Are you looking to improve your ecommerce website’s search engine rankings? If so, you’ll want to focus on link building. Link building is the process of acquiring links from other websites that point to your own. These links can help increase your website’s authority and visibility, which can lead to higher search engine rankings.
When it comes to ecommerce link building, there are a few key strategies you can use. In this blog post we covers some proven strategies improve your ecommerce link building campaign.
Let’s dive into this.
Importance of Link Building in Ecommerce
Link building is an essential aspect of ecommerce marketing that helps to improve your website’s visibility, credibility, and authority. It involves acquiring backlinks from other websites to your ecommerce website, which can help to drive traffic and sales.
Link building is crucial for ecommerce websites because it helps to improve your search engine rankings, which can lead to increased organic traffic. When your website appears on the first page of search engine results, you are more likely to get clicks and visits from potential customers.
In addition to driving traffic, link building can also help to establish your ecommerce website as an authority in your industry. When other websites link to your content, it shows that they trust your brand and consider you a valuable resource. This can help to build credibility and trust with your audience, which can lead to increased sales and customer loyalty.
Link building can also help to increase brand awareness by exposing your ecommerce website to a wider audience. When your content is shared on other websites and social media platforms, it can reach people who may not have otherwise known about your brand. This can help to attract new customers and expand your reach.
Overall, link building is an essential component of ecommerce marketing that can have a significant impact on your website’s traffic, sales, authority, credibility, and brand awareness. By developing a comprehensive link building strategy, you can improve your website’s visibility and establish your brand as a trusted authority in your industry.
Common Link Building Challenges for Ecommerce Websites
Link building for eCommerce websites can be particularly challenging due to the nature of these sites and the competitive online market. Here are some common challenges that eCommerce websites often face in their link building efforts:
Product-Centric Pages: Many eCommerce sites focus primarily on product pages, which can be less engaging in terms of content compared to informational or educational pages. This makes it harder to naturally attract backlinks, as other sites are less likely to link to purely commercial pages.
High Competition: The eCommerce space is highly competitive, especially in popular niches. Many competitors are vying for the same backlinks from authoritative sources, making it harder to stand out and secure those links.
Dynamic Inventory: Products on eCommerce sites often change, go out of stock, or are discontinued. This can lead to broken links or outdated content, which can negatively impact SEO and the effectiveness of link-building efforts.
Limited Content Diversity: Ecommerce sites may struggle to create diverse content that can attract links. Unlike blogs or news sites, their primary focus is on products and sales, which can limit the scope for creating linkable assets like in-depth guides, tutorials, or engaging blog posts.
Scaling Link Building Efforts: As the eCommerce site grows, scaling link-building efforts while maintaining quality can be challenging. Larger sites require more links to sustain and improve their rankings, but acquiring these links in an organic and sustainable way is often resource-intensive.
Brand Perception: New or lesser-known eCommerce sites may struggle with brand recognition, making it harder to earn trust and links from established websites. Building a brand reputation takes time and consistent effort, which can slow down the link-building process.
Quality over Quantity: The focus on acquiring high-quality links from reputable sources can be particularly challenging. There’s a temptation to go for easier, lower-quality links, but these can harm the site’s SEO in the long run.
Navigating SEO Algorithm Updates: Search engines frequently update their algorithms, and what works today in link building might not work tomorrow. Keeping up with these changes and adapting strategies accordingly is a constant challenge.
Resource Intensive: Effective link building often requires significant resources, including skilled SEO professionals, content creators, and outreach specialists. For many eCommerce businesses, especially smaller ones, allocating sufficient resources can be a challenge.
Top Ecommerce Link Building Strategies
When it comes to Ecommerce Link Building, there are several tactics you can use to build quality links to your website. Here are some of the most effective tactics you can use:
Guest Posting
One of the most popular ways to build links is through guest posting. This involves writing an article for another website and including a link back to your site within the content. To make the most of this tactic, you should focus on finding high-quality websites that are relevant to your niche and have a good reputation. You should also ensure that your content is informative, engaging, and provides value to the reader.
