link Building
Implementing these Ecommerce link building strategies takes time and effort. First, set measurable goals for link quantity, quality, and resulting sales impact before starting on outreach. Balance resource investment between link maintenance and new link acquisition for sustainable results. Then, track metrics like ranking improvements for target keywords.
Create authoritative content assets like infographics, videos, and guest posts to support outreach at scale. Personalize outreach and pitches based on priorities of potential linking sites rather than spamming. Focus on establishing long-term partnerships and consistently adding value through content creation. Avoid quick-win link schemes. Finally, Integrate link building with e-commerce marketing like influencer collaborations. With dedication and smart execution, ethical link-building can deliver transformative e-commerce SEO results over time.
Strategic Link Building: The Final Stretch in Ecommerce Growth
This comprehensive guide covered important link-building techniques like outreach campaigns, guest postings, site mentions, influencer marketing, and best practices for ecommerce link building. By securing authoritative backlinks from relevant external sites, e-commerce businesses strengthen their website’s domain authority and organic search visibility.
Continuously monitor your link-building efforts to identify the most effective publisher partnerships, anchor text uses and campaign formats.
FAQs
1. What are the most important metrics to track for link building campaigns?
The key metrics to monitor are:
1. Referral traffic from new links
2. Ranking improvements for target keywords
3. Link equity scores
4. Overall domain authority changes
5. Conversion rate changes from referral traffic
Tracking these metrics lets you identify your most valuable links and optimize ongoing campaigns.
2. How many outreach emails should be sent per week for an effective campaign?
To maintain quality, we recommend doing no more than 10-20 emails per week focusing on top tier targets. Personalized emails targeted to the right publishers get higher response rates than blast emails. Quality over quantity.
3. Should my ecommerce site disavow all low quality links or just toxic ones?
Only disavow confirmed toxic links that violate Google webmaster guidelines like paid links. Low quality links like irrelevant niche edits may indirectly influence rankings but won’t incur manual penalties. However, build your overall link profile with primarily high quality, relevant links and make those the focus of outreach efforts rather than building random low value links.
