Ecommerce Link Building: Top Strategies for 2024

We’ve recently updated this article to contain more recent and relevant information.

Since you’re reading this article, you’re likely already considering link building as a way to improve your SEO, SERP rank, and sales. Now, ecommerce link building can absolutely help you achieve these goals. That said, not all strategies are suited for ecommerce websites. Some can even derail the customer journey entirely, resulting in a revenue drop.

Luckily, our link legends are always on top of the freshest strategies – and we’re going to share our favorite (and best) ones with you. So, do you want to boost your lead generation, improve sales, and dominate the search vine? Let’s do it!

Understanding Ecommerce Link Building: The What and Why

In general, link building is a way for websites to improve their SEO and SERP rank by getting links from other reputable websites; these are known as backlinks. Those benefits are applicable to ecommerce link building as well, but, when it comes to online sales, a well-placed link can also be the difference between a missed opportunity and a conversion. It’s likely one of the most important marketing tactics for an online store, and a great way to establish your brand’s presence on the web.

There are several ecommerce link building strategies that can act as a superfood for your sales. Guest blogging, partnerships with influencers, and content marketing, are just a few – and we’ll be discussing these, and others, in more detail below.

Harvesting The Benefits: Why You Should Be Using Link Building for Your Ecommerce Site

What’s the main goal of any ecommerce site? To sell products, of course! Unfortunately, you can’t just put up a website and hope people will show up. To get sales, you need metaphorical boots in the door – or visitors to your site. Not just any visitors, either, but those who are interest and ready to buy. One of the best ways to accomplish this is through ecommerce link building.

Better yet, a healthy and diverse backlink profile will have several other benefits, including:

• Sustainable organic growth and traffic from search and external sources.
• Improved domain authority and reputability.
• Higher authoritativeness and trustworthiness signals (E-E-A-T).
• Boosted sales and conversion rates.

For example, if you sell camping gear, a backlink from a reputable backpacking blog is like a glowing endorsement. That influencer is telling their followers that, if they want to be like him or her, they should buy your products. This results in visitors who are already aware of your brand, saw a great and practical review, and are ready to walk away with what you’re selling.

That is the power of backlinks for ecommerce sites. Whether it’s from an influencer, a blog, social media, resellers, or directory, a backlink is the perfect way to get a ready-made buyer at your door.

Challenges Unique to Ecommerce Link Building

Ecommerce link building has unique needs, so it follows that it would have unique challenges as well. One of the biggest ones you’ll face is competition. Massive ecommerce sites like Amazon have been building links through affiliates and marketing campaigns for decades. Like thousands of other online stores, you’re going to be competing for those same high-quality backlinks.

On top of that, ecommerce sites are filled with product pages, but rarely contain much else. This means you’re dealing with the problem of thin content, which area lot less attractive for backlinks compared to comprehensive, high-value content. That’s another think you’ll need to keep in mind when creating your ecommerce link building strategy.

Another challenge is keeping your backlinks relevant and from trustworthy sources. A random backlink from a rotten apple with a poor domain rating can result in search engine penalties. In other words, not only do you need to earn these links, you also have to monitor them continuously, a time-consuming and resource-intensive exercise.

On top of that, you need to worry about link decay, where acquired backlinks become inactive or removed over time. Not only can other sites go offline or remove links to your store, but if you discontinue or remove a product, any links to it will also break.

In short, you’ll be dealing with:

• A highly competitive market.
• Thin content from products or category pages that rarely attract links.
• Backlink relevance.
• Poor backlinks from unknown sources.
• Monitoring and replacing lost links.

At this point, you may be wondering if ecommerce link building is even worth the effort. Are there any link building tactics for ecommerce worth the time? Absolutely. The trick is to have a dedicated, experienced team, whether in-house or outsourced, that knows how to overcome the challenges on your behalf.

Fresh Strategies for 2024: Ecommerce Link Building

Now that we’ve got all of that out of the way, let’s get to the reason you came here – ecommerce link building tactics that work! In the sections below, we’re going to cover each one in more detail, and sharing a few key tips on how to make them work for you.

