Are you frustrated that your online store isn’t capturing the sales and visibility you know it deserves?
Imagine a bustling digital storefront where your products are seen and sought after, where each click promises new customers and repeat business.
This vision isn’t just a daydream; it’s a tangible outcome within reach.
Yet, there’s a gap between where you are now and where you could be—marked by your site’s current search rankings.
It’s not just about having an attractive online store; it’s about ensuring it’s seen by the right people at the right time.
That’s where the art and science of link-building come into play.
Link building is the backbone of any successful SEO strategy and connects your hidden gem of a store to the bustling marketplace of potential customers.
However, navigating the complex world of link building can feel like a daunting task.
With our expertise in link building, we’re here to guide you.
Let’s embark on this journey together, transforming your online store from an undiscovered treasure into a thriving marketplace leader.
What Is E-commerce Link-Building?
E-commerce link building is an SEO strategy for e-commerce businesses that helps them generate more traffic and sales.
Link building for e-commerce websites includes a good mix of tactics, such as guest posts and niche edits on high-authority sites.
What Does A Quality Link for an E-commerce Site Look Like?
E-commerce sites that focus on generating quality links will notice the best results. Here are a few critical considerations for link quality:
- Naturally placed in high-quality content on an industry-relevant website.
- Careful selection of a website with good domain authority.
- A link that sends traffic to specific product pages.
- Strategic use of keywords as the anchor link.
It’s important to note that when it comes to e-commerce link building, quantity over quality isn’t always a better strategy. The quality of your link profile is just as important to consider.
In fact, securing a few links from website owners with trust and authority versus many low-quality links is a better link-building strategy.
Why Is Link Building So Important for Online Stores?
E-commerce websites that earn quality links can increase domain authority and organic traffic through higher rankings.
As today’s online shoppers turn to the internet and search for products, your e-commerce brand must be among the top search engine results for your target audience.
The e-commerce industry is also highly competitive, with new competitors joining the space regularly.
A strategic e-commerce link-building strategy allows e-commerce brands to stay ahead of the competition and build authority through high-quality links that can keep your brand relevant and profitable.
Unlike local SEO, the competition for an e-commerce site is unlimited. That’s why every website owner should try to acquire valuable backlinks and brand mentions from relevant websites.
Online Shopping Is Growing At A Record Pace – Are You Poised to Capitalize On It?
Online shopping continues to expand and grow at record numbers.
Trade.gov predicts that e-commerce will continue growing at a rate of 14.5% from 2024 to 2027.
Do you want a piece of the revenue?
If so, now is the time to determine the SEO and e-commerce link-building strategies that will allow you to capitalize on it.
As new players enter the market, e-commerce websites can expect the industry to become even more competitive.
Website performance and domain authority will remain among a few of the top factors that set some e-commerce brands apart from the others.
SEO and link-building strategies take time – and the sooner you start, the better and more competitive you’ll be with other websites in the same industry.
Here is an example of how our link-building efforts paid off for one of our e-commerce clients:
A link profile natural to the site’s industry helped this e-commerce website significantly boost its organic traffic.
After we built 90 relevant and trusted links, the business noticed almost 42,000 more visitors per month to their e-commerce store.
There’s no denying that effectively planned and executed link-building campaigns work.
This is because relevant links from high-authority websites boost your website’s trustworthiness.
Google and other search engines consider your website reputable and valuable to the user, resulting in higher rankings and more traffic.
Foundations of An Effective E-commerce Link-Building Strategy
Stellar SEO prioritizes a customized approach to every e-commerce link-building campaign.
Each campaign begins with a comprehensive link audit and industry research. We review your competitor’s link quality against your own website to identify areas of improvement.
If you are planning to run your own link-building campaign, you should do the same prior to starting.
How Can On-Page SEO Increase Your Link-Building Results?
On-page SEO is a crucial part of your link-building efforts. Good e-commerce SEO includes internal and external links, page formatting, and easy product identification.
On-page SEO generally includes high-value, reader-focused content, optimized images, well-formatted pages, and meta descriptions/title tags.
Taking the time to optimize your content and user experience will help your rankings and user experience – which can result in more sales for your store.
Link building aims to drive traffic to your website. But if your pages aren’t well-optimized or set up for easy user navigation, it’s unlikely to achieve your goals.
