Link building is a crucial part of any SEO strategy, but it’s especially important for e-commerce websites that rely on search engine traffic and conversions. The more high-quality backlinks you can acquire, the more authority and relevance Google will assign to your site. This in turn leads to higher rankings, more organic traffic, and ultimately increased sales and revenue.
In this article, we’ll explore some of the most effective link building strategies and tactics specifically for boosting your e-commerce SEO and driving more customers to your online store.
Guest Post Outreach
One of the best ways to earn high-value backlinks is by contributing guest posts to popular blogs and websites in your industry. Start by making a list of the top blogs related to your e-commerce store and niche. For example, if you sell fitness gear, great targets would be health, nutrition, and active lifestyle sites.
Look for sites that get good traffic and engagement, as they will confer more SEO authority. Thoroughly research the site first and customize your outreach email. Offer to write an original, value-adding post tailored to their audience on topics like workout gear recommendations, injury prevention tips for athletes, or new exercise science innovations.
In return, most site owners will include a brief bio with a link back to your store to run alongside the published piece. Over time, accumulating guest posts on authority sites helps increase your domain’s trust and relevance.
Targeted Outreach for Product Mentions
In addition to writing guest posts, you can also pitch online media outlets and bloggers to naturally mention or reference your products. Find sites that frequently recommend products through reviews and “best of” style articles.
Offer free samples of your e-commerce goods so the writers can test and review them. As long as they mention your site and link to it as the supplier, this counts as an earned editorial backlink that can boost your rankings, especially for product-specific keywords.
Influencer Marketing Collaborations
Influencer marketing should be part of your overall e-commerce SEO strategy. Research relevant social media influencers, bloggers, YouTubers, and other industry leaders who align with your brand. Consider both the size of their following and how targeted their niche is.
Reach out to potentially interested influencers and offer an affiliate partnership or sponsorship program. This incentivizes them to organically promote your products and brand to their engaged audiences, typically through discounts and special offers for their followers. Most will happily include links back to your e-commerce store in exchange for commission on resulting sales.
Optimizing Link Building Assets
Your website itself should also be built to attract links, which you can facilitate through on-page and on-site optimization. For example, create dedicated landing pages showcasing your most popular products. Include extensive information about their features and benefits compared to alternatives. Offer bonuses like free trials or special discounts to motivate natural links and social shares.
An on-site blog is also essential, providing the cornerstone for an inbound linking strategy. Make sure your blog covers topics related to your e-commerce niche and products. Seek keyword opportunities around FAQs, product comparisons, tutorials, troubleshooting guides, etc. Posts should provide value for potential linkers or sharers. Enable social sharing to also gain user-generated traffic and links.
Link Reclamation
Your competitors likely have valuable backlinks that could benefit your own store as well. Use link analysis tools like Ahrefs to uncover sites linking to domain rivals within your space. Sort and filter to identify pages you can feasibly convince to link to your store as well. Start by earning a natural mention, then follow up to request they switch the link from your competitor to you in that content.
Be careful not to violate any guidelines or poison the relationship through overtly manipulative tactics. But highlighting useful content from your site and showing why it would make more sense to link there can lead to new link wins. Over time the process can shift rankings more in your favor.
Link Development Outreach
A more ambitious option is cold outreach to owners of quality sites asking for links based solely on merit. Start by identifying web properties with authority in your e-commerce vertical that don’t yet link back to you.
Use tools like Pitchbox or BuzzStream to streamline the process of discovery and one-to-one outreach. Reach out kindly explaining who you are, what your e-commerce brand offers to readers, and specific pieces of content that provide value to become potential link anchors.
It may take extensive relationship building and producing custom content, but you can potentially convince non-linked sites to voluntarily add editorial links back to your store. This level of link building outreach takes significant effort but garners impressive SEO gains if successful.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building entails finding broken outbound links on high-authority sites pointing to missing pages. You then recreate that missing content on your own site and request the links get switched to your version.
Start with link analysis to identify broken links on otherwise reputable domains. Use crawl tools like ScreamingFrog to isolate and extract dead link data. Assess if the broken pages cover topics relevant to your e-commerce store and niche. Recreate or repurpose the content, then present your working version to the site owner.
By replacing their broken pages with operational ones leading back to your domain, you may convince site editors to link to your store instead. This provides a natural path to earning coveted backlinks from authoritative sources that still retain strong domain metrics.
Link Insertion Outreach
A more speculative play is to perform Google searches around recommending certain products and brands. Find reputable sites that mention competitors and complementary products but haven’t yet named your e-commerce store when relevant.
Contact the site owner and make a case for why organically mentioning your store and products would improve the article. Offer to provide further detail on features and capabilities if needed to make an informed recommendation. If you successfully get added to existing comparative content with a backlink, it can enhance relevancy without demanding new links be created solely for your benefit.
By actively pursuing a varied link building campaign tailored to e-commerce sites, online stores can greatly strengthen their SEO foundations. This leads to measurable gains in search visibility, site traffic, and conversion rates over time.
Set aside time each week to execute a deliberate link acquisition plan using the strategic options outlined above. Diversity is key, as is staying up to date on Google’s evolving standards and best practices. With consistency and creativity, your enterprise can continue earning high-quality backlinks at scale to boost your e-commerce SEO performance.