How to build links for eCommerce websites

Link building for eCommerce is often seen as one of the most challenging aspects of SEO.

Earning relevant and authoritative links to your homepage, product pages, and other key landing pages will give you a competitive edge when looking to capture the market and accelerate sales.

In this eCommerce link building guide, we’ll run through 9 of the most effective link building strategies that you can start implementing as part of your overall marketing activity:

• Creating quality content that captures search intent
• 10x your content production
• Publishing guest posts
• Include FAQs on your website
• Create PDF manuals
• Embrace video marketing
• Work with influencers within your niche
• Connect with journalists using HARO
• Launch a brand ambassador programme

The future of eCommerce

In a recent study, Forbes predicted that the eCommerce market is set to expand by 10.4% by the end of 2023, with retail sales online forecasted to hit $8.148 trillion by 2026.

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The importance of link building for eCommerce

Whether you’re a startup or an established market leader, if you’re looking to outrank your competitors in search, you can’t ignore the importance of link building.

With the advancements in technology, introduction of social commerce and evolving checkout experiences, consumers can make purchases from anywhere in the world at the click of a button.

So, ensuring your brand appears at the top of Google at every stage of the funnel will ensure greater brand awareness, trust and eventually sales for your eCommerce business.

You can achieve this level of organic search dominance by earning relevant and authoritative backlinks to your eCommerce website.

9 proven link building strategies for eCommerce brands

Let’s take a look at some of the most effective strategies to help position your brand in search and accelerate your eCommerce website for long-term success.

1. Creating quality content that captures search intent

In the State of Content Marketing: Global Report, it was reported that 45% of marketers and business owners are publishing more content and publishing more frequently.

Publishing evergreen content in the form of blog posts, product tutorials and guides on your eCommerce website, should be your top priority when looking to increase your link building efforts.

More time-sensitive content such as product launches, seasonal content, statistics, reports and surveys can provide audiences (and search engines) with fresh data and information and will help capture trending searches.

Evergreen content will ensure a long-term return on investment (ROI) when it comes to consistent traffic, brand mentions, brand growth, and customer engagement.

Blog posts don’t just engage your current customers, they attract new ones, encouraging higher quality links back to your website that help build your online authority. They are also a great way to direct readers to the product pages and category pages on your website through internal linking.

The key to successful link building with blog posts and resources is creating content that is better than other competing pages online.

This leads us to our next link building strategy; building a framework that will 10x your content production and form the basis of your linkable assets.

2. 10x your content production

The goal of a 10x approach is to produce content for a given topic or keyword that is 10 times better than what’s currently ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). These top results will often be produced by one of your competitors.

Creating a clear 10x framework will help streamline your content creation process and ensure you’re targeting the most lucrative search queries from your target market.

The first step in creating a 10x framework is to identify which pages on your competitor’s websites are attracting the highest quality and most relevant referring domains.

You can do this with Ahref’s ‘Best by Links‘ report.

See the below example of Zendesk’s ‘Best by link’ report:

This will provide inspiration for topics worth writing about to encourage similar links to your eCommerce website.

Another strategy to 10x your content and backlink profile is to improve on existing blogs.

If you’re already covering a topic which targets a high volume search term, but your competitors are outranking you in the SERPs, it might be worth updating your existing content:

• Provide deeper insights or opinions on the subject
• Showcase your experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T)
• Add engaging visuals (infographics, interactive tools, images and videos)
• Introduce new research and statistics to support your original points (use graphs to help your audience visualise this information)

10x-ing your content and providing better value than your competitors, will greatly increase your chances of earning links from other websites within your niche.

3. Provide guest posts to relevant publishers

Writing guest posts to be published on third-party websites is a great way to earn relevant and natural backlinks to your eCommerce website.

The easiest way to find guest blogging opportunities is by creating a list of surrounding topics related to your brand and offering, starting with your seed keyword.

For example, if you sell vintage clothing online, perhaps you could write a blog on ‘Why buying vintage is the sustainable solution for consumers’.

The piece would explore the benefits of vintage (or pre-loved) fashion on the environment and it could even compare the environmental impacts of fast fashion vs. vintage fashion.

Once you’ve written the article, you can pitch this to niche blogs and industry publications to be featured on their website.

4. Include FAQs on your website

Frequently asked questions (FAQs) pages are important to include on your eCommerce website as you’re able to capture longer-tail keywords that your customers are searching for online.

These assets not only provide a great space for new and existing customers to learn more about your products, but FAQs also create opportunities for link building.

The problem-solving nature of FAQs means people are more likely to share your content on forums, and social media, or even use them as references for their own blog posts.

