Ecommerce Link Building 101: Your Complete Guide to a Robust Backlink Profile in 2024

Ecommerce link building is different from other link building strategies. An Estore often has hundreds and thousands of product pages, and you’ve to wonder where to prioritize your linking efforts for the best results – the homepage? The category listing pages? Or the product listing pages?

You may have to compete with larger businesses while finding it difficult to create linkable content at the same time. There can also be budget constraints if you’re an SME.

To make your ecommerce journey smoother, we’ve compiled a list of the best Ecommerce link building practices to follow in 2024.

What is Ecommerce Link Building?

Ecommerce link building is all about gaining quality backlinks from credible sources for online stores to help boost their online visibility. Each link counts as a vote of confidence to Google and other search engines that represents your authority, relevancy, and trustworthiness.

The most effective ecommerce link building tactics are guest posting, resource page and editorial link building, and local directory listing.

Why is Link Building Important for Ecommerce Websites?

• Improved Ranking

Backlinks are one of Google’s most important ranking factors. That means if reputable sources relevant to your niche have provided you links, Google might consider you as a trusted source.

As a result, the more quality links you have, the higher the chances will be to be on top search engine result pages (SERP).

• Increased Traffic

Ecommerce businesses mainly aim at gaining organic traffic; i.e., visitors coming from search engines, because they have a buying intent and can be easily converted to customers.

If you can rank, people see you as a reliable source for the info/service they are looking for and tend to visit your website.

• Boosted Authority and Credibility

A solid backlink profile helps increase your authority that can be measured with metrics like Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority (PA).

DA is a score that predicts a website’s ability to appear on SERPs while PA estimates the ranking potential of a web page.

• Enhanced Sales and Leads

Not only does link building help with your traffic but brings referral traffic. Referral visitors are people that come from different sources (e.g. social media) other than the organic search results.

They usually have enough confidence in making purchases from your store because they have already checked your ratings and reviews.

What to Look for Before Trying Link Building for Ecommerce Websites?

• Relevance

Links from websites whose topics are related to your content are more acceptable to Google. For instance, if you have a medical equipment store and received a backlink from a popular health magazine, it’ll be considered more relevant than getting a link from a sports blog.

On the other hand, irrelevant links have zero value to Google and, in worst case scenarios, can lead to penalties.

• Authority

Authority backlinks refer to the quality and trustworthiness of the website that has provided links to you. As expected, Google rewards links coming from high-DA domains and finds them more valuable than those from low-quality and spammy sites.

Though Google doesn’t have any official metrics to measure that, there are some third-party tools like Moz that use their own metrics to see how strong a domain is.

The benchmarks are from 0-100. An example is that the Forbes magazine’s DA is 95 with a PA of 47. That means a dofollow link from this domain is much more valuable than one from a less renowned magazine site.

Also, remember that a higher DA won’t do you any good if the site is irrelevant to your niche.

• Traffic

Google expects that the source website should have some traffic in order to be considered linkworthy. The visitors can come from different sources, such as organic, social media, and referrals.

• Anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable text in the hyperlink. While creating backlinks, you need to place the exact keyword in the anchor text that you want to rank.

You can also make a variation of secondary and LSI (Latest Semantic Indexing) keywords; i.e., words or phrases related to the main keyword.

For example, if “social media marketing” is your primary keyword, your secondary keywords could be “social media marketing for business,” “social media marketing strategy,” or “social media marketing tips.”

On the other hand, your LSI could be “Facebook marketing,” “Instagram marketing,” or “social media marketing example.”

Sometimes, linking with simple words like “click here,” “check this,” or just the URL  performs better.

How to Keep Your Ecommerce Link Profile Natural?

Avoid building links too quickly

Think about it – you won’t get 100 backlinks from other websites in a matter of 7 days naturally, will you? So, if you manage to do that somehow, Google will find that suspicious.

After launching your Estore, wait for a month or two and then start building links but slowly.

