For an eCommerce site, link building is doubly beneficial. To begin with, it helps to gain authority through better search engine ranking. Secondly, it helps to effectively target new customers, thereby, increasing your profit margin.
The idea here is to develop the right kind of content strategies coupled with better outreach techniques.
That said, Google’s algorithms are getting smarter. It can now identify when a link is naturally earned and when it is not. Additionally, it is capable of using various signals to figure out when a link is not important in terms of SEO.
Broadly speaking, for a search engine giant like Google, there are two main ranking factors that need to be considered when working on SEO for an eCommerce site:
- Links from authoritative sources
- High-quality content
Natural backlinks from websites having high domain authority will help your eCommerce store to secure a top rank with ease. Adding genuine backlinks from authoritative sources is not so simple as tweaking your eStore here and there to streamline with the SEO.
Securing a bunch of organic backlinks from quality sites can do big things for your SERP performance. They create relevance, they improve your site’s reputation, they drive traffic, and they most certainly get Google’s attention.
Understand Google’s latest link policy
Google’s new link policy came into effect on March 1, 2020. Google recommends websites to mark each link using link attributes. These include:
- “sponsored” or “notfollow sponsored”– when the link has been bought or someone has paid you for it
- “ugc”– when links are built through user-generated content
The idea is to be transparent and let Google know which links to consider and which not to when crawling a site’s content.
That said, significant efforts are needed to join forces with website owners and content teams to fetch natural links.
Let us discuss some of the crucial steps for link building:
1. Resource page link building.
One of the best ways to take advantage of high-quality backlinks is by implementing a strategy known as resource page link building.
It is a technique that the most successful online marketers utilize on behalf of their clients. They use it because, quite frankly, it works exceptionally well.
Resource pages are the pages on a website that list links and resources for a particular topic. For example, a travel blog about Rome will have links to tour companies that offer service in Rome.
Resource page link building means adding the link of your eStore on the page as one of the resources.
What’s the big deal about resource pages?
If you are starting with your eCommerce store, it would be a great benefit to have links directing to your online store.
Resource pages are often seen as credible. With more credibility, there is a higher chance of people landing on your page.
There are two ways in which a resource page might appear.
- In the form of a blog post :
2. In the form of a static page
Having your link listed in a resource page that already has several links might not immediately command authority, but it is good enough to give a boost to your page rankings. And that’s really the first thing you need when considering SEO for your ecommerce website.
For finding resource pages, simply Google “inurl:resources + X” (X being your product, topic, or industry).
Your search result might somewhat look like this
You can also do regular online research and gather URLs and contact mail id. Tools like Voila Norbert help to find the contact information quickly without having to browse through the entire site.
Once you have gathered all the mail ids, it’s time to send the email.
Make sure to customize your email messages to ensure that it looks personal. Check out the template below:
“Hello, [name]!
I was googling some information on [topic] and happen to bump into your page:
[URL of resource page]
You have done an incredible job in listing down all the Ecommerce stores out there which sells the product. I would love to share a link to an eStore that I own.
I think this would greatly benefit your readers.
Thank you and keep up the fantastic work
Cheers
[Name]”
2. Joining hands with influencers
An influencer is someone who has the power to influence the purchasing decision of others strongly.
There are several reasons why the ability to influence is vested on someone. It could be due to expertise, knowledge, authority etc.
Partnering with influencers is a cool way to promote your eCommerce store; however, from an SEO point of view collaborating with influencers is quite different.
Here, instead of ending up paying several hundred influencers to share your eStore, the SEO strategy used is to get them to link back to your site.
This could be via a guest blog featuring your eCommerce Store or updating their article with your link.
To ease up the process:
- Post your link on their comment section.
- Reach out to them and ask questions about their expertise
- Give them free products or other gifts.
- Regularly follow their blog posts and befriend them.
3. Broken link building
This refers to links that are broken or not available anymore. Quite popularly known as “building links by fixing the internet” this is one of the easiest and effective strategies for link building.
Using software tools such as ahrefs or using a browser plugin, you can easily spot broken links on any web pages.
Following this, you need to create a custom email to send to the site owner informing him about the broken links on his page and how the link of your eStore would be a great addition.
While sending a request email, be ready to get disappointed as you need to at least send a few hundred to get a fair percentage of positive replies.
4. Create and maintain a blog section
For an eCommerce store, it is vital to maintain and regularly update a blog section.
This will help you to publish newsworthy content. The blogs could contain anything from new products launched in the market, recent trends in the technology, etc.
Make sure to keep your blogs engaging and informative. From an SEO point of view, blogs help a lot in driving traffic to your web page.
The search engines these days are smart enough to sense whether you are genuinely trying to engage your audience or simply filling up your blog for the sake of SEO.
In today’s world trust-building is one of the golden keys for successful marketing of any product.
Ensure that your blogs match up to the “searcher’s intent” and provide relevant and meaningful information to the viewers.
5. Stealing some of the links from competitors
Well, this is not really as bad as it sounds. Stealing backlinks means doing a thorough analysis of your competitors and uncovering the strategies that fetch them a better rank.
This is a simple process if you use software such as Ahrefs or Backlink Checker. Now if you are already using one, this could be done using the following steps.
Step 1: Copy-paste your competitors URL in the site explorer section
Step 2:In the left-hand side, there is a backlink tab and click on it.
Step 3:Filter by “One link per domain” and link-type “Dofollow.”
Now you will be able to see from where exactly your competitors are getting their links.
If you are using Backlink Checker, go to the Referring domains tab.
You can easily find all the details of the backlinks that are fetching your competitors a better rank. Additionally, you can keep a tab on the links that are recently added to your competitors eStore.
6. Promote guest blogs
Guest blogging is one of the sure-shot methods to improve brand awareness and fetch backlinks if appropriately used.
Each time you contribute content to a website that commands high authority apart from getting a link, you could use it as social proof.
You could easily find guest blogging opportunities by checking where the top players are contributing.
Alternatively, you could use the BuzzSumo tool as well. Open the tool and search “author: XXXX”.
7. Dedicate a section for manuals
For an eCommerce site, manuals help a lot in building authority. Since you are selling products online, manuals are mandatory to provide instruction.
Gather all your product manuals and put them online. If you have PDF files for manuals, you could easily optimize them to improve the visibility of your page.
Often eCommerce stores sell unique products that are not available with other online providers.
Creating manuals for uncommon products will be even more worthy from an SEO perspective since you could expect to get more targeted organic traffic.
Make sure to add links for instruction manuals from the category and product pages.
Final Words
Earning natural backlinks is one of the sure-shot ways for the success of an eCommerce store. This is fairly simple and easy to implement if you can spend some time to research your competitors and deploy those tactics on your page.
The technique is known to give quicker results in search engine ranking when compared to other popular methods of SEO.
Always keep in mind to reach out to influencers, build connections with top players of the industry and spend some quality time for blogging campaigns.
It is also advisable to partner with a reputed SEO agency to make the process smoother for you.
Need help to drive those valuable organic search traffic to your ecommerce website? Ask us for a free audit check on your website now!
