Effective Link Building Strategies for E-Commerce Brands

For E-commerce site owners, link building is a critical piece of the SEO equation.

The equivalent of having a physical shop on a busy high street for ecommerce companies is ranking highly on Google for relevant terms: you'll generate a ton of sales simply because you're in the right place at the right time when people want to spend money.

You'll need to get inventive with your link-building techniques if you want to rank well for competitive, profitable terms. The strength of your backlink profile has a direct impact on where your website appears in search results.

You clearly don't want to get involved with a marketing business that uses shady tactics to harm your search engine rankings, but you'll need a list of tactics to bookmark and refer to when it's time to execute a new link-building approach.

Some modifications are minor, while others are more significant. The following list of link-building tactics is far from comprehensive; feel free to pick and choose whatever ones you like and add to your own list.

In A Nutshell, What Is Link Building?

The practise of obtaining other websites to link to yours is known as link building. Every link counts as a vote for your website, conveying authority, relevance, and trust-which are crucial attributes of the process.

• Authority

Authority in SEO is really important. There are three different sorts of authority in the world:

Domain Authority— that considers all of the domain's links.

Page Authority— that only takes into consideration links to the page in issue.

Link Authority—that a link passes from page A to page B is referred to as link authority.

The more power you have, the better. Receiving a link from a website like CNN.com, for example, is every SEO's dream.

• Relevancy

A relevant link is one that leads to a page from another website that is topically connected. If you sell televisions, a link from a blog post on the best televisions to watch Netflix on is fantastic. As a result, the topic relevance of your website is influenced by the relevancy of links.

• Trust

The degree to which search engines trust your domain is referred to as trust. The higher the number, the better. Trust is earned over time, by adhering to Google's standards, and by obtaining connections from reliable websites. A newspaper is a fantastic example of a trustworthy website.
Continue to create trustworthy links in an ethical manner, with the goal of providing excellent service to your guests. Trust will develop organically.

Other properties for link building that matter

• Link origin and link target

By the source of the link, we mean the page on which a link is put. If you link from the website to the "About us" page, the origin of the links will be the homepage. The link is the page "About Us."

Ideally, the source and target of the link share the same subject. There are great links to the website because you can funnel the authority of your website to other pages. If, in competitive niches, you want to rank with pages other than your homepage, links to these pages are essential. 'Deeplinks’ are links to pages other than the homepage.

• Anchor text

The anchor text, which is normally underlined and blue, is the section of the link that can be clicked.

The anchor text should ideally contain keywords that you want your website to rank for. This is referred to as "exact match anchor text." However, don't go overboard; having too many links with exact match anchor text may signal to search engines that you're attempting to trick the system, which could lead to a penalty. It's critical that the anchor text changes and appears natural.

• Nofollow attribute

The nofollow attribute is used to signal that a link was purchased or that you do not wish to be linked with the websites to which you are linking. Only a portion of the link authority is given to the link target when a link has the nofollow attribute. It's usual for websites to contain nofollow links, so don't get too worked up about it. Furthermore, links with the nofollow property aren't useless. Although Wikipedia links are nofollowed, they still have some relevance, trust, and link authority.

• Maintaining a natural link profile

The so-called 'link profile' of your website is made up of all of the links to it. When it comes to links, this is essentially your website's fingerprint.

It's critical that your link profile appears 'natural' and does not stand out in any manner.

But how do you know what's natural and what's not? That is dependent on the industry in which you work. It's common in some businesses to have a lot of links with exact match anchor text. It's crucial to have a sense of your competition landscape before ramping up your link-building efforts. That determines what you are permitted to do and what you are not permitted to do.

Examine the link profiles of your top ten competitors to get a sense of what's 'typical' in your field.

Now we come to the awaited part…

Link Building Strategies to Follow for Your E-commerce Site

1. Embrace Video Marketing

Through walk-throughs, narratives, and in-depth instructional videos, video content helps you bring your brand's products (and the stories behind them) to life.

You may also develop a variety of material for your target audience, ranging from informative how-tos to amusing stories and slapstick comedy, using this medium.

This is quite useful when it comes to creating effective links that attract clients and increase click-through rates. Google favours video material, which has the potential for featured snippets.

Expand your audience by hosting the video on YouTube and keep an eye on your analytics to see who has embedded your YouTube video.

This can provide you outreach opportunities to relevant blogs where you can request a link back to the original page on your website.

One good angle to take when outreaching to bloggers, once they've embedded the video, they could offer a better option, such as a high-quality HD embed without the YouTube adverts.