In fact, you can get hundreds of backlinks simultaneously with automation software like GSA, but you have to be ready for a penalty at the same time.

Focus on quality websites

It is common SEO knowledge that a backlink from a highly trusted source is more valuable than dozens of backlinks from new or low quality ones. To build a strong Ecommerce backlink profile, you need to aim at reputed websites only with a high DA score.

Use a variety of link building strategies

There are several backlink tactics with different degrees of importance. Some are beneficial for search engines while some are for users.

For example, an informative guest blog gives an impression that your content has enough value to be featured on another website. On the other hand, a local directory listing provides essential information about your business.

Keep monitoring your profile

Irrelevant and poor links are one of the biggest enemies of your ranking.

Let us elaborate it for you.

Since 2022, Google’s been using SpamBrain – an AI-based spam-prevention system – to detect unnatural links directly and neutralize their effect on ranking through manual actions.

That means if you have many inbound links coming from low-value websites, you will notice significant ranking drops and Google may even deindex your whole website.

Link diversity

The number of referral domains are more important than the number of links you get. In other words, it’s more valuable to have 10 unique domains linking to you than to have 10 links from the same domain.

Top 12 Ecommerce Link Building Tactics to Follow

Finding what backlink methods will work and what won’t is critical for the success of your link building campaign. If you want to stay one step ahead of your competitors, check out these link building strategies for ecommerce websites:

1. Guest blogging

These days, Google is changing its search algorithms more frequently than before. Many backlink methods that once worked are now dead. Right now, guest posting is trending.

It’s a practice where you write an article for another website or blog as a guest author with your targeted keyword and hyperlink. The purpose is to share your expertise with the audience of other websites.

When the visitors of the referring sites come to your website through the link, Google takes that positively. This also helps with gaining referral traffic and promoting your brand and services.

As you already know, you’ll always have to look for industry-specific and relevant websites.

Pro Tip# Look into their best-performing content for ideas to write a killer post that will add more value to their audience.

Apply anchor text and keywords perfectly and use secondary and related keywords moderately. Finally, make sure your destination URL is correct that leads to your targeted web page.

2. Becoming a Source for Journalists (HARO)

HARO means Help a Reporter Out. It is mainly a platform for journalists and experts although you have the opportunity to leverage it for quality inbound links.

Here’s how it works in short.

When a reporter or writer needs certain info about a topic they are covering, they post requests for sources and information on HARO. The expert with enough knowledge on the subject replies to them and gets a link back to their website as a citation.

However, you need to be a specialist on specific niches and have linkable content as a source. Also, there is no guarantee that your response will be accepted because the journalist might get replies from hundreds of sources.

If you are confident enough, go to HARO, click “I am the source” and sign up to get started.

3. Press Release

A Digital Press Release – abbreviated as PR – is an official statement prepared for news media to provide special announcements about your company.

If the information is newsworthy, hundreds of magazines, newspapers, and online media publish it. This is a huge link building opportunity for your Ecom business.

Here’s how to gain unlimited backlinks from popular newspapers!

Suppose you are launching a new product. You can write an official announcement where you promote its features, functions, and benefits, and then publish it on several PR sites. Don’t forget to add your link.

Some of them may charge a one-time fee while others may be free.

The members of those news media regularly visit PR websites for new information. If they find your newsworthy, they may publish it on their sites.

As a result, you will gain hundreds of links for free.

4. Local Citations

Local citations are online mentions or references of a local business’s name, address, phone number, and other relevant information.

Local citations come in different forms, such as business directories, review and news websites, local blogs, and social media platforms. The most well-known sources are Google Business Profile, Facebook, Yellow Pages, Yelp, and Foursquare.

Now, the question is, how can you use local citations to your benefit?

Well, some of them are UGC (User Generated Content) sites where you can sign up and add the information of your store.

For others, you need to reach out to local directories, organizations, communities, and social groups and convince them to feature your website.

If they require a promotional and collaborative article, prepare one highlighting your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number.) Also, don’t forget to add your website link and Google Maps if they have the option.

