eCommerce link building is one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your store and clinch more sales.
It’s one of the most important SEO tactics you can employ - and it doesn’t even need to be that difficult.
In fact, there are 7 key eCommerce link building strategies that can turbocharge your website by boosting traffic and credibility. They’re fairly easy to implement and, provided you monitor your metrics and keep making the right tweaks, they can work wonders for your store.
In this guide, we’ll be going over each of the top 7 link building strategies, explaining what you need to do and why each strategy works.
1. Listicle Link Building
Ever seen a blog that promotes various eCommerce stores or products?
Chances are, that blog is a listicle, which is an article that - you guessed it - presents information in a list format.
The thing is, a listicle is much more than that. And when it comes to link building, it’s important to see a listicle as a list of potential products that your customer is looking for.
For example, let’s say you sell sunglasses. Problem is you’re not the only company that sells sunglasses.
While for you this represents a particular problem, for your customer it represents a different kind of problem.
In other words, they’re not sure which sunglasses to buy - yours or someone else’s.
So, during the consideration stage, they come across a listicle article that lists your sunglasses alongside your competitors.
… and wouldn’t it be awesome if they listed your sunglasses as the best sunglasses?
As you can see, a listicle puts you in the line of vision of a potential customer. You’re not alone on the list - but you are in a good position so that a customer can come along and click your link to “see more.”
Now, listicle link building isn’t the easiest way to build links. But it’s first of all important to find:
- As many listicles as you can
- As many listicles that are already ranking well
You can use tools to help you find relevant listicles, such as chatGPT Listicle Seach Assistant, which automates the discovery process.
Once you’ve found relevant listicles that are ranking well, it’s time to grab the attention of the webmaster via an outreach campaign.
Essentially, you want to contact them and explain why they should list your product or store on their website. What have you got to offer their audience - and what have you got to offer them?
In other words, what value and benefits does your store and product have?
Also, it’s a good idea to fill in the information for them so that they describe your product or store perfectly on their website. The last thing you want is to be featured in a great listicle without your offering being properly represented.
Here’s a step-by-step video tutorial using ChatGPT, Linkomatic and Respona to do a listicle outreach campaign.
2. A-B-C Link Swaps
Is link building as easy as A, B, C?
It can be if you perform A-B-C link swaps.
For many, the A-B-C link swap strategy is the gold standard used by lots of link building agencies who are hungry for quality links.
A-B-C link swapping is a bit like direct link swapping - but better.
With direct link swapping, you’d approach someone who’s running a high authority website in your eCommerce zone of interest and promise to link to them if they link to you.
Everyone’s a winner.
The issue is that Google doesn’t really like this sort of thing because, over time, the quality of the links may account for diddly squat, which means that Google users aren’t getting much value.
With A-B-C link swaps, you’re bringing in a third party (or third website) which acts as the middleman of-sorts. Instead of directly linking to a website that links to you, one site links to another site, which links to a third site.
To get this strategy work, you need to have access to numerous high domain websites.
Alternatively, you could combine your A-B-C link swapping strategy with guest posting. This is where you’d write a number of guest posts each month and provide links to your websites, as well as numerous partners. Reference the LinkedIn post below or the private influencer networks guide for a step-by-step implementation strategy.
This is much better than securing just a few links each month when not using the A-B-C link swap strategy.
Link building agencies, of course, would leverage a network and manage multiple links between multiple websites.
Does all this sound like something Google would frown upon?
Ordinarily - perhaps.
But so far, Google hasn’t claimed down on A-B-C link swapping and doesn’t seem determined to start clamping down on it anytime soon.
What’s more, it isn’t easy for Google to track all these different exchanges.
3. Digital PR (Simplified)
Digital PR link building is a fairly big thing and it can be a key strategy that ramps up your SEO efforts.
As you may have guessed, digital PR link building involves using media outreach to generate more backlinks.
The idea is to create data about a popular topic relevant to your eCommerce niche and reach out to thousands of journalists.
Some of these journalists will cover your story and link back to your article, therefore securing you some high-quality links.
Now, you might be wondering how digital PR can work in the eCommerce domain.
The good news is that it isn’t so tricky at all. Your chosen topic doesn’t need to be super wild (such as the latest political crisis!), it just needs to:
- Have a proven history previous media traction
- Somewhat related to your niche by at least 1 or 2 levels
For example, you could survey your target audience before turning the results into a research study/case study. In fact, this is a good idea because solid data will earn you more trust.
Or you could use publicly available databases to perform state and city comparisons. Local journalists love covering stories about their local rankings results!
Then, there’s newsjacking, which is when you react to a news story relevant to your products and add your own commentary. It could be that a problem has arisen among your target audience, for which you’ve got the solution.
My favorite is taking a evergreen topic that had proven traction about a year ago and refreshing the data for my own blog. I break down the step-by-step in my LinkedIn post:
The main aim is that you create content that people will want to share, and which will get folk talking about your brand and products.
Once you’ve created your content, it’s time to reach out to journalists and ask them to share your story. Here's a guide on how to find journalists and their emails.
You could include a press release to go along with it in order to add a bit more credibility and spice.
4. Maintain a Blog
Sometimes, link building begins at home.
In other words, you could create and maintain your very own blog.
High-quality content will never get old, with Google prioritizing content that:
- Matches a search query
- Provides useful, informative answers to the end user
The more valuable content you create, the higher it could rank on Google, which itself is a great way to drive more traffic to your store.