Broken Link Building
Broken link building involves finding broken links on other websites and offering to replace them with links to your own content. This tactic can be highly effective, as it allows you to provide value to other website owners while also building links to your own site. To find broken links, you can use tools like Ahrefs or Broken Link Checker.
Internal Linking
Internal linking is another effective tactic for building links to your ecommerce website. This involves linking to other pages on your site within your content. By doing so, you can help to improve the user experience of your site while also providing search engines with additional information about your content.
Unlinked Brand Mentions
Unlinked brand mentions occur when another website mentions your brand but does not include a link back to your site. To take advantage of this, you can reach out to the website owner and ask them to include a link back to your site. This can be an effective way to build links and increase brand awareness.
Reverse Product Image Link Building
Reverse Product Image Link Building is an innovative strategy used in eCommerce for enhancing link building and SEO efforts. This method leverages the unique images of products that an eCommerce site owns. Here’s a brief overview of how it works:
- Unique Product Images: The process starts with an eCommerce site having unique, high-quality images of its products. These images should be distinctive and preferably created by the site itself, rather than using stock or manufacturer-provided photos.
- Image Search: Using reverse image search tools like Google Images, the site owners or marketers search the web for instances where their unique product images have been used by other websites. This is done by uploading the image to the search tool, which then finds where else on the internet the same image appears.
- Identifying Opportunities: Once these external sites are identified, the eCommerce site’s team reviews them to see if they are relevant and have a good reputation. The goal is to find websites that have used the image without providing a link back to the original eCommerce site.
- Outreach: The next step involves reaching out to these websites. The eCommerce site’s team contacts the website owners or webmasters, informing them that the image they are using belongs to the eCommerce site. They can then request that a link to the product page or the home page of the eCommerce site be added in exchange for using the image.
- Building Relationships: This method also opens the door for building ongoing relationships with these websites. It can lead to future collaborations, guest posts, or other link-building opportunities.
Snag Competitor Links
Snagging Competitor Links is a strategic approach in the realm of eCommerce link building. This method involves identifying and acquiring backlinks that your competitors have already secured, thereby leveraging their link-building efforts to your advantage. Here’s a brief overview of how it works:
Understanding the Concept
- Competitor Analysis: The first step is to identify your main competitors in the eCommerce space. These are typically businesses offering similar products or services.
- Backlink Profiling: Utilize SEO tools to analyze the backlink profiles of these competitors. This involves identifying websites that link to your competitors’ sites.
- Quality Assessment: Not all backlinks are created equal. Assess the quality of these links. Look for high-authority, relevant sites that would also be beneficial for your website.
Implementation Strategy
- Target Selection: From the list of backlinks, select those that are most relevant and have a high domain authority. Prioritize links that can realistically be acquired.
- Content Analysis: Understand why these sites linked to your competitor. Is it due to unique content, a specific product feature, or a partnership?
- Outreach Preparation: Prepare your outreach strategy. This could involve creating superior or complementary content, offering a collaboration, or simply introducing your products/services.
Execution
- Outreach: Contact the owners or editors of the selected websites. Personalize your communication and clearly articulate the value proposition of linking to your site.
- Follow-Up: Be persistent but respectful in follow-ups. Building relationships is key in link acquisition.
- Content Development: If your strategy involves content creation, ensure it is of high quality, unique, and adds value to the target site’s audience.
Advantages
- Leveraging Competitor Research: Saves time and resources as your competitors have already done the groundwork in identifying valuable link opportunities.
- Improved SEO: Acquiring high-quality backlinks can significantly boost your site’s search engine rankings.
- Market Insight: This method provides insights into your competitors’ marketing strategies and network.
Challenges
- Outreach Rejection: Not all sites may be willing to link back to you, especially if they have strong ties with your competitors.