Pro Tips#

• Maintain consistency of your information across all citation platforms.
• Confirm if the websites are authoritative and trusted within your industry.
• Make sure your website includes all the relevant information of your business.
• Encourage your users to leave reviews on your official social media pages and local review platforms. (Positive reviews indirectly help improve local search visibility.)
• Monitor citations so that they publish your information accurately.
• Update the reference pages when you change your business details e.g. address or phone number.

5. Broken Link Replacing

Broken or dead links are the links on a page that no longer work or lead to a valid website. You look for these invalid links and convince the web admins to replace them with valid links targeting a relevant page on your site.

This is a powerful Ecommerce link building method because there are benefits to both parties. The referral site gets more functional with reduced dead links while you score new backlinks for free.

Pro Tip# When you outreach and refer to a top-quality blog page of yours, your request might be approved quickly.

Also, ask them to provide you dofollow links to make it more powerful.

To find broken link sources, you can check your competitors’ backlink profiles, resource pages, and informative websites like Wikipedia. Also, use link analyzing tools like Semrush’s Backlink Audit or Ahrefs’s Broken Link Checker.

6. Sneak on Your Competition’s Links

The backlink profiles of your competitor, especially those on the first page, are your gold mine to find new link building opportunities because you know these links have helped get them on top SERPs.

If you want to outrank them, you have to replicate their strategies. It won’t guarantee the first page, but it would definitely raise the possibility.

So, why not try them?

Third-party tools like Ahrefs and Semrush show you where they get links. Filter them by category, DA, DR, relevancy, and dofollow or nofollow attributes and download the list as CSV or Excel.

However, here comes the hard part.

If it’s a guest post, pitch the site owner with convincing emails. You can also offer niche and resource page editing.

The best way is to get a link for the page with the exact keyword where your competitor got one.

You can also find user-generated links like Wikipedia, Quora, question-answer sites, communities, and forums. Sign up and contribute to these platforms with helpful content featuring your links.

7. Resource Pages

There are two types of resource pages that link to external websites – one contains a curated list and another is an article with a lot of references.

Here’s an example of the first one:

And this is a Wikipedia page for citations.

These types of pages are created to share a complete guide with links to credible sources.

Just like fixing broken links, you can offer handy resources that will keep their lists updated and fresh. In fact, many creators ask for submissions in the footnote.

For instance, you can add your link to the Wikipedia page as a reference, and the moderator will keep it if they think your content deserves it.

To gain these types of backlinks, first you have to add trends, information, statistics, and tutorial-style content on your website that contains lots of data.

While adding your link as a resource, you can target your home page although this method works best for informative posts.

However, not all resource pages are titled as “resources,” and some of them are curated links but named differently. For example: “best recipes,” ultimate diet plan,” or “places to learn.”

To find them on Google, use these search terms.

Keyword “ultimate guide”

Keyword “best sites”

Keyword “best blogs”

Keyword “places to learn”

8. Editorial Links

Editorial backlinks are gained naturally without any manipulation and artificial tactics e.g. reaching out or paying to other websites.

It is one of the most difficult Ecommerce link building strategies because only quality content and reputable websites can easily attract these backlinks – the very reason Google considers them worthwhile.

For example, whenever Samsung declares to release a new Galaxy phone, hundreds of bloggers, journalists, writers, and newspapers start featuring the big news on their own platforms. As a result, Samsung gets editorial backlinks organically from all those sources.

Another example is Statista. They provide insights and facts across 170 industries, including digital trends and market reports. Because of publishing updated statistics and graphical presentations, they have already gained millions of editorial links.

Even if you are not Samsung, Apple, or Statista, you can still work your way through writing data-driven content, listicles, and news.

Here are some ideas that you can consider to attract editorial links:

• Infographics
• Comprehensive Guides
• Thought-provoking articles
• Case studies
• Facts and insights
• Predictions
• Expert Interviews
• Success stories
• Tools and resources
• Leadership thoughts
• Celebrity contributions

9. Niche Edits

Niche editing is the practice of optimizing the existing content on a website within your industry and naturally inserting a link back to your site.