For example, if you sell sunglasses (yeah, we’re all about the sunglasses today), you could write a blog post entitled “summer sunglasses trends for 2024.”
When people enter this query into Google, they may come across your blog post.
How can maintaining a blog be useful for link building?
Well, let’s say that another company types in a similar keyword and finds your content.
They’re not looking to buy - but they are looking to write an article about why sunglasses will make a person instantly more charismatic.
And they like your article so much that they link to it in theirs.
Which means you’ve got a backlink.
The best thing is, you didn’t even need to run an outreach campaign this time around.
Naturally, to ensure the right people find your articles, you will need to use a keyword research tool. This will help you to write articles that are popular with your target audience.
It’s also essential that you write high-quality content that people actually enjoy reading, and which offers value.
Not sure what to write about as an eCommerce store? Keyword research will yield some ideas. But here some more:
- How to articles - show people how to use your products
- Comparison article - compare different products and who they suit the most
- New product announcements
5. Link Inserts Into Quality Articles
Link insertions are all part and parcel of a link builders toolbox.
And now that you’re on the lookout for links in the eCommerce niche, it’s time to add this strategy to your repertoire.
In a nutshell, a link insert is when you get in touch with the author of a high-performing piece of content and convince them to add a link to your eCommerce site where it fits naturally.
You can add the links to the body of the article, to a list or even to the “extra resources” bit at the end.
The main thing is that you get your links in there and that they:
- Make sense
- Look natural
“But wait - aren't link inserts the same thing as guest posting then?”
Not exactly.
With guest posting, you’re writing a whole article before adding a link to your website.
With link inserting, you’re simply adding a link to a paragraph (that you may have written) to an article that already exists on the blogger's site.
It’s much easier.
That's why link inserting is highly recommended for newly launched eCommerce stores that want to get their foot in the door on Google and make some noise.
It’ll secure you some much-needed authority and help you to start ranking.
Like with many things, though, you must stick to high-quality opportunities.
To start with link insertions, you need to have linkable content on your e-commerce blog.
Let’s say you sell candles. While it's tempting to try getting links to your product page, create linkable content like a "guide for how to burn candles correctly" instead. Starting with linkable content will give you more link insertion targets and a higher approval rate.
Then, you can build a massive list of relevant articles before sending the webmaster a message asking if they could add a new paragraph to a particular section.
The paragraph would mention what you appreciated about their article and how adding a link to your article would be beneficial to their audience.
It also helps if you give them something in exchange, such as a discount at your store or a link back in return. Here's an example template:
Now, this tactic won’t always hit a bullseye and a lot of bloggers might not want to link to your content. But it’s still a worthwhile tactic that can give your site more authority and relevance.
6. Ask for a Review (In Exchange for One of Your Products)
Here’s the thing with online reviews: 90.6% of customers read them before buying an item and 75.5% trust them.
Those are big numbers, which means more reviews of your products = more trust among customers. Your reputation and trust rating will rocket.
When it comes to link building, customer reviews are even more exciting if you manage to land reviews on high DA websites.
This is because you’ll get two things:
- A review
- A backlink
Score.
The only downside to this tactic is that you have to request a review yourself (which, I know, a lot of people don’t like doing!).
But as long as you’re able to find high-performing articles that are relevant to what you sell, it’s a smart idea to make a list of them before personally reaching out to them and putting forward your case.
In other words, you’ve got a product that you think their target audience will be interested in and you’d be grateful if they could leave an honest review of it on their website.
To ensure honesty, you’ll send them your product for free in exchange for a link.
And that’s all you have to do.
The key thing to note is that you need to ask for an honest review. You want the review to look balanced.
If you pressure them into writing a hugely positive review, you may put them off completely. But feel free to mention how you think your product/store could benefit their audience.
Make sure to thank them for their time, too.
7. Take Advantage of Broken Links
Lastly, an eCommerce link building strategy that never gets old is finding and replacing broken links.
Broken links are links that no longer work. Perhaps a website is linking out to one of your former competitors whose website no longer operates.
The issue is that the webmaster doesn’t realize they’ve got a broken link on their hands. But broken links do two things:
- They can destroy a bit of trust among their readership
- They’re bad for SEO because Google hates broken links
By approaching the webmaster to let them know their link is broken and you know how to fix it, you can’t really go wrong.
(Btw in case you haven’t kept up, you’re going to fix it by offering to replace it with a link to a similar website - yours).
To get started with fixing broken links, you’ll need to use an SEO tool that comes with a broken link checker.
Find articles that are giving lots of backlink love to your competitors - and then apply the ‘broken links’ filter to zone-in on articles that have relevant broken links.
Once you’ve got a list of websites, it’s time to reach out to each one. Let them know they’ve got a broken link on their page, remind them why broken links are bad.
Then, let them know you’ve got a link they can quickly replace it with.
TLDR in 2024
Now that you know which eCommerce link building strategies to focus on, it’s time to start making your eCommerce store more visible on Google.
Used correctly, these link building benefits will boost your website's domain authority, earning you higher ranking spots on Google and more qualified traffic.
Lastly, it’s important to measure any link building campaign you implement. Use tools to analyze traffic sources and monitor incoming traffic, as this can help you spot the links that are performing the best.
You can also combine this data with bounce rate to see whether or not you’re driving traffic from websites that - as it turns out - aren’t interested in your niche.
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