On-page SEO will help you get the most from every link you acquire while helping you convert the traffic into sales – so it’s a no-brainer to start here.
Website Structure Optimization
When designing URLs, aim for clarity and conciseness. Choose paths that accurately reflect the content’s structure and incorporate relevant keywords.
Avoid long URLs and superfluous parameters, as they can hinder user experience and SEO effectiveness.
Your website should boast a logical layout, with distinct parent (category) and sub (individual page) relationships.
Employing hard silos clarifies different site sections, benefiting both navigation for users and indexing by search engines.
A meticulously organized site architecture elevates the user experience by facilitating smoother content discovery and enhanced crawl efficiency.
Internal Link Optimization
Distributing Link Equity with Precision
Employ strategic internal linking to spread link equity across your site. Focus on linking to key pages to enhance their authority and search visibility.
Refining Anchor Texts
Develop anchor texts for internal links that are both descriptive and relevant. Such anchor texts aid search engines in grasping the linked pages’ context and significance, which can lead to better search rankings.
Crafting Content Funnels for Enhanced Engagement
Design content funnels that lead users from broad information on external platforms or your blog to detailed landing pages.
This structure bolsters topic relevance and boosts user engagement and conversion rates.
Strategies for Content That Attracts Links
Creating Link-Worthy Content
Focus on creating content that naturally attracts backlinks. User guides, original research, infographics, expert roundups, and resource lists crafted with quality can significantly increase your site’s linkability.
A Comprehensive Approach to Content Creation
A thorough content creation strategy that includes brainstorming, writing, editing, formatting, and optimizing ensures your content is polished and ready for publication. This approach elevates your content’s quality and potential to attract valuable backlinks to your e-commerce website.
Anchor Text Analysis and Planning
Why do anchors matter?
Anchor text, which refers to the text that appears along with your link, plays a crucial role in any link-building strategy.
Anchors tell search Google engines more information about your link and encourage readers to click to access more information. It also provides information about your site structure and website intent.
We use a unique approach to text analysis and planning. Rather than simply following best practices, we compile information from your competitors and build a bespoke plan based on the data.
Here’s an example of our process and how we choose the best anchor text for your brand’s content:
Let’s say you want to rank for “diamond tennis bracelets.”
First, you would list the top 3-5 pages ranking for that keyword. Then, you would review your top competitors’ referring domains (RDs).
For these, you would pick sites with the number of links most similar to where your link profile will end up.
In this case, competitor sites two, three, and five have less than two RDs, so you’ll get better data from sites one, four, and six.
Searching further within domains, you’ll find an “anchors” sidebar within Ahrefs, which includes a screen like this for each competitor:
Using this information, make note of the following:
- The number of referring domains your competitors have using the exact keyword “diamond tennis bracelets.”
- The number of referring domains that use a partial match keyword like “tennis bracelets.”
- The number of URL-based anchors, like “jamesallen.com.”
- The number of branded anchors, like “James Allen.”
Continue this step-by-step process for each site on your list. The list of anchors you’re left with includes an average count of anchors by type for each competitor.
You can use this information to average it out across the group – bringing your anchor text profile into the same range.
Here is an example of a completed analysis comparing a client page to the top-ranking competitors.
Identifying anchor text and target keywords should be a part of your strategy, which comes before content creation.
Determining your target anchors and keywords before starting your campaign ensures you choose relevant topics that tie your SEO goals together well. It also allows you to create share-worthy content based on the anchor link while driving highly targeted traffic to your website.
Now that we’ve covered the setup to ensure your links pay off, let’s get to discussing e-commerce link-building tactics that work.
Basic E-commerce Link-Building Strategies
Blogger outreach
Our blogger outreach service gets your e-commerce site in front of influential website owners and bloggers.
Acquiring a link with these bloggers means a broader audience base and the ability to build quality links from highly trafficked websites.
Guest Posting
Guest posting involves creating content and publishing it on other websites.
Creating content for someone else’s website allows you to reach a new audience while being in control of your link building techniques.
Niche Edits
Niche edits are popular e-commerce link-building tactics that involve placing a link in existing content.
Website owners may be willing to let you build links to your website by adding unique perspectives or updating existing content.
Resource Links
Resource links are natural, useful guides or studies published on your site that other websites are likely to link back to.