Harnessing the Power of Content Marketing

First, we’ll start with old faithful – content marketing! Content is the foundation of everything; without it, you have little to attract links, and even less for Google to look at. You might argue that your products are the real show stealers, as they should be, but having the best shop on the internet won’t do you much good if no one can find you. Remember, product descriptions are also considered content and will likely serve as the backbone of your ecommerce link building campaign.

Let’s take a closer look at how you can use content to get those yummy links.

Creating Shareable Content

The best way to get relevant backlinks organically is through shareable content. The core idea here is to create amazing content that many other sites, blog owners, and creators will want to link back to. While there are various types of content that can end up shareable, and maybe even viral, they do tend to have a few traits in common:

• The information is useful, such as a step-by-step tutorial post on how to use your product.
• It’s funny or entertaining, like the viral Poo-pourri videos.
• It tells a story, much like the Old Spice ‘Man your man could smell like’ ads.
• The content is original, approaching a topic in a way no one else has.
• It has a visual component, such as videos and images.

For an ecommerce website specifically, you should lean into videos and written content. Videos are perfect for explainers, tutorials, and storytelling – and fantastic for working with influencers. As for written content, aim for:

• Amazing product descriptions and pages.
• Helpful resources like interesting articles and how-to guides.
• Customer stories.
• Relevant insights and informative content regarding your niche.

If you consistently create shareable content, you’ll soon start noticing backlinks turning up. Now, to be fair, you can’t control whether these backlinks come from high authority sites or not. Even so, a healthy backlink profile usually includes links from sites with varying domain ratings, so it will still work in your favor. Additionally, if a few toxic links do manage to sneak in there, you can always disavow them through Google Search Console.

Leveraging User-Generated Content

When it comes to ecommerce link building strategies, user-generated content is one of the best. Yes, there are some risks involved; if you’re not paying a reviewer or buyer, you can’t dictate what they say about your product, and not everyone will have something good to say. However, if your product is reliable and your service is good, you should be fine.

Now, when we talk about user-generated content, you’re likely thinking about testimonials and product reviews – and you’d be right! These are extremely useful forms of user-generated content, and you should definitely put any relevant reviews onto your ecommerce websites. But there’s a lot more to user-generated content that just reviews:

• On social media: Encourage buyers to share photos and videos of their products on social media, linking back to your store. Even if they only tag your social profile, that’s a win! (We’ll dive a bit deeper into social media links later on in the article.)
• Blog submissions: Why create all your posts yourself? Give customers the ability to submit guest posts that cover their unique experiences. You can accept personal stories, how-to guides, and even tip articles.
• Contests: Encourage buyers to submit photos or videos of themselves using your product. Not only will this give you content to use for marketing and link building, but winners often share competition information with others via their blogs or social media – which means more backlinks for you.

Another way is through influencer collaboration, but we’re going to be covering that in more detail down below. In short, you don’t need to be the only one creating link worthy content for your ecommerce website; you’ve got a whole audience who can get in on the action!

Blogging and Guest Posting

Guest posts are another great ecommerce link building tactic. It’s also a great way to get noticed by other bloggers and influencers in your niche who may be interested in featuring you on their blogs, videos, or social profiles. While it does involve a bit of work, it’s a great way to build natural links that will look great on your link profile.

One of the biggest benefits is that you retain a lot of control. You pick which of the other websites you want to work with and usually you get to pick the topic as well. You’ll also choose which product pages’ links to include. Another benefit is that it’s one of the best ecommerce link building tactics to use if you want to strengthen your brand reputation. Google will love it if you gett mentions from reputable sites in your niche.

It’s also worth mentioning that if you have any products or services that can be sold online, it’s always good practice to include them in any guest posts you write and publish. This will help increase the chances of people finding out about your products or services when they visit your ecommerce site.

Building Relationships with Influencers and Bloggers

Content may be the foundation of your ecommerce link building strategy, but if external sources don’t want to link to your ecommerce site, your content will do little more than pull organic traffic. Hopefully. Partnerships, particularly when it comes to earning relevant links and brand mentions, are vitally important. These partners can include:

• A website owner with a site relevant to your target audience.
• An influencer with a dedicated following that matches your target audience.
• A directory that’s relevant to your niche or products.
• A blogger that consistently uses and talks about products in your niche.