- Resource Intensive: Requires dedicated effort in research, content creation, and relationship building.
Overall, there are many tactics you can use to build links to your ecommerce website. By focusing on high-quality, relevant websites and providing value to your audience, you can improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your site.
Utilizing SEO Tools for Link Building
When it comes to ecommerce link building, utilizing SEO tools is essential to ensure that you are building high-quality, relevant links that will improve your website’s search engine rankings. Here are some of the best SEO tools for link building that you can use:
Using Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool that can help you with all aspects of link building. With Ahrefs, you can:
- Analyze your competitors’ backlinks to identify potential link opportunities
- Track your own backlinks and monitor their quality and relevance
- Find broken links on your website and fix them
- Identify link building opportunities based on relevant keywords and topics
By using Ahrefs, you can streamline your link building efforts and ensure that you are building links that will have a positive impact on your website’s search engine rankings.
Leveraging SEMRush
SEMRush is another great SEO tool that can help you with link building. With SEMRush, you can:
- Analyze your competitors’ backlinks and identify potential link opportunities
- Track your own backlinks and monitor their quality and relevance
- Conduct keyword research to find relevant topics for link building
- Analyze your website’s overall SEO performance and identify areas for improvement
By using SEMRush, you can gain valuable insights into your website’s SEO performance and optimize your link building efforts accordingly.
Utilizing BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is a content marketing tool that can also be useful for link building. With BuzzSumo, you can:
- Identify popular content in your industry and use it as inspiration for your own content
- Find influencers in your industry who can help you promote your content and build links
- Monitor your brand’s mentions and respond to any link building opportunities
By using BuzzSumo, you can create high-quality, shareable content that will attract backlinks and improve your website’s search engine rankings.
Applying Majestic
Majestic is a link analysis tool that can help you with all aspects of link building. With Majestic, you can:
- Analyze your competitors’ backlinks and identify potential link opportunities
- Track your own backlinks and monitor their quality and relevance
- Conduct keyword research to find relevant topics for link building
- Analyze the quality and relevance of your backlinks
By using Majestic, you can ensure that you are building high-quality, relevant links that will have a positive impact on your website’s search engine rankings.
Overall, utilizing SEO tools for link building is essential to ensure that you are building high-quality, relevant links that will improve your website’s search engine rankings. By using tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush, BuzzSumo, and Majestic, you can streamline your link building efforts and ensure that you are building links that will have a positive impact on your website’s search engine rankings.
Building Links Through Content
If you want to build links for your ecommerce website, creating linkable content is one of the most effective ways to do it. By producing high-quality content that other websites want to link to, you can improve your website’s authority and visibility in search engine results pages.
Creating Linkable Content
Linkable content is content that other websites want to link to because it provides value to their audience. To create linkable content, you need to focus on producing high-quality, informative, and engaging content that solves a problem or answers a question for your target audience.
Some examples of linkable content for ecommerce websites include:
- Product reviews and comparisons
- How-to guides and tutorials
- Expert interviews and roundups
- Industry reports and whitepapers
- Case studies and success stories
By creating linkable content, you can attract links from other websites, which can improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your ecommerce store.
Developing Infographics
Infographics are a great way to present complex information in a visually appealing and easy-to-understand format. They are also highly shareable and linkable, making them a powerful tool for building links to your ecommerce website.
To create linkable infographics, you need to focus on producing high-quality graphics that are visually appealing, informative, and easy to read. You should also make sure that your infographic provides value to your target audience by presenting information in a unique and interesting way.
Video Marketing
Video marketing is another effective way to build links to your ecommerce website. By creating high-quality videos that provide value to your target audience, you can attract links from other websites and improve your website’s search engine rankings.
Some examples of video content for ecommerce websites include:
- Product demos and reviews
- How-to guides and tutorials
- Expert interviews and roundups
- Industry reports and whitepapers
- Case studies and success stories
By creating high-quality video content, you can attract links from other websites, which can improve your website’s search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your ecommerce store. YouTube is an excellent platform to host and promote your videos.
