If SEO is parts of your Ecommerce Stores marketing strategy, then you will have no doubt seen backlinks mentioned in numerous guides that you have probably read.
But how do you get backlinks to your ecommerce store? Because most backlinking guides are very generic and are often targeted towards blogs than ecommerce stores.
Well that is what we are going to be looking at in this guide as I have a rather unique perspective of someone who is an SEO nerd and also has a pretty good knowledge of the world of ecommerce. So lets get started!
- Why Are Backlinks Important for Ecommerce Stores?
- 1. Connect With Influential Bloggers
- 2. Reach Out to Industry Publications
- 3. Become a Contributor
- 4. Create an Incredible Blog
- 5. Create a Tool
- 6. Broken Link Building
- 7. Guest Blogging
- 8. Testimonials
- 9. Claim Unlinked Brand Mentions
- 10. Supplier Listings
- 11. Directories
- Conclusion
Why Are Backlinks Important for Ecommerce Stores?
First off, it is important to understand why backlinks are so important for Ecommerce stores SEO.
The main one is that it builds trust in the eyes of search engines when high quality, authoritative link back to your store and this increases the chances of your stores pages appearing higher in search results (as long as you have SEO’d those pages properly!).
So backlinks are very important but you want to be selective in the links that you build to your site as not all backlinks are the same and some can actually hurt your sites SEO, so what do you want from your backlinks?
*DA/DR stands for Domain Authority (Moz) and Domain Rating (Ahrefs), these are unofficial ratings that show how authoritative a site is based on things like backlink profile
That is why it is best practice to be selective when choosing sites you try and get backlinks from and aim for sites that fit the criteria above as it will be beneficial to your ecommerce stores SEO.
1. Connect With Influential Bloggers
A great way to get backlinks is to build relationships with influential bloggers in your niche as they:
- Are likely to have high domain authority (especially established ones)
- Will have a targeted audience for your products
- Can be quite receptive to new businesses, especially if their products are very good
You may have noticed a key wording above, which is build relationships and this is hugely important (as the owner of a blog, I know this first hand!).
The worst things you can do is do a full on sales pitch of your product or say that you would like to be added to post in your outreach email as this will probably get instantly deleted.
Instead you want to be looking towards a collaboration and remember, you are speaking to a person, not a business, so find out who you need to contact, address them personally and adding some personality to your email can also help break the ice.
When doing your blogger outreach, ask what you can offer their audience as there are more than one way to get a link from an influencers blog as you could:
By working with these bloggers, you can build some very good relationships that can be very beneficial to both parties in the long run and in some cases lead to much more than a single link.
Erik Emanuelli has created a great guide on Blogger Outreach to help you get started.
2. Reach Out to Industry Publications
Many trade publications have now moved online (in some cases completely online) and now publish their articles on their website rather than in print and this does provide potential backlink opportunities.
But to get featured in a trade publications post, you are going to need to do something newsworthy and just starting a new business isn’t of much interest unless:
- You are a b2c business that is doing something completely different or disruptive to the industry that could attract some attention
- You are a b2b business that is offering the industry something that will be of big benefit to them
So if you fall into either of these categories, it can be a worthwhile endeavour to reach out to these trade publications, explain who you are, a brief overview what you are doing and if it piques their interest you may get a response and you can take it from there.
It can be helpful to try and contact the editor or head writer directly, rather than just the generic contact email and once again, try a build a relationship with that person and they may be interested in following up with you at a later date.
3. Become a Contributor
Do you ever see posts where they get input from industry experts and wonder how that person or people got asked to be part of it?
Well, you might be surprised to hear that in most cases, the journalist or writer hasn’t spend hours trying to find people to contact, instead they got people to contact them and you can do it as well.
