Ecommerce link building — Impact, benefits, & Strategies

It’s a no-brainer that the link-building is important. We all agree. But why have we picked this moment to talk about ‘e-commerce link-building’ today? It is because of the burgeoning ecommerce industry worldwide, the never-ending addiction to shopping online, and Google favoring the ecommerce niche more than ever now with AI Overviews and other novel features. 

Okay, we’ll talk about the last one in a separate post soon. For now, let’s focus on the importance of building quality backlinks for your ecommerce businesses. How are you gonna do it, and how exactly is it a little different from the conventional link building we have in place? 

We can all agree that e-commerce is thriving. With every passing day, more people are relying on making purchases from the comfort of their homes instead of trying to go out, find the store, and finally buy something. The universal truth is that ecommerce brings so much convenience into our lives. We can buy anything from the store located on the other end of the world while chilling in our homes. Don’t we all love that? 

 

Ecommerce Stats 

Now it’s time to look at some ecommerce stats: 

In 2023, the total number of online buyers reached up to a whopping 2.64 billion. And these stats alone make up 33% of the world population.  

In the same year, the United States of America had 274.70 million online buyers. This makes around 81% of the total population actively making purchases online.   

Another interesting fact found in the same year was that 44% of online shopping starts with Google Search. 

Even if they don’t start with Google Search, the vast majority of online purchases include surfing the internet at some moment in the research process.

So, you see, no matter how cliched it sounds, it is nothing but the fact that Google plays a vital role in online customer journeys. The search behemoth brings the brands, businesses, and products right in front of the eyes and scrolling thumbs of users worldwide. And this is where link building enters the scene.  

 

Link Building Benefits 

Here are some top-of-the-list benefits of Ecommerce Link Building:

• improves your ranking on SERPs
• drives traffic to your ecommerce store and helps increase conversion and sales.
• builds trust, credibility, and authority 
• increases click-through rate (CTR)
• increases brand awareness
• helps you find new business opportunities and build meaningful relationships with other ventures in the industry. 

What makes Ecommerce link building different? 

Apart from the usual discourse of link building being important or not, there’s another factor that needs our coveted attention. Ecommerce link building is slightly different from the standard link building template we have in place. Speaking of which, it needs to have a custom action plan depending on the nature of your online business, your product offerings, and the type of audience you are targeting. So, we come back to the point that ecommerce link-building is different and needs a unique approach.   

As ecommerce businesses can be of any size and niche, it directly influences the number of pages the sites can have. So ecommerce site pages can range from hundreds to thousands. Smaller sites can have 15 to 30 pages, too. However, despite the variation in page numbers, the standard page categories of the ecommerce sites remain the same. These pages are: 

• Home page
• Category pages
• Product pages 
• Content pages      
• Blog pages 
• And more…

Therefore, to match the different search intents, it’s important to build quality backlinks to the wide-ranging sections of the websites. You need to figure out the right balance of backlinks pointing to all the important pages of your online store. That includes products, categories, and other content pages you want people to discover, visit, and make purchases from. This big time contributes to building a cohesive and natural-looking link-building profile. 

However, that’s not the case with the most non-e-commerce sites out there. With such sites, the standard practice is to build links pointing to pages that you want Google to acknowledge and rank in SERPs.    

In this way, it makes sense that ecommerce link-building isn’t a piece of cake. It’s a challenge. Which goes up a notch when you’re supposed to build those important links to particular product pages. But don’t worry, we have covered it for you through this blog. 

Now, let’s talk a little about what kind of backlinks you should prioritize for your link-building campaigns. 

What Kind of Ecommerce Backlinks Matter?

When it comes to building a robust link-building profile for your ecommerce ventures, you need to be ultimately mindful of a few important things:   

Page/Site Relevance 

Always go for the relevant referring domains in your niche. Not only does it help you get a vote of confidence and site authority, but it also helps Google to acknowledge your credibility. Besides, the recent discovery of the Anchor Mismatch demotion system in the leaked Google Content Warehouse API is a strong indication that site relevance is a vital factor for building premium quality backlinks.

