Every e-commerce website owner knows that getting high-quality backlinks is crucial to rank on the first page of Google. However, creating a robust link building strategy is not an easy task, especially for those who run an online store. Fortunately, there are effective link building strategies that can boost your e-commerce website's visibility and drive more organic traffic.
In this article, we'll discuss some proven link building techniques that work for e-commerce websites. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced marketer, these strategies will help you improve your search engine rankings and grow your business.
Why Link Building is important for E-commerce Websites
Link building is an essential part of SEO for e-commerce websites because it helps to increase their visibility in search results and drive more traffic to their pages. When other websites link to an e-commerce website, it signals to search engines that the website is a credible, high-quality resource. This, in turn, can boost the website's rankings and help it attract more organic traffic.
Here are some key reasons why link building is important for e-commerce websites:
- Boosts search engine rankings: Backlinks from authoritative websites can help e-commerce websites improve their search rankings and visibility.
- Drives referral traffic: Links from relevant, high-quality websites can drive referral traffic to an e-commerce website, increasing the number of potential customers who visit and interact with the site.
- Builds brand authority: When a website has many high-quality links, it establishes its authority and credibility in its market. This can help build long-term brand loyalty and trust among customers.
- Increases sales opportunities: An e-commerce website that ranks higher in search results and attracts more traffic is likely to have more opportunities to convert visitors into sales.
- Long-term benefits: Even though link building is a gradual process, the benefits are long-term, with the potential for website visibility and search traffic to continue growing over time.
Overall, link building is a crucial part of any e-commerce website strategy that seeks to gain maximum visibility, credibility, and sales opportunities.
Essential Strategies to Build Links for E-commerce Websites
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a technique that involves writing and publishing blog posts on other websites that are not owned by you or your business. This can help you build backlinks, increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website. Here are some key points to keep in mind:
- Identify relevant and authoritative websites to approach for guest posting opportunities.
- Pitch article ideas that are original, interesting, and useful for their audience.
- Follow the guidelines provided by the website regarding topics, tone, length, and formatting.
- Link back to your website in a natural and contextual way within the content.
- Avoid stuffing the article with commercial or promotional content.
- Share the published article on your own social media channels and website to maximize exposure.
- Build relationships with the website owners and keep the communication open for future collaboration opportunities.
Guest blogging can be an effective strategy to build long-term relationships with other websites, expand your audience, and boost your search engine rankings. However, it requires time, effort, and a strong writing and pitching skills.
Broken Link Building
Broken Link Building is a strategy that involves finding dead links on other websites and replacing them with working links to your own website. Here's how it works:
- Find broken links: Use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMrush to identify relevant pages with broken links. Alternatively, you can use Chrome plugins like Check My Links.
- Create replacement content: Once you have identified a broken link, create content on your website that is similar to the dead link's content.
- Reach out to the website: Contact the website owner and notify them of the broken link. Offer your replacement content as an alternative.
- Track your progress: Monitor your outreach efforts using tools to track your success rate and adjust your approach to get better results.
Broken Link Building can help increase your website's traffic and improve your search engine rankings. It's a great way to build relationships with other websites and drive more targeted traffic to your website.
Infographics
Infographics are visual representations of data or information, often used to make complex information more easily understandable and engaging for the audience. Infographics combine text, graphics, and imagery to tell a story or explain a topic in a clear and visually appealing way. They are used in a wide range of settings, from education and marketing to journalism and social media.
Infographics are an effective link building strategy for e-commerce websites because they can attract viewers and encourage them to share the content on various platforms. Infographics may feature product demonstrations, comparisons and visual guides on how to use your products. They could be shared through social media, blog posts, or other mediums as a way to bring in new interest and drive traffic back to your website or e-commerce store.
By creating unique and interesting infographics, you can generate backlinks from other websites, which can lead to increased traffic and higher search engine rankings. To create an effective infographic, it's essential to conduct research and gather relevant data, create a design that is both visually appealing and easy to understand, and promote it through various channels to reach your target audience.
Infographics are an effective way for e-commerce websites to differentiate themselves from their competitors and present data or information in a more captivating and engaging way. By incorporating infographics into your content marketing strategy, you can drive traffic and build quality backlinks to your website or online store.
Product Reviews
Product reviews are an essential link building strategy for e-commerce websites. Reviews of a product can increase the credibility of the product, and a positive review can influence a customer's purchase decision.
There are several ways e-commerce websites can use product reviews for link building. One way is to reach out to bloggers or influencers with a high domain authority and ask them to review a product. Another way is to ask customers to leave a review on your website or third-party review sites such as Google, Yelp, or Amazon.
