Today I’m going to show you some simple yet effective link building strategies to boost your e-commerce site’s Google rankings and increase your traffic.
Link building has proven to be an important ranking factor that directly affects a website’s revenue.
The whole thinking behind it is quite straightforward: the more links pointing to your resource you have, the more popular and successful you become.
Of course, not all links will provide you with the same amount of traffic flow.
Links from high-authority websites like news outlets will be more beneficial than links from websites with lower authority, but maintaining a good amount of backlinks from both types of webpages is always a good idea.
As long as you keep quality in mind, it’ll help your business.
So, where should you start? Let’s talk about some of the more obvious link building strategies for eCommerce.
1. Blog Outreach
This one is extremely simple. First you need to find websites that are oriented around content relevant to your niche.
Then, you send the owner an email saying that you would like to cooperate.
As long as there’s some benefit for the other person, they will most likely agree to link to your site.
Just don’t be generic. Write a personal letter that doesn’t feel like a template message and be straightforward with it.
2. Your Own Side Projects
Let’s say, you run an online store selling snowboarding and skiing equipment.
It would be logical to run a separate blog about the best of your experiences, stories as well as tips on mountain sports.
If you manage to interest people in your content and that blog is a self-sufficient site, linking back to your store would be quite beneficial.
But remember: that side blog should feel like a separate resource that can stand on its own well and not like just a way to promote your business.
3. Unlinked Mentions
This one is probably the easiest strategy of all, since if someone has already mentioned you, that backlink is halfway in your pocket.
Use web monitoring tools like Ahrefs to find your unlinked mentions, then approach those sites with emails asking to add links to those mentions and they will be more than likely eager to provide you with them.
4. Broken Link Building
You can always take advantage of someone else’s broken link.
For example, if a website has a link to another resource that no longer exists, you may approach them pointing at the dead link and offering to replace it with a backlink to your page with relevant content.
Let’s return to mountain sports.
Imagine a situation: someone else is running a blog about snowboarding but has a dead link to a snowboarding store that has either moved domains or simply no longer exists.
Approach them asking to replace the dead link with a link back to your own store and you will most likely get a positive reply.
5. Sponsorships
You’re probably very familiar with the concept of sponsoring posts or reviews.
You have a product, you approach a blogger or influencer to promote it, send them a sample or straight up pay them and you have yourself a backlink.
But remember, in order to follow Google’s guidelines the content about your product should be clearly marked as sponsored.
Following these guidelines is up to you and your risk tolerance.
6. Reclaiming Lost Links
Losing links is a natural process. It happens all the time.
The two most common reasons for it is that either the page with the link has been deleted or the content on it has been rewritten.
While there isn’t really anything you can do about a page that has been completely deleted, there’s definitely a wiggle room if we’re talking about rewritten content.
Take a look at it and see if there’s an appropriate place for a link back to your resource.
If there is, be sure to contact the site’s owner and ask them to include your backlink on the new version of their page.
Since they have already linked to you, they will most likely accept your offer.
7. Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is one of the oldest tricks ever invented and it is as simple as writing a good piece of content for another website.
No sane person would reject a basically free piece of good, relevant content.
As the popular link building blog OutreachMama notes, writing relevant content on relevant sites consistently over time is one of the best ways to boost your domain authority and thematic relevance for higher Google rankings.
Writing for someone else may be a bit time-consuming, but getting a backlink from a high-authority website will be more than worth the time spent.
8. Commenting and Answering Questions
Being active in the comment sections of blogs, Reddit, and answering questions on sites like Quora can be highly beneficial for your business.
Just keep in mind that any links posted there will probably have the “nofollow” attribute.
And if you’re answering questions like “How do I pick a snowboard?” (back to the whole mountain sports thing), just be genuine and human and try to avoid seeming like you’re only doing this to promote your ski store.
Which, of course, is exactly what you’re doing but if people see that you’re a real person with a passion for going fast on a piece of wood down a mountain, you will definitely receive a traffic boost.
9. Buying Links
Money is all-powerful and if you have enough, you can buy anything and backlinks is no exception.
Buying backlinks has a bad stigma since Google is openly against bought backlinks, but despite this it is quite a common practice.
There is nuance here though.
For example, a PR company is also measured on their ability to generate backlinks for their clients, yet they are not considered black hat.
If you’re considering buying links, invest that money into building an engine centered around great content and outreach, instead of simply buying links.
In Conclusion
So, there are some of the tips on link building for eCommerce.
I hope that this article has proven useful to you and you have picked up a few tricks to use!