This is more like guest posting, except you offer to edit a small part of the published post with your link.

For example, if you have an article titled “The Real Importance of Backlink in SEO,” you can offer niche edits to websites that have content about “backlink,” “SEO,” “digital marketing,” or “link building.”

Want to beat the niche edit game? Follow these best practices:

• Find websites that have high DA and PA scores with stable traffic.
• Identify the top-performing posts where your link will provide value.
• Make sure the link is placed naturally.
• Contribute a specific part of the blog with essential information or guidance to convince the owners.
• Explain how your link will help improve their content and the visitors.
• Refrain from annoying web admins with spam and repetitive emails. If anyone doesn’t agree, head to another.
• Monitor and ensure your links are dofollow and active.
• Link back to a highly informative content that will genuinely benefit their audience.

However, this strategy should be done ethically. Since Google prefers relevant and authority backlinks, focus on quality over quantity.

10. Feedback & Reviews

Many bloggers review different types of products and post the best listicles. They are a prominent source for backlinks. You can gain in-article links if you reach those who have reviewed similar products and convince them to feature you.

Let us break it down for you.

Suppose you have a lawn mower store. Google “best [product category] – brand name.” In that case, it’s the “best lawn mower – Honda.”

Check the listicles and find out who didn’t feature you but your competitors. Email them to know whether they have tested your product or not.

If they haven’t tried yet, offer a sample and let them test.

Wait a few days and send a follow-up email to know about their thoughts. If they like your product, request them to include their feedback with your webpage link on their next edit.

However, don’t ask for positive feedback or links in exchange for money or gifts because Google sees that as link spamming.

11. Unlinked Brand Mentions

When browsing, you may stumble upon many posts that have mentioned your brand but not provided a link. This is an easy link building opportunity because they are already aware of your brand and your product.

If you can reach them, they will most likely provide you links.

Here’s how you find these pages.

Search your brand name on Google and visit them one by one to check if there are any unlinked mentions.

This is a timely process, and you may have to go through Google’s 1-50 search results or more pages.

However, there is another way to do it. Go to Ahrefs and search for your brand. Select “highlight unlinked domains” and type your site.

You might see many unlinked mentions and the number will be high or low depending on your brand’s popularity.

Check how they represent you in their posts. If they show you positively, connect with them and request for a backlink.

12. Where-to-Buy Pages

You can use this technique if you are a retailer and showcase different brands in your store.

Browse the websites of the different manufacturers and check if they have “where to buy” pages. These web pages usually redirect visitors to their official vendors.

Use this search term to find them: [brand name] intitle:(“where to buy” OR “stockists”)

If you find some of those manufacturers actually have these pages but you are not there, request them to add you.

This opportunity will reward you with links and referral customers.

How to Measure Ecommerce Link Building Efforts?

1. Google Analytics: Track Your Traffic and Ranking

When it comes to analyzing your site performance and user interactions, Google Analytics is the gold standard. It allows you to calculate the impact of your Ecommerce backlink building strategies through several metrics.

Traffic Analysis: You will see the number of visitors (new and total), page views, sessions durations, traffic source, bounce rate, and real-time traffic in the dashboard.

You can compare the data before and after your link building campaign to see the marginal growth (if any).

Audience Insights: You will also get more details about your visitors such as their demographics (country, age and gender), interests, languages, and pin-point locations (cities).

This will help answer a vital question, “Are these people your target traffic, or should you change your link building tactics?”

Behavior Analysis: This tool measures how your visitors move through your store, such as which products or pages they visit, how long they stay, and where they engage most.

Use this information to identify your best-performing pages and improve the posts that have the highest bounce rate.

Conversion Tracking: Converting users into customers and generating more revenue is the priority of any Ecommerce business. This feature provides you data related to your transactions, sale volumes, and revenues.