When requesting reviews, it is important to incentivize customers or bloggers. For example, you can offer a discount code or a free product to customers who leave a review. You can also offer a commission or other incentives to bloggers or influencers who write a review.
However, it’s essential to ensure that the reviews are genuine and are not paid for. This can be done by asking reviewers to disclose any incentives they received.
Product review link building can also be strengthened by using schema markup. Schema markup helps search engines to better understand the content on a website and show rich snippets in search engine results pages. The use of schema markup can result in better visibility and higher click-through rates for product reviews.
Overall, product reviews are an excellent way of building links for e-commerce websites. Genuine reviews from customers and influencers can increase the credibility of the product and website, leading to more conversions, improved search engine visibility, and better website traffic.
Building Relationships with Influencers
Influencer Outreach
Influencer Outreach is a marketing strategy that involves building relationships with individuals who have a significant following on social media. These influencers can play a crucial role in promoting your e-commerce website and driving traffic to it. Here are some key points to keep in mind for successful influencer outreach:
- Research potential influencers carefully, looking for those who align well with your brand and target audience.
- Customize your approach to each influencer, taking the time to understand their interests and communication style.
- Reach out with a clear, concise message that outlines the benefits of working together and any compensation they'll receive.
- Offer value to the influencer, such as exclusive content or early access to products.
- Be patient and persistent, following up regularly but avoiding becoming pushy or spammy.
- Once you've established a relationship, maintain it with regular communication and collaboration on future campaigns.
Community Building
Community building is an essential strategy for link building for e-commerce websites. It involves building relationships with potential customers and industry influencers and engaging with them regularly. This approach is focused more on creating loyal fans of your product rather than persuading prospective customers to purchase from you.
To build a community, e-commerce entrepreneurs should focus on creating engaging content and foster conversation by making use of forums, groups, events and social media. By doing so, businesses will be able to connect with individuals who can share their work and link to their e-commerce sites across other platforms.
Community building allows you to connect and interact with potential customers in a meaningful way, as you get to know them and their needs better. This strategy can also help you gain links naturally by encouraging customers and industry influencers to share your content and link back to your e-commerce site.
It's important to note that building a community takes time and effort and that it requires a balanced and thoughtful approach. E-commerce businesses should strive to provide value to their community members and engage with them regularly to foster trust. This approach not only helps businesses build quality links, but also creates a loyal customer base that will keep coming back for more.
Leveraging Social Media for Link Building
Brand Awareness
Brand awareness refers to how familiar people are with a particular brand and how easily they can recognize it. It is a crucial aspect of building a successful business as it enables customers to remember and trust the brand. Here are some points to help explain brand awareness in detail:
- A strong brand awareness helps businesses to stand out from competitors and establish their unique identity.
- It encourages customer loyalty as customers tend to prefer brands they are familiar with and trust.
- It also attracts new customers by making the brand more visible and recognizable.
- Brand awareness can be achieved through various marketing channels such as advertising, social media, influencer collaborations, and content creation.
- Consistency in branding, messaging, and visual identity is key to building strong brand awareness.
- Businesses can use metrics like social mentions, search engine results, and web traffic to measure their brand awareness levels.
- Building brand awareness is a continuous process that requires a long-term strategy and consistent efforts.
In summary, brand awareness is crucial for building a successful business and attracting loyal customers. It can be achieved through various marketing channels and requires consistency and long-term strategy.
Social Listening
Social listening is the practice of monitoring social media channels, blogs, forums, and other online platforms to gather insights and identify trends regarding a particular brand, product, or industry. It involves tracking social media mentions, comments, and conversations related to your brand or industry and analyzing them to extract meaningful insights.
Social listening allows you to stay up-to-date with what your customers and competitors are saying about your brand. It helps you uncover new opportunities and identify gaps in your marketing strategy. By tracking social media conversations, you can gather customer feedback, track industry trends, monitor brand sentiment, and get insights into customer preferences and behaviors.
To get started with social listening, you need to choose the right social media monitoring tools that will help you track your brand mentions and conversations related to your industry. Once you have your monitoring tools set up, you should define your key performance indicators (KPIs) and start analyzing the data you collect.
Social listening is a valuable tool for e-commerce websites, as it allows you to gather insights about your customers and competitors, spot opportunities, and make informed decisions based on the data you collect.
Advanced Link Building Techniques
Skyscraper Technique
The Skyscraper Technique is a content marketing strategy that involves finding the most popular content in your industry or niche and creating a better version of it. It works by analyzing the top-performing content in search results and creating a piece of content that is more informative, detailed, and visually appealing.