Domain Rating 

Note that getting backlinks from higher DR poses more benefits to your site. As these domains have better site authority, their backlinks pass more link equity to linked sites. However, this doesn’t mean you should never have backlinks from average or lower DR sites. Because, in the grand scheme of things, they help you create a more natural link-building profile. As a matter of fact, if a website is very relevant to your own site’s topic, you can afford to be less concerned about its DR being lower. 

No follow signals

Don’t forget to have a fair amount of no-follow signals too. They bring better visibility, engagement, and traffic, to your site while sending crucial user signals to Google.

Okay, now it’s time to talk about all the link-building tactics that can help you land premium-quality backlinks. 

 

Link building tactics 

Not all of these strategies require the grind. Some are simple and low-effort but can do wonders and contribute to building your coveted link-building profile. So, without further adieu, let’s begin!  

• Create linkable assets 

We can’t put more emphasis on how important this is. Having linkable content pieces on your site has the power to change the link-building game for you. 

As these pieces offer incredible value and are packed with interesting information, they are one of the major drivers to land premium quality backlinks from authoritative sites and platforms in your industry, and that too very smoothly. 

Depending on your niche and your offerings, you can create a range of linkable assets, for example: 

• Stats Pages
• In-depth guides 
• Original research 
• Roundup posts & more 

If you’re skeptical about which topics to choose, you can perform a competitor’s analysis to get a better idea about it. Or if you want to pull off the never-done-before-topic idea, you can do that too. To learn more methodologies for creating link-worthy content, check out our blog and video. 

Once you go above and beyond in creating your linkable piece and put all your effort into it, it doesn’t go without being noticed. People cite it because they appreciate the value provided by it, talk about it on socials and other spaces, and the piece ends up getting many links from different places.    

Link Building HQ crafts linkable assets for our clients across the world that help them get quality backlinks, better rankings, and visibility. Reach out to us if you want to know more about our work methodologies, proven records, and more.  

Start and Maintain a Blog

By having an optimized blog, or blogs for that matter, for your E-commerce website, you can get incoming links from trusted websites.

The blog you have for your E-commerce website needs to be a part of the domain of your website, or at least a subdomain. If your blog is on another domain, it will do more harm than good.

To get links from blogging, the content you churn out needs to be top-notch. If you manage to pull through, other webmasters may share links to your blogs, but only as long as they offer real value.

Links pointing back to your blog pages will automatically improve the rankings of your product pages and domain.

• Sponsor Events and Conferences 

Eminent conferences and events happen all around the year, according to the seasons and other important occurrences. And yes, your brand, being one of their honored sponsors, can do more than what meets the eye. Not only do sponsorships have the power to influence you to get multiple quality links, but they also impact your reach and bring more eyeballs to your brand. Truly a win-win situation. 

And there are two ways to go about it!! 

• Sponsor an Event 

We know that sometimes, in a year, the industry is buzzing with the hype of some ecommerce relevant conferences, workshops, shopping events, showcases, etc. Some popular ones are CommerceNext, NRF Big Show, and Shoptalk.  

So, do some research and look out for the relevant sponsoring opportunity in your industry, and once you get a chance to pitch your proposal or request your submission, just go for it. 

Here are some perks for it… 

The host links to all their sponsors and gives them an appreciation shout-out before, during, and after the event. It’s the continuous coverage that your brand gets from the host, which is nothing but great. 

Secondly, you also get to build meaningful relationships with other giant brands and authorities in your industry.  

• Host your own Conference.

If you have an ample budget and resources, you can also consider hosting a host. How great would it be to have an event or conference of your own and have it advertised on different platforms for maximum coverage? 

Local and global media sites, news platforms, and industry forums will cover your event and of course, will link back to your site in return. Most of these links will be from high authority sites that will pass link equity to your site smoothly.  

And not to forget the fun, the excitement, and all the incredible perks related to it.  

 

Welcome Video Marketing with Open Arms

By embracing video marketing, you will allow your products to come to life. This can be made possible by creating narratives, walk-throughs, and instructional videos.

