Building backlinks for e-commerce requires different strategies than for conventional sites.
This is why we want to share 15 different steps to claim more backlinks.
Why Link Building Is Essential for E-commerce?
15 Best Ecommerce Link Building Strategies
1. Create Top 10 Listicles
Top 10 product listicles are highly effective for ranking and link building because they combine informative content with a focus on specific products, making them valuable for both SEO and user engagement.
These listicles tend to perform well in search results for high-intent keywords like “best,” “top,” or “most popular,” which attract users who are already in the buying mindset. By creating well-structured listicles, you increase the chances of earning backlinks from other sites that reference your expert recommendations, driving even more targeted traffic to your e-commerce site.
These backlinks not only improve your site’s authority but also increase its visibility on search engines, ultimately leading to more qualified traffic and higher conversion rates.
2. Focus on Seasonal and Event-Based Link Building
E-commerce sites often have seasonal sales, product launches, or special promotions. Link builders should take advantage of these events by creating campaigns that focus on holiday guides, discount deals, or product launches.
Tip: Reach out to bloggers, publishers, and websites that create seasonal content, like “Top Holiday Gifts” or “Best Black Friday Deals,” and suggest your products for inclusion, which can generate both backlinks and high-converting traffic.
3. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging involves writing articles for other websites in your niche to earn backlinks to your e-commerce site. It’s one of the most effective link-building strategies because it helps establish your authority and brings in quality referral traffic.
- How it works: You write valuable, informative content for a blog or website relevant to your industry. Within the article, you include links to your e-commerce site, typically in the author bio or the content itself, as long as it naturally fits the context.
- Benefits for SEO: Guest blogging on high-authority sites can significantly improve your search rankings by providing quality backlinks. It also helps you reach a broader audience that may be interested in your products.
Tip: Focus on sites with high domain authority and a readership that aligns with your target market to maximize the impact of these backlinks.
4. Influencer Collaborations
Influencer collaborations involve partnering with social media influencers, bloggers, or content creators who have a significant following in your niche. These influencers can help promote your products and include links back to your e-commerce store.
- How it works: You can collaborate with influencers by providing them with free products or paying for sponsored content. In return, they create posts, reviews, or unboxing videos that include backlinks to your e-commerce site.
- Benefits for SEO: Influencers often have high-authority websites or social media platforms, and their followers trust their recommendations. A backlink from an influencer’s blog or website not only boosts your SEO but also brings in targeted traffic that’s more likely to convert.
Tip: The best type of collaboration is simple link exchanges, however, you must be careful with these. If you want more info on how to do link exchanges properly, here’s another article.
5. Broken Link Building
Broken link building is a strategy where you find broken or dead links on other websites and suggest your site as a replacement for those links. This approach benefits both parties as you help the website owner fix a problem while gaining a backlink to your site.
- How it works: You use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Check My Links to identify broken links on relevant websites. Once you find a broken link, you reach out to the site owner, inform them about the issue, and suggest your content or product as a replacement.
- Benefits for SEO: Since you’re offering a solution to a problem, the chances of earning a backlink are relatively high. These links are valuable because they often come from sites that are already relevant to your industry.
Tip: Use a chrome extension called “Check my Links” to help you uncover a broken backlink.
6. Resource Page Link Building
Resource page link building involves getting your ecommerce site listed on resource pages that provide curated lists of helpful links or tools for a specific industry or topic.
- How it works: You find resource pages that are relevant to your products or niche. Then, you reach out to the website owner and suggest your site or a specific piece of content as a valuable addition to their list.
- Benefits for SEO: Resource pages are often highly authoritative and trusted by search engines. Being listed on these pages can provide high-quality backlinks that significantly improve your site’s visibility in search results.
Tip: Ensure that your resource genuinely adds value to the page you’re targeting, as this will make it easier for the site owner to justify including your link.
7. Product Reviews and Roundups
Product reviews and roundups involve reaching out to bloggers, reviewers, or influencers to write reviews of your products or include them in a product roundup. These reviews often contain backlinks to your ecommerce store.
- How it works: You can provide free samples of your products to bloggers or influencers in exchange for an honest review on their website. Alternatively, you can pitch your product for inclusion in roundup articles that list the best products in a particular category.
- Benefits for SEO: These reviews and roundups not only generate backlinks but also increase social proof and trust in your brand. Potential customers who see positive reviews on reputable sites are more likely to visit your store and make a purchase.
Tip: Target bloggers or review sites that regularly publish content about your industry, as they are more likely to accept your products for review.
8. Content Marketing (Infographics, Blog Posts, Videos)
Content marketing involves creating high-quality content like infographics, blog posts, and videos that naturally attract backlinks. The goal is to produce content that is so valuable, informative, or entertaining that other sites link to it as a reference.
- How it works: Create engaging content that addresses common questions, provides solutions, or offers unique insights relevant to your niche. Share this content across various platforms and outreach to other sites in your industry to encourage them to link to it.
- Benefits for SEO: High-quality content that gets shared and linked to can significantly boost your site’s domain authority and improve your search engine rankings. Content marketing also helps to position your brand as an authority in your industry.
Tip: Focus on creating evergreen content that remains relevant over time, as it has a better chance of attracting backlinks long after it’s published.
These strategies not only enhance your ecommerce site’s SEO but also help establish your brand’s authority, increase referral traffic, and drive more potential customers to your store.
9. Building Links through Social Proof
Building links through social proof involves leveraging testimonials, user-generated content, and customer reviews to earn backlinks to your ecommerce site. Social proof signals that your products are trusted and valued by real users, making it easier to attract links.