The steps involved in the Skyscraper Technique are straightforward. First, you need to identify the content that has generated a lot of links, shares, and engagement. Then you need to create a better version of that content.
To make your content better, you should add more details, cover more related topics, and provide more valuable insights. You could also make the content more visually appealing by incorporating images, videos, and infographics.
Once you have created the superior version of the content, you need to promote it to get more links, shares, and engagement. You can do this by reaching out to the websites that linked to the original content and asking them to link to your improved version instead.
The Skyscraper Technique has been proven to be effective for building high-quality links and driving traffic to your website. It is a great way to improve your website’s search engine rankings and establish your brand as a thought leader in your industry or niche.
Overall, the Skyscraper Technique is a smart and efficient way to create high-quality content that stands out in search results and attracts links and social shares.
Resource Page Link Building
Resource page link building is a technique that is used to acquire links from resource pages. Resource pages are web pages that curate links to helpful content about a particular topic. These pages are often used as a reference point for people searching for information on specific topics. Resource pages provide a long-term opportunity for link builders to build links to their e-commerce website.
To get started with resource page link building, you first need to identify resource pages in your niche. Once you have a list of resource pages, you need to analyze them to ensure they are relevant to your e-commerce website. Check their backlink profile and look at the quality of links. Avoid linking to resource pages with poor quality links.
When you have identified a relevant resource page, you can then pitch it to the website owner. - You may want to tailor your pitch to suit the context of the resource page. You can also suggest new relevant resources that can be added to the page and suggest your e-commerce website for inclusion in the list.
It is worth noting that resource page link building is an effective technique for building links to your website. However, it is crucial to resist linking to a page just to get a link. The link should be valuable to both your website and the resource page, both in terms of relevance and quality. Additionally, the resource page content should be relevant to your e-commerce website and customers.
Website (Exchange) Link Building
Website (Exchange) Link Building is a tactic where two websites agree to link to each other's website. This process is also known as reciprocal linking. However, this strategy can be tricky because Google has previously provided penalties for websites that engage in manipulative link exchanges for the purpose of improving rankings.
To make the process effective, businesses must take extra care to target reputable websites within their industry and ensure that the linking pages are relevant to their audience. In doing so, they can boost their website's authority, earn referral traffic, and avoid penalties.
It is also essential to keep the link exchange ratio balanced to offset any potential red flags. A safe approach is to lead with a link back to the other site, giving the other site more value, before requesting a reciprocal link back.
Moreover, businesses must not solely rely on Website (Exchange) Link building as their main link-building strategy. This technique should be used in combination with other white hat strategies such as guest blogging or broken link building to ensure that their link profile is diverse and effective.
The Do’s and Don’ts of Link Building for E-commerce Websites
Here are the do's and don'ts of link building for e-commerce websites to keep in mind:
Do's:
- Focus on building natural, high-quality links from authoritative websites relevant to your niche.
- Create high-quality, unique content that others will want to link to.
- Create a diverse link profile with a mix of links from different sources, such as blogs, forums, and social media.
- Keep track of your link profile, regularly monitor for broken links, and fix any errors or issues.
- Build relationships with other bloggers and influencers in your industry to gain exposure and links.
- Use social media to promote your content, and engage with your followers and customers.
- Utilize link building tools and software to streamline the process and improve results.
Don'ts:
- Buy or sell links, or engage in any other black hat SEO practices that violate Google's guidelines.
- Focus solely on quantity over quality when it comes to link building, as low-quality links can harm your search engine rankings.
- Spam other websites with irrelevant or low-quality comments or links.
- Use automated link building tools or software that violate Google's guidelines.
- Rely solely on link building to improve your search engine rankings. Focus on creating high-quality, unique content first and foremost.
- Over-optimize your anchor text or use too many exact match anchor texts, which can appear spammy to search engines.
- Neglect your website's user experience, as a positive user experience can lead to more natural backlinks.
Overall, the key to successful link building for e-commerce websites is to focus on creating high-quality content, building relationships with other websites and influencers, and implementing a diverse and natural link building strategy. Avoid any practices that violate Google's guidelines or appear spammy, and prioritize user experience above all else.
Key takeaways
Link building is an essential strategy for boosting the visibility of e-commerce websites. A well-executed link building campaign can drive organic traffic, improve search engine rankings, and increase online sales. However, not all link building strategies are created equal. The best approach is to adopt a diversified strategy that incorporates a variety of link building techniques. These may include guest blogging, broken link building, and outreach to industry influencers.
It is also important to focus on building high-quality links from authoritative sources, rather than spammy or low-quality websites. By following these best practices, e-commerce businesses can effectively leverage link building to grow their online presence and drive revenue.