Keep in mind that a partnership doesn’t appear out of thin air. To build a successful one, you’ll have to put in the time and effort, or straight up pay for a sponsored post. So, before you start pursuing every site owner and influencer that might be relevant to your niche, let’s take a closer look at how and where to focus your efforts for the best results,.

Finding the Right Influencers

According to trendHero, there are currently over 64 million influencers on Instagram alone – that’s about the total population of France! If only 0.1% of those influencers fall within your niche, and only 0.1% of those are relevant to your target audience geographically, that’s still 64 possible influencers you can work with. The trick, of course, is finding them.

We’ve broken down the steps to find the best matches for your store:

• Find Influencers: Use platforms like Instagram and TikTok to find influencers in your niche.
• Evaluate Potential: Determine their potential reach, engagement, and content relevance with tools like BuzzSumo, Influencity, or Upfluence.
• Get Real Numbers: Look for genuine engagement rates (likes, comments, shares) rather than just a high follower count. Statistically, macro- and micro-influencers (5,000 to 100,000 followers) tend to be the most valuable to marketers, with extremely high engagement rates.
• Evaluate the Influencer: Check their posting frequency, interactions with followers, and quality of content. Are they a good match, personally and ethically, for your brand?
• Outreach: Once you have your final list of candidates, craft a personalized message that introduces your brand, explains why you want to work with them, what you’re offering, and what you want in return.
• Follow Up: If you don’t hear back within a week, you can try to follow up, either through a direct message on socials or via email. However, if they’re not interested, move on.

To top it off, influencers tend to love working with ecommerce businesses, particularly if there’s a little something in it for them, as well. Eventually, you’ll have a good base of influencers working with you. If you want to turn those budding relationships into long term partnerships, remember that it’s always give and take. Engage with their content, share their posts, and don’t be afraid to show your appreciation in public.

Finally, keep track of the ROI generated by each influencer. This will give you a good idea of which links are generating sales, and which ones fall short.

Master of the Vine: Brand Ambassadors

The most valuable type of partnership for ecommerce link building is the Brand Ambassador. As far as link building strategies go, few will serve you as well as this, and it’s an unmatched source for brand mentions and ecommerce backlinks.

You can turn an influencer, blogger, or even a customer into a brand ambassador; the only requirement is that they actually love your products and will shout that love to the world anywhere and everywhere. Think deadheads, but without the near-stalking behavior.

That said, the best brand ambassadors are the ones you don’t even need to cultivate. Loyal, passionate customers will become your brand ambassador almost automatically; it’s their sincere belief in the value and quality of your products and online store that will drive brand awareness and boost sales. That doesn’t mean you don’t need to put in at least a little bit of work.

Many of the best ecommerce stores will offer brand ambassadors certain perks, like the occasional freebie, discounts or coupons, or even unique referral links so that they can earn a share of the profits. It’s undeniably one of the most effective link building strategies.

Sponsored Posts

Not every influencer or site owner is going to become a valued partner. Instead, you can work with site owners, blogs, and even influencers to do a sponsored post or campaign with you. For example, Anti-acid brand, TUMS, sponsored a season of the YouTube show, Hot Ones, where participants are interviewed while eating increasingly spicier chicken wings. It was a temporary partnership, but an effective one.

There are many ways to get your products reviewed by influencers, who would then include links to your product pages. Some of these methods include paying for a review video or paying influencers to post about your product. Keep in mind that these do come with a price tag. If you’re looking to work with a micro-influencer you can expect to pay:

• $100 to $500 for an Instagram post
• $25 to $125 for a TikTok video
• $20 to $100 for an X (Twitter) post

Macro-influencers charge slightly more per sponsored post:

• $500 to $5,000 for an Instagram video
• $125 to $1,250 for a TikTok video
• $100 to $1,000 for an X (Twitter) post

Now, ideally these types of posts should generate sales. However, if you get a great backlink that will benefit your link profile in the long run, it might just still count as a win.

Spread the Word: Utilizing PR and Media Outreach

While ecommerce link building is important, many site owners don’t realize that there are some (relatively) easy ways to get quality, relevant inbound links. One of the ways to do this is outreach and public relations. Unfortunately, many ecommerce brands are not aware of the importance of outreach, or they don’t understand how to do it correctly.