Conducting primary research or creating a comprehensive guide provides unlimited link-building opportunities from other websites that may publish and credit your guide.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building involves identifying outdated or broken links on websites and asking for their replacement with links pointing back to your website.
A comprehensive site search can help you identify broken link-building opportunities, but be prepared to reach out in high volumes to get a meaningful amount of links from this approach.
If the basics leave you wanting for more, here are some more advanced tactics you can employ to build links to your e-commerce website.
Advanced Link Building Strategies
Advanced link-building strategies are especially effective for e-commerce sites in highly competitive markets, like fitness, home office, cosmetics, or subscription products.
Because Stellar SEO uses a customized approach to build links, we can also employ advanced strategies that limit your competitor’s ability to replicate and outrank your e-commerce website.
Building and Leveraging Supplier/Distributor Relationships for Link Acquisition
- Identify Opportunities for Joint Marketing Campaigns: Explore ways to co-create content that benefits both parties, such as case studies, testimonials, or product reviews that can be shared on both websites.
- Enhance Visibility through Supplier/Distributor Directories: Ensure your business is listed in supplier and distributor directories, often accompanied by a link to your site.
- Utilize Drop-Shipping Agreements for Backlinks: In drop-shipping arrangements, request that suppliers include your website link within their recommended retailers section or existing blog posts.
Networking Opportunities: Leveraging Social Media and Industry Events
- Engage with Industry Influencers on Social Media: Build relationships with influencers who can share your content, thereby increasing its visibility and potential for social media links.
- Participate in Online Forums and Groups: Active participation in industry-specific forums and social media groups can lead to natural link-building through the sharing of content and resources.
- Attend and Present at Industry Events: Use speaking engagements and attendance at trade shows and conferences to network, share your content, and encourage linking.
Professional Collaboration With Other Subject Matter Experts
- Collaborate on Exclusive Content: Work with partners to produce exclusive reports, research, or webinars that require linking to your site for more information.
- Initiate Co-Branding Opportunities: Co-branding projects can boost brand visibility and encourage natural linking between partners’ websites.
- Co-Sponsor Online Events: Co-sponsoring online events or webinars with other websites can help generate more inbound links.
- Partner With Industry Adjacent Brands: Partnering with industry-adjacent brands helps acquire more backlinks through a mutual agreement.
Leverage Content for Link Building:
- Create Valuable Consumer Guides: PCmag created “The Best TVs for 2024”, positioning them as a product expert and bringing more traffic to their website. PCWorld created the “Best Laptops of 2024” guide, encouraging other tech industries to link back to them for crediting sources.
- Analyze Factors Behind Success: High-quality, highly relevant content included in a larger strategy typically outperforms other content. Identifying trending topics, sharing in-depth research, and keeping SEO goals in mind are all crucial elements of an effective e-commerce link-building strategy.
- Utilize Research Tools for Content Ideation: Using sites like Buzzsumo, Ahrefs Content Explorer, or SEMrush can help your e-commerce store find trending topics that are more likely to encourage links. These tools can also help you analyze niche websites and competitor links to identify gaps.
- Adopt Passive Link Acquisition Strategies: Focusing on valuable, user-friendly content now sets your e-commerce business up for a passive approach that continues to acquire new links and maintain and boost your SEO results. Evergreen content that continues to be relevant in your industry, original studies and surveys, and high-quality infographics meant for social media are excellent strategies to continue building your link profile with minimal effort on your part.
Merger & Acquisition for Link Building
Traditional M&A for Client Base Expansion
- Acquiring Competing Companies: This strategy involves purchasing competitors to integrate their client base, products, or services into your own. It can significantly boost your revenue, market share, and online presence. (This also is usually an excellent opportunity to use the merge for PR coverage if the brands are well known, which can result in thousands of links)
- Benefits: Immediate access to a new customer base, enhanced market presence, and the potential to consolidate backlinks from acquired entities to strengthen your domain authority.
- Considerations: Conduct thorough due diligence to assess the quality of the competitor’s backlinks and online reputation. Integrating a company with a poor SEO history could negatively impact your site’s performance.
Acquiring Domains for Link Benefits
A word of caution: Be very careful when using this strategy. Google targeted this in their March 2024 core update to prevent the misuse of expired domains.