To give you an idea of the power and link opportunities behind creating FAQs for your eCommerce website, we’ve included a snapshot of some of the world’s largest eCommerce brands and the number of unique websites linking to their FAQ pages:

• MAC Cosmetics has over 40 referring domains
• Groupon has over 180 referring domains
• Gymshark has over 350 referring domains
• Nike has over 600 referring domains

[This data was taken: Nov 2023]

5. Create PDF manuals

If you’re selling a product that comes with a manual, why not make the manual available for download in PDF form straight from your website?

Manuals are both interesting if you sell niche products and are a great way to achieve targeted organic traffic to your website.

Just be sure to link from your manual to those all-important category and product pages, as this will provide extra value and internal linking helps to increase the authority of these pages.

6. Embrace video marketing

To stand out from the crowd, you need to be creating engaging content that grabs audiences’ attention and raises the visibility of your eCommerce brand.

There are over two billion users on YouTube, so embracing video marketing has huge potential for improved brand visibility and encouraging high-quality links to your store.

Video marketing is a fantastic way to bring your products to life, promote the skills of your team, connect with your customers and create linkable assets for future link building.

What’s more, you can create all kinds of video content to share on your eCommerce website:

• Unboxing videos
• Livestreams
• Educational how-tos
• Product launch videos
• Vlogs
• In-depth demo videos
• Interviews with customers
• Get to know videos with the CEO or Founder

Video content lets you get creative, connects you with a wider audience and encourages social shares. All of which will help improve your brand’s visibility, reputation in the industry and encourage customer loyalty and trust.

7. Work with influencers within your niche

With the rise of social commerce and influencer marketing, eCommerce brands now have the unique ability to reach and engage with customers in a more personal and authentic way than we’ve seen before.

Influencer marketing is at an all-time high and should be considered as part of your overall marketing strategy. In fact, 40% of consumers have admitted to making a purchase after seeing it advertised by an influencer.

Therefore, offering free product samples or paying influencers to promote your products, can be a great way to secure wider coverage, gain high quality backlinks, increase engagement, and see a surge in website traffic to your online store.

It’s important to do your research when choosing an influencer to work with. Spend time understanding who your competitors are working with, analyse their engagement and learn what has worked for them, and what hasn’t.

Find an influencer who aligns with your brand’s values, target audience and company mission.

It’s easy to get excited about someone with thousands (sometimes millions) of followers, but dig a little deeper and ask yourself the following questions:

• Have they built up an audience, or do they have a community?
  An audience can be seen as a passive follower count, whereas a community is often highly engaged, shares a niche interest or hobby and is consistently interacting with each other.

• What do other people say about this influencer?
  Are they seen as an authority within their respective niche? Do they have strong signals of E-E-A-T?

• Do they love your product? Is it something they would use, even if you weren’t paying them to promote it?
  Consumers are quick to notice if a product feels forced or doesn’t align with someone’s personal brand.

A quick way to understand whether an influencer’s website is relevant to your eCommerce brand is by using softwares like Majestic, Semrush or Ahrefs.

By using these tools you can quickly discover other products they’ve reviewed in the past and what type of engagement they received.

Alternatively, a quick search in Google, such as “influencer's name" + "review” will do the trick.

8. Connect with journalists using HARO

Link building services like Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a gold mine of opportunities for eCommerce websites looking to gain new links and secure coverage for their brand online.

HARO is a free service that helps businesses connect with journalists to provide unique quotes or insights for articles they’re writing.

Often these journalists are providing content to authoritative media outlets such as MarketWatch, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, and more.

All it takes is less than one hour of your time every day and it could change the trajectory of your eCommerce website significantly.

? Read our HARO link building guide to get started.

9. Launch a brand ambassador programme

Many people confuse influencers with brand ambassadors. So, we’ll set the record straight.

• Influencers are people who talk about and promote your business in return for a financial contribution.

• Brand ambassadors, on the other hand, are unpaid loyal customers. They’re people who love your brand, customers who want to share all about it with other people – generating valuable sales through word of mouth. And social media makes this all possible.

Thanks to social media, eCommerce businesses like yours can launch valuable and successful brand ambassador programmes.

Loyal customers’ authentic reviews and testimonials don’t just make your brand look amazing, they also make your brand feel more approachable.

As such, brand ambassadors allow you to share first-hand experience and information about your quality products, helping improve your online reputation and promote link sharing.

Final thoughts

Link building for eCommerce websites, while notoriously difficult, is essential for growth.

It takes time and dedication, implementing the strategies we’ve outlined in this link building guide for eCommerce. However, we hope the advice we’ve shared will help form the basis of your strategy going forward.

You can find more information about how to implement these tips in our link building resources and guides.

Alternatively, get in touch with us at Hive19 to discuss how we can build long lasting authority to your online store.