Now there are a couple of options to become a contributor for one of these posts:
- HARO, this stands for Help A Reporter Out, which is an online platform where reporters and content creators ask questions, which are then emailed out to potential contributors every day, who will send a response if they can to that question
- Twitter, this one might surprise you but a similar thing happens on twitter with journalists or writers asking questions and using hashtags such as #journorequest and #journorequests and if you can provide a response, you drop them a DM
Some niches are more active than others when it comes to contribution options and you need to understand that not every response you give is going to get published (some can have hundreds or thousands of replies) and that the link will more than likely be to your homepage.
But it can be a great way to build backlinks and also get your name out there within your niche, which can in some cases lead to more opportunities such as being interviewed.
4. Create an Incredible Blog
I can pretty much see you rolling your eyes at this one but having a high quality blog on your site can be a great way to build links and be very useful resource to have in your arsenal for the next two link building methods.
But having a blog consisting of high quality content can make link building a lot easier and is one of the few ways that you can gain organic links (ones that you don’t have to go out and get), it also helps you to grow your authority in your niche by demonstrating your expertise.
There are many different types of blog post that you can produce but one that are more likely to attract links are:
- Listicles – where you create a list and this can be for anything from best product for X to 10 ways to do Y
- How to – people like to learn how to do things and detailed how to tutorials are great for links
- Detailed Guides – think of a how to on steroids! basically, you take a subject and cover it in great detail, some people (like me!) will often use words like ultimate, definitive or the complete when naming it
When it comes to creating your blog posts, there are some key ingredients 1) Do the keyword research to know what to create posts about 2) Make sure they cover the topic in detail but are also easy to read.
Once you have created your posts, sharing them with your audience can be a great way to get them out there so that it increases the chances of people reading them as the more people read them, the higher the chance of getting links!
5. Create a Tool
A popular way to generate organic backlinks is to add a tool of some kind to your site, but what do I mean by tool?
Something that helps your audience such as:
Basically something that your customers can use to help with or enhance their buying experience, I’ve done this with EcommerceGold by adding a profit calculator and a website cost calculator.
These can in many cases be very easy to set up on your site but if they are good and people like using them, they can earn you a lot of backlinks.
Now the type of tool that you will want to add is very niche dependent but when you have been a customer in your niche, what would have been really helpful to have had available to you?
It may even be something that you think is super simple or basic but for other people it could be a really helpful tool that they use and are happy to add a link too.
6. Broken Link Building
Established sites can often have thousands of outgoing links on their site and due to the constant evolution of content, it may be that some of these links are broken, meaning that they go to pages that aren’t active.
There can be many reasons for this, such as a page being deleted or renamed and the website owner not redirecting it properly or a website may close and this presents a very good opportunity for link building.
This is because website owners don’t want broken links on their site and this is where you can help them out and also potentially get links to a variety of different pages on your site.
And one of the advantages that ecommerce websites have is that they have different kinds of content they can link to, including:
But how do you find these broken links? Well you are going to need specialist SEO software such as Ahrefs, which you can use to crawl complete sites or even specific pages or posts to see if there are any broken links on that page.
Once you have found some broken links and know that you have a page or post on your site that would be a great replacement, you can reach out to that website.
And while you are doing this to get a link and the website owner knows you are doing this to get a link, you don’t want to be overly obvious.
You want the main purpose of your outreach email to be that you are informing them that you have found some broken links on one of their pages (pointing out all the broken links can be helpful to the website owner) and make a suggestion that if they decide to update the post that you have a page/post that could be a good replacement.
This strategy won’t always work and you may get completely ignored (it happens to all of us!) but if you can get some links from high authority sites, then it is definitely worth doing.
7. Guest Blogging
Would you like to write a blog post for someone else’s website?
Most peoples answer is probably no as they would prefer to do it for their own site but guest posting can be a great way to build backlinks.
There is a pre-requisite to this and that is that you need to be able to create good quality content or be able to outsource it to writers who can do it for you.
Guest blogging is often one of the most labor intensive methods of links building but it can also be one of the most lucrative in terms of the quality of links that you get, even though the process on paper looks quite simple..