The medium has a lot of potential, even allowing you to create different content types for your target audience. The types of video content can range from slapstick comedy to how-to.

Video content can make all the difference in the world when it comes to engaging with your customers. If you play your cards right, it can also increase click-through rates. If that is not enough, such content also ranks well.

You can always expand your reach by uploading any and all videos created to YouTube. Once that is done, keep checking back to see how well each video does using Analytics. 

You will also find out who embeds your video from YouTube. This way, you can talk to said people and request a backlink to your website.

 

Build Content Assets via Influencers

According to research, millennials are quite skeptical about sponsored messages and big brands these days. This makes it difficult for E-commerce websites to build quality links.

One way of overcoming this problem is by building content assets via influencers. Influencers are those empowered individuals who have a massive fan following.

You can tap into influencers’ followers by offering sponsored content to them. For instance, if you are selling branding clothing, ask your influencers to dress in them and upload pictures on their social media platforms. The pictures would have links to encourage their users to buy the look and give your brand incredible promotion. 

These links from social media platforms will not make much of a difference in your site’s organic rankings, but they will attract referring domains. By following this strategy to the word, you will put yourself out there naturally without having to rely on a high-cost E-commerce link-building campaign.

 

Find Your Mentions on the Web.

Always be aware of where you are mentioned and what the internet says about you. How? Let us break it down for you in three super-simple steps.  

It’s time to surf the internet! 

Step 1 

This begins with a quick Google search of your brand name. Just type in “yourcompany.com” -inurl:yourcompany.com

The search will let you see all the pages that mention your brand name while excluding pages from your own site. Smart and simple! And yeah, you can try the same search with the incorrect spellings as well because the chances of people misspelling your name are quite high.  

Step 2 

Once you’re done running multiple quick searches on Google, just proceed to make a list of all the sites and places you found your mentions. Make separate columns for broken links, 404s, incorrect links, and mentions without links so that they can be identified better. 

Step 3

The next step is to contact the webmasters who are managing those sites. In case you fail to find the contact details of that individual, you can just visit the ‘Contact Us’ page and use the email address provided there. 

Then, craft a short, sweet, and to-the-point email asking them to add the correct link to the existing mention on their site. Hopefully, it does work out for you. 

 

Get product feedback on other sites.

Roundup posts, reviews, and experts’ feedback over a particular product or brand still draw the attention of your target audience. And yes, these forms of content pieces are not only popular but also manage to get higher rankings on SERPs for particular queries. 

So, it’s totally worth it to pursue these options. 

Either you go for the sponsored post feature on some popular magazine or submit your product for the roundup posts, you can leverage the coveted spotlight and have that golden product backlink. But do make sure that your backlink is marked no follow in the sponsored posts.  

 

Get featured on Podcasts. 

Nothing is more cool than getting featured in a podcast these days. As much as this creative outlet is becoming popular content among diverse audiences, it’s also fascinating to see so many businesses and brands getting better reach through them. 

Apart from its popularity, podcasts are repurposed and circulated on different platforms for a longer period. If it’s published on the website, you’ll get a link pointing to your site. Similarly, on socials, you’ll get nofollow links to maintain the right balance of dofollow and nofollow.  

And by chance, if it gets viral, then it just keeps popping up on different socials, forums, and other relevant spaces. This means your brand message will reach many people even after months or years.

• Internal Links 

While you’re busy garnering those golden backlinks, don’t forget to build a network of internal links too. And that’s because they do play a role in your custom SEO  journey, like, 

• helping Google discover more of your content 
• assisting Google bots in understanding and ranking your content
• bring in more traffic to the pages 

So in a nutshell, take internal linking seriously! It does matter for link building and also for SEO in the grand scheme of things. 

 

Conclusion 

As can be seen above, there are many ways you can build links for your E-commerce website. Really, it all depends on your E-commerce store and what you hope to achieve.

 

There is a chance that you may still be uncertain about your E-commerce store and how to tackle link-building effectively. There is no harm in asking for help, especially if you don’t want to take unnecessary risks. For this reason, it would be best for you to contact the professionals at Link Building HQ.