Analyze these reports and evaluate the total impact of your digital marketing campaign, including link building.

2. Ahrefs and Semrush: Analyze Your Backlink Profile

Both Ahrefs and Semrush are well-known to measure your link building campaign performance.

Sign up to Ahrefs and enter your URL. You will see the number of backlinks, including all (new and lost) referring pages and their own metrics like DR, UR, domain traffic, anchor, target URL, dofollow, nofollow, as well as the backlink types e.g. edu, gov, and in-content.

Check to see how many inbound links (mainly dofollow) you have gained from high DR sites, how many are niche-related, and if your target anchors and URLs are correct.

On the other hand, Semrush provides link acquisition reports under slightly different names.

In the “Overview” section, you will see your domain’s DR score, total backlinks, referring domains, and IPs. It also shows the percentage of dofollow and nofollow attributes and the overall toxicity score – the proportion of spammy links compared to the quality ones.

Ecommerce Link Building Mistakes to Avoid

• Thinking quantity over quality

You may have heard – the more backlinks you get, the higher your keywords will rank. As a result, you try to get as many links as you can from low-value websites.

Solution: Emphasize on getting quality backlinks only from established sources only.

• Using automated backlink methods

Somebody tells you that you can create hundreds of backlinks within a day with an automatic backlink SEO software like GSA Search Ranker. Or, you may have found some seller on Fiverr that builds 1000 links for $5 only. You think this is a quick way to enrich your profile!

Solution: Most automated links come from low-quality, spammy, and suspicious websites. If you suddenly build hundreds of them, Google might penalize you.

Link building takes time and effort. Don’t rush if you want your SEO to drive results.

• Getting inbound links from irrelevant websites

You discover an opportunity to gain links from a domain with a high DA score without considering the relevance.

Solution: Focus on earning backlinks only from niche-related websites because relevancy matters in the eyes of Google.

• Using too many exact-match anchors

You target just 1-2 keywords and use them for all your backlinks. As a result, Google thinks you’re trying to manipulate their algorithms and risk your site for a penalty.

Solution: Use primary and secondary keywords, including random words like “click here,” “for more info,” “check details,” and URLs to make it more natural.

• Ignoring local SEO

You have an Ecommerce website targeting your locality only. But you forget about the geo-targeted link building approach, such as listing local directories, business sites, blogs, communities, and groups.

Solution: Focusing on local SEO helps acquire more relevant links and referral traffic.

• Not publishing linkable content

You only target the homepage or a few ranked product pages without creating helpful articles.

Solution: You should target all of your resourceful pages for inbound links – not just the home page or the product pages.

• Not diversifying your profile

You find a lucrative source like Web 2.0 and try to get hundreds of links without trying other sources like in-content, edu, gov, directory listing, and citation.

Solution: Balance your profile with a range of valuable sources to make it appear more natural to Google.

• Linking from high DA sites but no traffic

When looking for links, you find a relevant and high-DA website but without any traffic. You don’t care about the traffic because you think the DA will work for you. However, in reality, the site has manipulated their authority or been penalized by Google.

Solution: Always look into the source site’s past and present traffic state. A high-DA site should have a significant number of visitors. Look for one that has at least some traffic.

Common Link Building Challenges for Ecommerce Businesses

• Fierce competition

Most Ecommerce stores contain more or less the same products with a few exceptions. As a result, they go for similar link building methods, making it hard for new stores to stand out and secure valuable links.

• Too many products, too few linkable assets

Ecommerce businesses usually focus on listing hundreds of products and product descriptions, but they don’t have enough linkable resources because it takes a lot of time and effort. If you don’t have a list of published content, it will be tough to convince other websites to link to your site.

• Limited budget

With big pockets, established Ecommerce platforms can pursue the best backlinks easily. But an SME can’t compete with them and takes a long time to build an effective link portfolio.

• Difficulty in earning trust

Usually, people tend to link to credible resources that have reliable information. Ecommerce businesses, especially the newer ones, may struggle to earn credibility for link-building purposes.