The biggest hurdle we’ve noticed amongst ecommerce store owners is that they’re not sure what is important enough to be featured in a PR release or media outreach post. The answer? Well… just about everything!

Are you releasing a new amazing product? Send out a press release to relevant sites and partners. Withdrawing a seasonal product? Let everyone know, and tell them which other product they can look at instead. Participating in an event? Sponsoring something? Onboarding a new well-known influencer? Opening a store? Reached a milestone event?

Yes to all!

Not only will this bring in more high-quality links (and traffic), but many websites like to pick up trending topics and posting the news themselves. Those are free links for your ecommerce store. You’ll also gain a lot more visibility for your brand, and build a solid reputation.

Crafting Press Releases

Just sending an email to an outlet and letting them know you have some news to share unfortunately won’t cut it. There are a few important things you should keep in mind when crafting your press release.

• The headline: Keep it clear and concise, but make it interesting to grab attention.
• The lead paragraph: This is where you put the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of your release. This is your hook; if it doesn’t pull the reader in immediately, they won’t read any more.
• The juice: What’s the news? Why is it significant or unique? Why is it relevant to the site owner and their audience? Spill the juice (without making a mess)!
• The body: This is where you share detailed information to support the previous content. Put the most important info first, and go from there. You can even include quotes from key figures, like industry experts!
• Supporting data: If there are supporting facts or statistics to back up your information, make sure to include them.
• Make it pretty: Images, videos, and other interesting types of media can make your release both more appealing and engaging.
• Contact information: Include clear and accurate contact details for media inquiries, such as a designated PR representative’s name, phone number, and email address. Don’t forget the relevant links pointing to your product pages or posts!
• Boilerplate: Tell them a little bit about your store, brand, and company.
• Call to action: Suggest the next steps or actions for the readers, such as visiting a website, attending an event, or contacting for more details.

Finally, remember to use a clear and professional format. Use bullet points and short paragraphs, and check if the outlet has any style requirements. Once you have your perfectly crafter release, it’s time to send it out!

Climb the Social Vine: Social Media Platforms

Ask a link builder whether social media backlinks are worth it, and you could get an enthusiastic yes or a firm no. Frankly, as with any link building strategy, there are definitely pros and cons either way. See, most social media links are ‘no-follow’; they don’t pass any link equity, or link juice, to your site. In that sense, they’re not really the best for traditional link building purposes.

Does that mean you shouldn’t be using social media? Heck no!

If you don’t share your content and products on socials, you’re probably missing out on new audiences, potential customers, and improved rankings. They might not have the same juicy benefits as, say, a backlink from a massive blog, but they’re not useless either.

See, not too long ago, Google’s search algorithm had a pretty big leak, and the resulting 2,500 pages of juicy secrets revealed something interesting. Not only is traffic a ranking factor, but user engagement metrics might also be one. And if you guessed that social media posts are good for both of those, you’d be right on the money.

Other benefits include:

• Increasing brand awareness through online interactions.
• The opportunity to engage with your audience, humanizing your brand.
• Improving your brand reputation while driving traffic and boosting rankings.
• Gaining additional links through shares.

The tricky part, really, is creating awesome content that your viewers and followers will want to share. That means creating fantastic videos that are funny, informative, or interesting, holding contests or giveaways, or encouraging users to interact with your posts in some meaningful way.

Implementing Broken Link Building (or, How to Snag Competitor Links)

Why do all the work if someone else already has? After all, according to SureOak, 42% of websites have broken internal links – although, odds are that there are quite a few more out there. What better way to get backlinks than to replace existing ones that no longer work?

Okay, to be fair, broken link building, particularly for ecommerce link building, is still going to take some work. In short, broken link building means finding links on other sites that are no longer working, and asking to replace them with a relevant one from your own site.

For example, let’s say you’re selling cooking products. You find a baking blog post that ranks well in search, but one of the links to a recommended product on another site no longer works. Perhaps the other site discontinued the product, moved the page, or even closed. That’s your opportunity to reach out to the blogger and offer up a link of your own to a similar product.

Now, as we mentioned before, there is some work involved in broken link building. You have to:

1. Use a tool to find broken external links on relevant sites;
2. Filter the links to find ones relevant to your products or content; and
3. Contact the site and find out if they’re willing to replace the link with yours.