- How it works: Encourage your satisfied customers to share their experiences with your products on social media, blogs, or review platforms. You can also create content that showcases customer testimonials and case studies on your website, which other sites may link to as evidence of your product’s credibility.
- Benefits for SEO: Social proof not only enhances trust but also makes your content more shareable, increasing its chances of getting backlinks. People are more likely to link to content that demonstrates real-world use and positive customer experiences.
Tip: Create a dedicated page on your website for customer testimonials and user-generated content to make it easy for others to link to and share.
10. Partnering with Industry Experts
Partnering with industry experts is a strategy where you collaborate with thought leaders, influencers, or experts in your field to create content, conduct interviews, or produce joint projects that earn backlinks.
- How it works: Reach out to experts in your niche and propose co-creating content such as blog posts, webinars, podcasts, or guides. When the content is published, both you and the expert promote it, and they often link back to your site as a collaborator.
- Benefits for SEO: Links from industry experts carry a lot of authority and credibility, boosting your website’s reputation in the eyes of search engines. These collaborations also help you reach a wider audience and gain exposure to the expert’s followers.
Tip: Offer something valuable to the expert, like visibility on your platform or co-branding opportunities, to make the partnership mutually beneficial.
11. Testimonials for Backlinks
Testimonials for backlinks involve providing positive feedback or reviews for products or services you use, in exchange for a backlink to your e-commerce site from the company’s website.
- How it works: Many businesses display testimonials from satisfied customers on their websites. You can submit a testimonial for a product or service you genuinely use, along with a link to your e-commerce site. Most companies are happy to include a link back to your site as a thank-you.
- Benefits for SEO: This strategy is a simple way to gain high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites, as businesses love to showcase genuine customer feedback. It also helps build relationships with other companies in your industry.
Tip: Target businesses and services that are relevant to your niche and have a high domain authority to maximize the SEO benefits of your testimonial backlinks.
12. Tiered Link Building (Forums and Communities)
Tiered link building is a strategy where you create multiple levels (or “tiers”) of backlinks that funnel link equity to your main ecommerce site. This approach helps boost the authority of your primary backlinks by building links to them, rather than directly to your website. It’s a way to strengthen your site’s link profile without risking penalties from search engines.
- How it works: In tiered link building, you focus on building high-quality, primary backlinks (Tier 1) to your ecommerce site from reputable sources like guest posts, product reviews, or influencer collaborations. Then, you create secondary backlinks (Tier 2) that link to these Tier 1 backlinks, using methods like forum posts, blog comments, or social media shares. The goal is to pass link juice up through these tiers, boosting the power of your primary backlinks.
- Benefits for SEO: This strategy amplifies the authority of your Tier 1 links, making them more valuable in the eyes of search engines. By boosting these top-level links, you indirectly enhance your e-commerce site’s rankings without directly associating your site with lower-quality or less controlled link sources.
Tip: Always ensure that your Tier 1 backlinks are high-quality and come from authoritative sources while using Tier 2 links to support and strengthen them without spamming or overloading the backlink profile.
13. Backlinks through Affiliate Programs
Backlinks through affiliate programs involve setting up an affiliate marketing program where partners earn a commission for driving traffic and sales to your e-commerce store through their content and links.
- How it works: Create an affiliate program and recruit bloggers, influencers, and content creators to promote your products. Affiliates will include backlinks to your product pages on their websites or social media in exchange for a commission on any sales they generate.
- Benefits for SEO: While the primary goal of affiliate links is to drive sales, they also help increase your site’s visibility and search rankings. These backlinks can be an effective way to build a network of high-quality links from various sites in your niche.
Tip: Promote your affiliate program on popular affiliate networks like ShareASale or Commission Junction to attract quality partners who can drive valuable traffic to your site.
14. Competitor Backlink Analysis
Competitor backlink analysis involves researching your competitors’ backlink profiles to find out where they are getting their links from, and then using that information to build your backlinks.
- How it works: Use tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or Moz to analyze your competitors’ backlinks. Identify the websites linking to them, and reach out to those sites with your content or product as an alternative resource.
- Benefits for SEO: This strategy allows you to discover backlink opportunities that have already proven to be effective for your competitors. By replicating their success, you can quickly build a robust backlink profile and close the gap in search rankings.
Tip: Prioritize sites that link to multiple competitors, as they are more likely to be open to linking to your content or products.
15. Monitor and Recover Lost Backlinks
This comes from personal experience.
E-commerce sites are more prone to losing backlinks, especially if product pages are removed or URLs change. Link builders should consistently monitor the site’s backlink profile and contact website owners to update or recover lost links.
Tip: Use tools like Ahrefs or Moz to track lost backlinks and identify opportunities to reclaim them by providing updated URLs or redirecting old links to relevant product pages.
Conclusion
Effective link building is essential for the success of any e-commerce site, as it directly influences search engine rankings, drives targeted traffic, and enhances online visibility.
Additionally, tactics such as leveraging social proof, partnering with industry experts, and conducting competitor backlink analysis can further strengthen a site’s authority and reach.
FAQs
Q1: How long does it take for link building to impact my ecommerce SEO? Link building can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months to show significant effects, depending on the competitiveness of your niche and the quality of your links.
Q2: Is it safe to buy backlinks for my e-commerce site? Buying backlinks can violate search engine guidelines and may lead to penalties. It’s best to focus on organic link-building strategies that provide long-term results.
Q3: How do I measure the success of my link-building efforts? Use tools like Google Analytics and Ahrefs to track referral traffic, domain authority, and ranking improvements as a result of your link-building strategies.
Q4: How can AgilePR help me get more customers? Absolutely, our digital PR and SEO strategies have been proven to succeed across many industries. Our focus on SEO hygiene and lead-generating keywords has helped businesses get more clients.