• Algorithm changes

Since search engines update their algorithms frequently, especially for Ecommerce websites, it’s hard to guess which link building tactic will actually work and which will lead to a penalty.

Why Opt for Ecommerce Link Building Services

What Does an Ecommerce Link Building Agency Do?

Link building is a dynamic and timely process. Without deep knowledge of changing algorithms and competitor strategies, crafting a natural backlink profile is much more difficult.

Here comes the role of an Ecommerce link building agency as a savior. With years of experience, they know exactly what types of backlinks you need and how to get them.

They analyze your competitors for relevant and authoritative link building opportunities. They also craft a strategy tailored to your Ecommerce store’s needs.

How Ecommerce Link Building Agencies can Help You?

The agency will help you achieve your link building goal – create a strong link profile and increase conversion.

At LinkBuilderPros.com, we analyze your competitors (links, content, and pages), create the right link building strategy, find the best link building opportunities, and deliver results.

Why Choose LinkBuilderPros?

LinkBuilderPros has been providing fully-fledged link building services for more than 10 years now. We guarantee that you will have a robust backlink profile that will help improve your organic traffic significantly.

Our seasoned link builders specialize in ethical and sustainable Ecommerce link building tactics. We also have a distinctive partnership with a list of high DA domains ready to launch your campaign immediately.

Do you need help with your Ecommerce SEO and link building campaign? Talk to us so we can make a custom plan for you.

Final Thoughts

A strong backlink profile helps raise your DA, improve ranking, and increase traffic. All these outputs lead to more conversions.

But first, you need to set a goal as per your budget.

While reaching out for backlinks, ensure the websites are niche-related and have information people trust.

Also, you have to focus more on local backlink building strategies like directory listing. Encourage your customers to leave testimonials on your Google Business Profile, official social media pages, and your website.

While reaching out for links, look into their metrics like relevancy, authority, toxicity score, and traffic.

FAQs

Q. When to start link building for my ecommerce website?

Ans. There is no definite timeline, but waiting 1-2 months is recommended. In the meantime, you can create a blog and publish enough linkable content with targeted keywords.

Q. How long does it take to see results from ecommerce link building?

Ans. Typically, you will need 3-12 months to see any ranking improvement. However, the timing will depend on numerous factors like Google algorithm update, link building strategies and budget, keyword difficulty, authority, and brand popularity.

Q. How many backlinks do I need to rank?

Ans. It depends on keyword difficulty, meaning you have to create more backlinks than your competitors.

For example, if the 10th website of SERP has 50 links, you will need at least 50 or more to outrank it.

However, this doesn’t guarantee you to grab the 10th position. It depends on other factors like competitor’s DA, PA, content and link quality and vice versa.

When you check Keyword Difficulty (KD) on Ahrefs, you will see estimated backlinks you need to get in the top 10. These are the average backlinks based on the first page’s result.

Q. Does a nofollow link matter?

Ans. Though the nofollow backlink, rel=nofollow tag in the URL, doesn’t directly impact your ranking, it shows a weak signal.

On the other hand, it increases referral traffic, boosts authority, enhances brand reputation, and diversifies link profiles.

Q. Should you link to a product or resource page?

Ans. If you want to rank any specific product, you can do it, but remember, the link will be worthless if you drop the product in the future. Otherwise, linking to your resource pages is best because they are evergreen.

mothasim

SEO & Growth Manager

A distinguished SEO and Business Development Consultant with a proven track record of helping businesses achieve outstanding results in the digital landscape. Throughout his career, Mothasim has worked with a diverse range of businesses, from startups to Fortune 500 companies.

His strategies are characterized by his meticulous attention to detail, data-driven decision-making, and a deep understanding of search engine algorithms. In his personal life, Mothasim enjoys hiking, photography, and volunteering in his community. He believes in giving back and is actively involved in mentoring aspiring SEO professionals. LinkedIn .