Overall, creating linkable content is an effective way to build links to your ecommerce website. By focusing on producing high-quality, informative, and engaging content that provides value to your target audience, you can attract links from other websites and improve your website’s search engine rankings.
Optimizing Product and Category Pages
When it comes to ecommerce link building, optimizing your product and category pages can make a huge difference in your search engine rankings and overall visibility. Here are a few tips to help you optimize your pages:
Product Pages
Your product pages are where customers make their buying decisions, so it’s essential to make them as informative and appealing as possible. Here’s what you can do to optimize them:
- Use high-quality images: Including multiple images of your product from different angles can help customers get a better idea of what they’re buying.
- Write detailed product descriptions: Your product descriptions should be detailed and informative, providing customers with all the information they need to make an informed buying decision.
- Include customer reviews: Including customer reviews on your product pages can help build trust with potential customers and improve your search engine rankings.
- Use schema markup: Using schema markup to provide search engines with additional information about your products can help improve your visibility in search results.
Category Pages
Your category pages are where customers browse your products, so it’s important to make them easy to navigate and informative. Here are a few tips to help you optimize your category pages:
- Use clear and descriptive category names: Your category names should be clear and descriptive, making it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for.
- Include filters and sorting options: Including filters and sorting options on your category pages can help customers find the products they’re looking for more easily.
- Write informative category descriptions: Your category descriptions should be informative, providing customers with an overview of the products included in each category.
- Use internal linking: Using internal links to connect your category pages to your product pages can help improve your search engine rankings and make it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for.
By optimizing your product and category pages, you can improve your ecommerce link building efforts and attract more customers to your online store.
Backlink Analysis and Monitoring
To ensure the success of your ecommerce website, you need to monitor and analyze your backlinks. Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. They are important because they can increase your website’s visibility and search engine rankings. However, not all backlinks are created equal. You need to analyze and monitor them regularly to make sure they are high-quality and relevant.
Backlink Analysis
To analyze your backlinks, you need to look at the following entities:
- Backlinks: the number of links pointing to your website.
- Referring domains: the number of unique domains that link to your website.
- Link profile: the quality and relevance of the links pointing to your website.
- Backlink profile: the overall picture of your website’s backlinks.
- Domain rating: a metric that measures the strength of a website’s backlink profile.
- Domain authority: a metric that measures the overall strength of a website.
Using a backlink analysis tool, you can see all of these entities and more. The tool will give you a report that shows you which backlinks are high-quality and which ones are not. You can use this information to improve your backlink profile and increase your website’s visibility.
Backlink Monitoring
Once you have analyzed your backlinks, you need to monitor them regularly. This will help you identify any changes in your backlink profile and take action if necessary. You should monitor the following entities:
- Backlinks: the number of links pointing to your website.
- Referring domains: the number of unique domains that link to your website.
- Link profile: the quality and relevance of the links pointing to your website.
- Backlink profile: the overall picture of your website’s backlinks.
By monitoring your backlinks, you can identify any changes in your backlink profile and take action if necessary. For example, if you see a sudden increase in low-quality backlinks, you can disavow them to prevent them from harming your website’s visibility and search engine rankings.
Conclusion
Ecommerce link building is an important aspect of any ecommerce business. By building quality links, you can improve your organic search ranking, which will lead to more organic traffic and ultimately increase your ROI.
It’s important to note that link building is just one part of SEO practices, and it’s not a quick fix solution. It takes time and effort to build quality links, but the value they provide to your ecommerce business is worth it.
When building links, focus on quality over quantity. One high-quality link can be more valuable than several low-quality links. Additionally, make sure your links are relevant to your ecommerce business and provide value to your audience.
By implementing a strong link building strategy, you can improve your SEO ranking, drive more organic and referral traffic to your ecommerce site, and ultimately increase your revenue.