- Find a website in your niche that accepts guest posts
- Send an enquiry about guest posting with some ideas for posts
- Once agreed, write the post according to their editorial guidelines
- Submit the post
- Post is published and you should get a nice backlink to one of your sites pages
In reality, it can be quite challenging and also time consuming!
So how do you find guest posting opportunities?
The easiest way to start is by using Google and searching things like:
- niche “guest post”
- niche “write for us”
- niche “editor guidelines”
There are many more variations of this but this should present you with a list of websites in your niche that accept guest posts, an example that I have used is ecommerce “write for us”.
When coming up with a list of prospective sites to contact, always check the DA or DR of the site first as you don’t really want to waste time trying to work with sites whom getting a backlink from won’t really benefit you all that much.
There is also a general rule of thumb for guest blogging and that is the harder it is to get a post published on the site, the higher the quality the link.
Just make sure that you read through all of the editorial guidelines and if you have any questions or there are things you are uncertain of, then ask before you start writing, so that you know exactly what you need to do.
8. Testimonials
Is there a supplier that you use for your business that you absolutely love?
If so, then you may be able to leave them a testimonial, which they will publish on their site.
This is a good and relatively easy to do link building strategy and in many cases it is a win-win for all parties involved as they get a glowing testimonial, which helps them get more business and you get a lovely backlink.
It can also help you build relationships with these suppliers, which can have mutual benefits in the future.
When you are reaching out to them to ask if they accept testimonials, don’t ask about links as this will probably put them off, instead let them know that you are really happy with the product or service that you use and would like to leave them a testimonial.
This is something that I have done with EcommerceGold as there are plugins and services that I use to make the blog as good as it can be and by reaching out and providing testimonials, I’ve got some backlinks.
But as with the contributor backlinks, these are most likely going to be links to the homepage of your site.
9. Claim Unlinked Brand Mentions
This can be one of the easiest ways to get backlinks!
And there are many reasons why you or your business may have been mentioned somewhere, such as:
- Been interviewed for something
- Asked to give feedback
- Been a named attendant, participant or speaker at an event
Obviously there are many other reasons why you may have been mentioned (hopefully in a good way!) and if you can find these mentions online, you can reach out to the website owner or editor and politely as if they could add a link to your site, in most cases, they are usually happy to do it.
10. Supplier Listings
If you have been on a trade only suppliers websites, you have probably seen the stockists section with links to all the stockists websites.
These are backlinks and you could get one for your site if any of your suppliers sites include this section.
Now, your suppliers may have requirements for being listed in this section such as order volume etc but it is worth enquiring as to whether your site could be listed as a stockist or not as it can benefit them as the more sales you get, the more sales they are likely to get!
As with the last two options, these links are likely going to be to the homepage of your site, unless you have a specific category or brand listing for this supplier, then you could ask for them to link directly to that page.
11. Directories
I know that directory listings are often seen as low quality and sometimes spammy but hear me out on this one!
Not all directories are the same as there are industry specific directories that are created by trade organisations or professional bodies that often require membership but links from their directories are often higher quality but once again, the link will most probably be to your homepage.
Conclusion
Building backlinks is one of the fundamentals of ecommerce SEO and is crucial if you want your site to rank higher in search results.
To get your first few backlinks is probably going to be challenging as it can be difficult getting backlinks to a site that has a low DR, this is because established sites don’t always like linking to them (it can be a bit of a catch 22 situation!).
It is for this reason that it can be better when you are just starting out to try getting links from sites with a DR of 50 – 60, rather than going straight for DR 80’s and 90’s as you are more likely to get links from these sites.
Then once your DR starts to increase and you are also improving your outreach process, you can begin going after links from higher DR sites.
Want to learn more about ecommerce SEO? Then check out our other posts:
Hi, I'm Paul, the Owner and Founder of EcommerceGold.
I ran my own Ecommerce Business for over 7 years and now help others start their own online retail empires!