Whether you’re a small business owner running an online store or a brick-and-mortar store owner leveraging sales opportunities online, eCommerce can help your business grow. Visibility is crucial to your eCommerce venture, which is why successful brands use effective digital marketing strategies to connect with relevant users.
Link building is one of the most popular digital marketing strategies for organic traffic generation. However, effective link building can be tricky to get those valuable links when it comes to eCommerce sites. Relevant and high-value publishers tend to link to informational content, making them less likely to post links to your product pages.
It’s challenging, but it’s not impossible. Here are some eCommerce link building strategies and eCommerce marketing tips that marketers can use to maximize link building efforts for online stores:
What Is Link Building?
Link building gets backlinks to your website featured on other websites. Think of it as word-of-mouth referrals but between websites. If one website features a link to your website, it’s a sign that they think yours is credible and relevant enough to share with their users.
When done correctly, your link building efforts can increase your visibility. Having a link on other websites increases the chances of users on that website from clicking the link and going to your website. Additionally, search engines like Google see these links as a sign that others trust and value your website. This can boost your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and improve your ranking on relevant searches – further boosting your visibility.
However, not all links have equal weight. A link from authoritative and relevant websites can improve SEO for online shops. In this case, quality links from fewer but reputable websites have a better effect than plenty of links from less reputable ones.
Why Should Businesses Use eCommerce Link Building Strategies?
Effective eCommerce link building strategies can provide the following benefits:
Increase Website Visibility
eCommerce sites can improve their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). If search engines like Google see that your website gets plenty of links from quality websites, they can see you as a relevant topical authority. Aiming to increase website visibility can lead to higher rankings, which means more potential customers visit your website on relevant searches before your competitors.
Expand Reach and Brand Awareness
Link building introduces your eCommerce brand to new audiences browsing on other websites. When your site is linked to other websites, their visitors may click through to your site, which expands your reach beyond search engines. Additionally, if your site is mentioned, it can increase brand awareness and recognition among potential customers.
Increase Referral Traffic
Quality backlinks can drive direct referral traffic to your eCommerce site and improve organic traffic generation. Users who click on a link from another website are already interested in what you offer. This makes them quality traffic and more likely to buy or subscribe to your products or services.
Build Authority and Trustworthiness
Building a robust backlink profile from reputable sources signals to users and search engines that your eCommerce site is trustworthy and authoritative within its niche. This can instill confidence in potential customers and encourage them to purchase or engage with your brand.
What Makes Link Building for eCommerce Different?
For other businesses, effective link building can be used for pages that provide information about their products, services, industry or brand. However, when it comes to eCommerce websites, this means getting links to category or product pages.
This can be challenging because reputable websites often link to informational content that adds value to users’ search for information rather than product pages. Additionally, eCommerce websites don’t usually have long-form content focused on industry information rather than sales.
As a result, some of the more widely used link building strategies aren’t available to eCommerce websites. Instead, we recommend alternative eCommerce SEO best practices for getting your links on reputable websites.
Best Practices: Link Building for eCommerce
Here are some eCommerce marketing tips to overcome the common challenges of link building for eCommerce:
1. Find Unlinked Brand Mentions
Your eCommerce marketing efforts can include already existing content from other websites. An unlinked brand mention is when existing articles or blogs mention your brand, your products or your own name but no link pointing to your site. You could take the opportunity to reach out to the website and ask them to link these to your website.
There are two ways to find unlinked brand mentions:
• Google Alerts: Go to Google Alerts and set an alert for your brand, your name, your products, etc. Modify the settings to get immediate, daily or weekly alerts. You can also select which sources to monitor, region, language, etc. These alerts will be sent to the email address you provide.
• Content Explorers: Many SEO tools have content explorer features that can help you find mentions of your brand from other websites. From there, you can scan for high-value websites that mention your brand but are unlinked.
The same can be applied to the images you use without crediting you. Use Google Images to perform a reverse image search. When done right, these strategies can improve SEO for online shops.
2. Get on Product Review Blogs
Many reputable websites in your industry create content such as product rankings, individual reviews and their top picks for a certain product that year. These could be well-known bloggers, influencers or experts in your niche. Consider reaching out to them with samples of your product and offer these products in exchange for their feedback. If they like your product and create content reviewing it, they will likely link to your website.
How to best reach these experts can vary depending on your industry, but a general way to handle this is:
1. Research for websites creating similar content. The fastest way of doing this is to search Google for “best [product or product category] -[your brand name]”. This should give you a list of top-ranking websites.
2. Reach out to the website. Offer to send samples for their feedback.
3. If they like your product, ask them to consider writing a review or adding it to their list. Otherwise, you can use their feedback to improve your product.
3. Create Shareable Content
Many eCommerce websites don’t have long-form content to become an informative source, but you could use well-written blogs targeted to your products and services. Create a section for blogs in your online store, then create articles or blogs using relevant keywords.
This strategy can help your eCommerce efforts in several ways. One is getting your articles to rank for a keyword and creating links that direct your products and services. Another is by other users sharing your article. In this case, another website may see your article as a good resource to share, therefore creating a backlink.
Not many eCommerce websites create long-form content because SEO doesn’t happen overnight. However, with a well-written article and the right featured products and services, your content could be shared with other websites.
4. Become a HARO Source
Becoming a HARO (Help a Reporter Out) source can present an opportunity for building high-quality backlinks. Essentially, HARO connects journalists and bloggers for expert sources. Businesses can increase visibility, brand credibility and stronger search engine rankings when they become an authoritative source.
As requests for sources are sent directly to an eCommerce business’s inbox, they can identify relevant opportunities without investing significant time and resources in outreach campaigns. The process is simple, often requiring a quote or brief interview.
5. Join Resource Pages and “Where To Buy” Pages
Other websites create resource pages or “where to buy” pages that your website could benefit from being a part of. These pages are usually needed to link to different pages within the same industry. ECommerce SEO best practices include getting your link on these pages, especially for websites with good domain authority.
By listing your website in sync with high-quality, authoritative resource pages, business owners can piggyback off the credibility and trust of these pages. Moreover, this association can significantly enhance the site’s link profile and attract quality, engaged traffic that is already interested in the website’s niche.
Let Digital Marketing Experts Boost Your Visibility
Boosting your online store’s performance requires optimizing its visibility. Although link building can be challenging for eCommerce websites, these are some eCommerce marketing tips to effectively ensure your links end up in reputable websites that drive traffic, improve search engine rankings and get you quality leads.
However, effective link building is only one of many strategies to optimize your eCommerce website’s visibility. When you work with a full-service digital marketing agency like Thrive, you can have tried-and-tested strategies working in sync to get you the leads and sales needed for a successful venture. From SEO for online shops to other strategies tailored to your business, Thrive’s experienced team delivers the dedication and eCommerce SEO best practices you need for a successful digital marketing strategy.
Work with a digital marketing team you can trust. Get in touch with Thrive today to get a free proposal.