- Purchasing Out-of-Business Domain Names: Target domain names of similar businesses that have ceased operations or are shutting down. Redirecting these domains to your site can leverage their existing backlinks for SEO benefits.
- Benefits: Direct transfer of link equity from established domains can enhance your site’s authority and visibility in search results, potentially delivering immediate traffic boosts.
- Considerations:
- Backlink Quality: Ensure the domains you acquire have high-quality, relevant backlinks. Acquiring domains with spammy backlink profiles can harm your site’s SEO.
- Relevance: The acquired domain should be relevant to your business. Redirecting from a non-relevant domain might not provide the expected SEO benefits and could confuse users.
- Redirect Strategy: Implement thoughtful technical SEO 301 redirect strategy that maps relevant content from the acquired domain to your existing site, preserving user experience and link equity.
- Google’s Guidelines: Familiarize yourself with Google’s Webmaster Guidelines on redirects to avoid penalties for manipulative practices,
Product Reviews and Giveaways: Leveraging Products for Backlinks.
- Organize Targeted Giveaways: Partner with influencers or industry blogs to host giveaways of your products. The requirement for entry could include creating a post that links back to your product page or writing a review, thereby generating backlinks.
- Offer Products for Review: Reach out to bloggers and industry leaders with a significant following and offer your product for free in exchange for an honest review that includes a backlink to your site.
- Use Social Media to Amplify Reach: Promote your giveaways and product reviews through your social media channels to increase participation and visibility, encouraging more websites to link to your content.
PR Outreach for Brand Awareness and Link Building
- Develop Relationships with Journalists and Bloggers: Build a network of journalists and bloggers in your niche. Regular communication and providing them with helpful information can lead to your content being featured in their articles and posts.
- Leverage Expert Quotes and Insights: Use HARO or similar sites to offer expert insights, quotes, or commentary on current trends or news in your industry. This positions your brand as a thought leader and can lead to backlinks from articles utilizing your expertise.
- Collect First-Hand Research/Curate Existing Data to Extrapolate New Insights: Collect or create first-hand research using primary and secondary data sources to share with industry-relevant journalists.
PPC Ads to Generate Links by Promoting Informational Content.
- Create High-Value Content of Interest: Create high-value content for other business owners in your area or niche that is likely to attract links.
- Target High-Value Content: Use PPC ads to promote high-value content like original research, in-depth guides, or interactive tools. These resources are more likely to attract backlinks from readers impressed by the content. This strategy is similar to a natural link acquisition strategy but with more traffic via PPC ads.
- Focus on Content with Linking Potential: Prioritize promoting content that has historically shown a high potential for earning backlinks. Use tools like Ahrefs or Buzzsumo to identify which types of content have been successful in your niche.
- Retarget Engaged Visitors: Build audience around key topics and introduce additional related content through retargeting
Ethical Link Building Practices
Balancing risk vs. reward in your link-building practices is vital to the health and longevity of your link profile.
- Assessing Link Quality: Prioritize quality over quantity. A few high-quality links from reputable, relevant sites are far more valuable and less risky than numerous low-quality links.
- Carefully Screen Paid Links: Carefully screen paid links to avoid obvious footprints like “write for us page” or “sponsored posts” labels on content with do-follow links.
Building Links Sustainably: Strategies for Long-Term Success.
- Content-Driven Link Building: Focus on creating high-quality, valuable content that naturally attracts links. This includes original research, comprehensive guides, and insightful analysis that provide real value to your audience.
- Relationship Building: Build genuine relationships with other webmasters, bloggers, and influencers in your niche. Networking can lead to natural link opportunities and collaborations that benefit both parties.
- Diverse Link Profile: Work towards building a diverse link profile from various sources, including blogs, news sites, and industry-specific directories. This helps insulate your site from changes in search engine’s algorithms.
- Work Toward Passive Link Building: By focusing on high-quality, evergreen content, your e-commerce store can continue acquiring backlinks with less effort.
Troubleshooting Common Link-Building Challenges
Handling Outreach Rejection: Strategies for Persistence and Improvement
- Analyze and Refine Your Pitch: After a rejection, review your outreach messages for clarity, value proposition, and personalization. Ensure your pitch clearly communicates the benefits to the recipient and their audience.