Though it does take a bit of work, you’ll often get far more consistent traffic from these quality links. Not to mention that it’s a great way to build relationships with relevant websites for future link building opportunities!

Finding Broken Links

There are several tools that can help you find broken links. Two of the most popular tools are Semrush and Ahrefs. The latter even has a free version of their link checker, so it’s definitely a good one to start with if you have a limited budget.

But these tools can do more than just help you find broken links. Semrush, for example, allows you to evaluate your competitors’ backlink profile and find where their links come from.

You can also identify backlink gaps, find lost links (for lost link building), and, most importantly, keep an eye on your own link profile. It doesn’t matter how awesome your link building strategies are, a few toxic apples always find a way to sneak into your pocket. Luckily, with broken link building, you can filter out those poor performers and build links that’ll stand the test of time.

Outreach and Link Replacement

Once you’ve identified the high quality sites you want to target, it’s time to reach out. Before you dive in, however, there are a few key practices you should keep in mind. First, make sure that you’re contacting the right person. Some sites will have the relevant contact information readily available. For others, you might need to do a little digging on social media platforms like LinkedIn.

Next, you’ll want to let them know that you’ve found a broken link in one of their existing blog posts or pages. It’s at this point that things can go really well for you, or drop of completely. See, once the site owner or blogger is aware of the broken link, they might choose to ignore it, or just delete it. It now falls to you to tell them why they need to link to your ecommerce website.

You can:

• Explain why your ecommerce brand, store, or products fits their brand and audience.
• Provide reviews from happy clients.
• Include your domain authority and traffic information.
• Offer to replace their content or provide a guest post instead.

There are a few other effective link building tactics you can use to convince the website owners to link to your site. They might even be willing to build a long term relationship if your products are particularly relevant to their audience. That said, if the say no, don’t be a pest. You can try to reach out once more to sweeten the deal, but if they make their disinterest clear, leave it at that.

Better to have no mention at all than to make an enemy of someone who has a trusted opinion and can turn potential buyers away from your ecommerce store.

Is There a ‘Best Ecommerce Link Building Strategy’?

Honestly? No, there isn’t. At least, there’s no way for you to choose the best one without actually trying them out first. Through your link building efforts, you’ll eventually realize which strategies are paying off, and which ones just don’t offer a viable return on investment. Not every tactic will work for you.

So How Do You Build a Winning Strategy?

In short, by trying a lot of things and evaluating the results. The steps themselves are simple, and are the same for everyone:

• Know your product and what makes it amazing.
• Evaluate your current backlink profile for gaps, opportunities, lost, and broken links.
• Update your content and write amazing product descriptions.
• Have valuable resources and link-worthy content on your site.
• Find sites, blogs, and influencers that reach your target audience.
• Find the best sources and partners for links.
• Reach out and implement your strategies.
• Track, measure, rinse, repeat.

It really is that simple. The trick is to identify which of the various tactics is most effective for your ecommerce site. Find where the money is, refine your strategy and budget, and you’ll be off to the races.

When Things Get Tough, The Tough Outsource

Link building is a fantastic tool for an ecommerce store, particularly to increase your traffic and sales. Unfortunately, as you might have figured if you’ve read this far, it can be time consuming to build links, and your link profile needs continual maintenance. What do you do if you don’t have the internal resources to manage everything? Why, outsource to an awesome agency, of course!

Buzznberry is familiar with many different ecommerce link building strategies, and we know just how to keep your link profile natural and thriving. Not only do we build quality links, we maintain your profile, evaluate competitor links, hunt down brand mentions, improve your SERPs in Google search, and get rid of those nasty spammy links on your behalf.

Interested in finding out more? Check in with our amazing team and we’ll get you started.

Conclusion

Link building is more than just an SEO strategy, particularly if you have an ecommerce website. Instead, it’s how you lure in new customers, drive conversions, get endorsements, build your brand reputation, and generate revenue. To get started, all you need to do is start implementing some of the strategies we’ve mentioned.

Still a little wary? Not to worry! Link building can be scary, even more so if you’re not really sure how it works. Luckily, experts (like our wonderful berry tribe) can help you out. Whether you need content creation or help building quality links, we’ve got just what you need. Reach out to our team today!