2. Create A Blog Section

You can post link-worthy content by adding a blog feature to your website. Anything that is newsworthy, informative, trending, or interesting might be considered link-worthy material. For example, if you make an infographic, this is a fantastic place to share it.

It's vital to remember that generating and releasing linkable content is just the beginning. The next stage is to inform the rest of the globe. Inform industry leaders about your material by reaching out to them.

3. Frequently Asked Questions Pages

FAQ pages are useful resources for solving problems in your sector. Although they are a form of linkable asset, they attract links in a somewhat different method.

Instead of outreach — though that can be done — the goal with FAQs is to rank the page high in search engines for a variety of long-tail keywords on a single topic. People will find your content if they search for these terms.

People are more inclined to share these pages on forums or social media, or to use them as references for blog entries, due to their high exposure and problem-solving character.

Check out this post from Made in Cookware as a good example.

4. Influencer Product Reviews
Product reviews that are sponsored are a great strategy to obtain links back to your website. Simply reach out to bloggers or websites in your niche and ask if they'd be interested in reviewing your product.

The website will determine what they expect in return. In exchange for a review, a tiny blogger might be willing to receive your goods for free. Depending on the price of the product, this could be a terrific deal for you. A major publisher, on the other hand, may demand payment.

There are a few things you should keep in mind. Sponsored reviews and posts should be declared as such, and the link should have a "nofollow" tag to comply with Google guidelines.

You may undoubtedly locate sites eager to review your goods and provide “Dofollow” links if you desire them.

You should, however, make sure that the site in question does not specify that you pushed them to write a review. It is acceptable for the review to appear natural and unforced.

5. Make A Feature That Allows Your Products To Be Shared

Getty Image's Embed, which made roughly 50 million photos available for free use on blogs and social media websites, was one of the most successful link-building programmes in recent memory.

The success of this campaign was due to the fact that it made the product shareable to potential customers, paving the way for the idea to scale and grow, driving traffic back to the website.

If you make aesthetically attractive photos embeddable, you may route traffic straight to a page that lies at the centre of your business, rather than seeking to develop organic links through a remote blog post or external piece of content (and then creating a customer journey through internal linking).

This increases the chances of your links being shared outside of your own consumer network, resulting in increased traffic and potential sales.

6. Build an Entire Community of Independent Brand Ambassadors

What if you're a young ecommerce business with minimal marketing resources and little more than a product to sell? You want to employ link building to increase traffic and visibility to your website, but what is the best approach to apply?

Brands largely focus on creating regional communities within their client base, with each one having its own Facebook group and social network.

These networks provide a breeding ground for enthusiastic brand ambassadors, who are drawn in by targeted and tailored content that includes links to new product releases and existing lines.

These brand ambassadors then share these product links and steer people to commercial pages, all while continuing the conversation even when there is nothing new to discuss.

This strategy essentially turns customers into brand ambassadors by equipping them with the resources they need to help generate and share organic and well-received links.

7. Unlinked Brand Mentions

When someone mentions your brand in a blog article, they usually include a link to your website. It's not uncommon for folks to neglect to provide the link. If you can determine when this occurs, you may contact the website owner and request that they add a link to your site; they will usually be pleased to do so.

Setting up a Google alert for your company will notify you whenever someone creates a webpage that includes your brand name. The alert settings can be customised based on the type of source, language, area, and how frequently you wish to receive emails.

Unlinked mentions are a simple approach to obtain links, but it only works for brands that are well-known enough to have people talking about them.

8. Broken Link Building

Searching for websites that connect to resources that are no longer available and suggesting that they link to an alternative resource on your website is known as broken link building.

The first step is to locate websites that connect to pages of your competitors that no longer exist. You can rapidly find those using a service like Ahrefs:

Make a list of these websites and establish alternative resources to link to on your own site. Now contact the website owners and explain that you saw a broken link on their site and that you have a good option to connect to.

9. Customers' Personal Stories To Be Shared On Your Blog

Did one of your customers use one of your outerwear goods to win a competition? Did someone use one of your tablets to compose an award-winning screenplay? If that's the case, send them an email and tell them about your experience. Other customers will be inspired, and if it's interesting, you'll get a lot of links.

Conclusion

Link building for ecommerce websites isn't as difficult as you might think, but there are a few different approaches to take. To avoid being overwhelmed right away, we recommend using only a few of these tactics. Keep track of the links that lead to your site, and once one wave of approaches has been implemented, review the results to see how well they worked. Did they help you increase your sales? Have you noticed any noticeable changes in search engine rankings?

Embrace your creativity and happy link building!