- Follow Up Strategically: If you don’t receive a response, send a polite follow-up message. Sometimes, emails are missed or forgotten. A follow-up can bring your proposal back to their attention without being intrusive.
- Seek Constructive Feedback: When possible, ask for feedback on why your outreach was rejected. This can provide valuable insights into improving your approach or offering more relevant content.
- Diversify Your Outreach List: Don’t rely on a single type of site or influencer for your links. Broadening your outreach to include a variety of potential link sources can increase your chances of success and reduce the impact of individual rejections.
- Enhance Your Offer: Consider how to make your content or offer more appealing. This could involve adding exclusive information, offering to share their content in return, or proposing a different form of collaboration.
Dealing with Toxic Links: Building High-Quality Links to Improve Your Link Profile
- Conduct Regular Backlink Audits: Use SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Google Search Console to consistently monitor your site’s backlink profile. Backlink audits help identify potentially harmful links and understand your overall link health.
- Identify and Understand Toxic Links: Recognize backlinks from spammy, irrelevant, or low-authority sites. These links often come from unrelated content or sites with a high volume of outbound links—do not disavow without a manual link penalty. Track this to make sure you are getting new high-value links to keep your profile at a healthy percentage overall.
- Prioritize High-Quality Link Acquisition: Instead of focusing solely on removing toxic links, emphasize acquiring new, high-quality backlinks. This strategy helps dilute the impact of bad links by improving your backlink profile’s overall quality and authority.
Tracking and Analyzing Link Building Efforts
Tracking, analyzing, and reporting are all essential parts of Stellar SEO’s e-commerce link-building campaigns
We use a variety of data points to measure the effectiveness of our link-building efforts.
- Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): KPIs ensure we’re measuring success against your metrics.
- Number of New Referring Domains Acquired: Comprehensive reporting informs clients of the number of new domains and brand mentions acquired to different category pages.
- Search Rankings for Targeted Keywords: Tracking rankings for specific keywords allows us to measure keyword volume and overall effectiveness.
- Organic Traffic Improvements: Careful measurement of organic traffic, including how it measures from previous months and year over year.
- Collection of Important Analytics using Industry-Best Tracking Tools: Ahrefs for website crawls and unlinked mentions, Majestic for reporting, and Google Search Console and Google Analytics for key data points.
- Adjust Strategies Based on Data: Collected data can help e-commerce sites pivot and reevaluate goals based on results. Many e-commerce sites may adjust their SEO approach after adding new products or pinpointing specific link-building opportunities that work better.
Preparing for Future Trends in E-commerce SEO
Voice Search Optimization: Adapting Content for the Spoken Word
- Conversational Keywords: Incorporate long-tail, conversational keywords into your content that mirror natural speech patterns. Voice searches tend to be more verbose and question-based, reflecting how people talk.
- FAQ and Q&A Formats: Utilize Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) or Question and Answer (Q&A) formats on your product pages and in blog content. This directly aligns with the query-answer format prevalent in voice search inquiries. Both of these can help surface your page for longtail queries that could result in links
Artificial Intelligence in SEO: Harnessing AI for Enhanced Strategies
- AI-Powered Research: Leverage AI Data Analyst features to review large data sets and extrapolate unique or new insights. This transformative strategic approach to data analysis can potentially elevate SEO strategies by quickly compiling valuable data.
- AI-Powered Content Analysis: Feed large volumes of viral/high-performing articles into GPT and have it analyze and output the overlapping qualities of each content piece, then use this “trained” chat to analyze your content against those key points, highlighting areas for improvement.
- Natural Language Processing (NLP): With the advancement of NLP, optimize your content for semantic search. This involves understanding user intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable databank, ensuring content relevance and authority. You can leverage Chat GPT to compare your content to other high-performing pieces with regard to SEO rankings, which will uncover ways to improve your content – this is useful for the content pieces you are making on your own site to rank and naturally attract links.
Ready To Unlock Sustainable Growth for Your E-commerce Site?
Navigating the complexities of link building for your e-commerce website is essential for sustainable growth and enhancing online visibility in today’s competitive digital landscape.
Let our team guide you through the intricacies of building a robust link profile that bolsters your site’s authority and drives strong growth while avoiding penalties from search engines like Google.
Contact us for a consultation to see how we can help you overcome SEO challenges and achieve your growth goals for your e-commerce site.
