With over 2 million online stores competing for attention, e-commerce visibility feels impossible. Yet some brands consistently rise above the noise. Their secret weapon? Strategic link building and SEO optimization from an expert big commerce SEO expert at an SEO company that improves their SEO rankings. Ecommerce marketplace integration also plays an important role in increasing visibility.
Securing authoritative backlinks from trusted sites unlocks transformational organic visibility and revenue growth for e-commerce businesses. Crafting an integrated link-earning strategy built on relevance, relationships, and persistence provides retailers with the competitive edge they need in crowded marketplaces to climb the SEO rankings.
Done right, deliberate link building efforts elevate sites above the millions of stores few customers ever discover by boosting their rankings in search engine results. Ready to learn how to master link building and compete with top players by improving your SEO rankings? Let's get your e-commerce site found!
The Crucial Role of Backlinks in E-commerce SEO
Backlinks remain one of the most important e-commerce SEO strategies for elevating a website's authority and search rankings. Consider these compelling statistics:
- 69% of digital marketers believe buying quality backlinks positively impacts Google rankings
- 65% measure link quality by domain authority, making it the most popular metric.
This data highlights that not all links are made equal. Quality backlinks from authoritative, relevant websites play an outsized role in influencing search engine results pages. Ecommerce marketplace integration with leading platforms also boosts visibility.
By earning links from trusted platforms, e-commerce sites can dramatically improve domain authority metrics and overall organic visibility – increasing the likelihood of getting discovered by motivated customers. Tools like All in One SEO Search Console provide easy monitoring of critical SEO metrics like backlinks to help optimize link building campaigns. Advanced link building for ecommerce website strategies for E-commerce Websites.
| Metric | E-commerce Sites With Quality Backlinks | E-commerce Sites Without Quality Backlinks |
| Domain Authority | 63 | 34 |
| Organic Traffic | 38,412 visitors/month | 11,236 visitors/month |
| Lead Conversion Rate | 4.73% | 2.36% |
With enhanced domain authority comes higher search rankings, traffic, and conversions. That's why continuously investing in white hat link building tactics should be integral for e-commerce SEO success.
Advanced Link Building Strategies for E-commerce Websites
Now that we've established why e-commerce link acquisition matters, let's explore advanced strategies like growth hacking SEO to build high-quality backlink profiles:
Creating Link-Worthy Content
Over 40% of digital marketers believe content marketing represents the most sustainable way to generate quality backlinks passively over time. By developing comprehensive guides, infographics, videos, and other multimedia content that addresses consumer pain points, e-commerce brands can attract numerous high-quality backlinks.
The goal is to create truly unique, link-worthy content on your site that publishers want to reference as an authority or resource on a particular topic. Types of magnetic content include
- Detailed buying guides comparing the best products in your industry
- Infographics visualizing industry trends, patterns, and statistics
- Videos demonstrating product features or providing how-tos
Additionally, interactive and viral content formats tend to earn the most links over time:
- Quizzes and assessments that share results help drive social engagement
- Tools and calculators that provide custom recommendations encourage links as resources.
- Interactive polls and surveys that reveal consumer opinions and data
- List posts, contests, or giveaways that incentivize shares and links
By blending educational utility with built-in viral components, e-commerce content stands the best chance of attracting high-quality backlinks at scale over the long run.
By investing in value-driven owned media instead of low-quality paid links, e-commerce sites reap multiple benefits including stronger rankings, referral traffic, brand visibility, and long-term link equity. Using an SEO article rewriter can also help generate more link-worthy content efficiently.
Influencer Partnerships & Affiliate Programs
In addition to owned content, collaborating with influencers and affiliates represents a strategic way to earn high-quality backlinks at scale.
The incentive for influencers to share or reference e-commerce products is built into affiliate commissions they receive per sale driven. By negotiating influencer link building partnerships, online stores can tap into engaged social followings and website traffic to acquire recurring links and referral sales.
Meanwhile, launching an affiliate program that rewards external publishers for links and traffic provides similar win-win value. As affiliates drive more conversions via organic links, they'll continue prominently featuring your products.
Over time, these compounding links establish stronger domain authority for e-commerce sites while driving direct sales with trackable ROI – making influencer and affiliate partnerships well worth the investment.
Guest Posting on Relevant Platforms
Guest posting involves creating and publishing content on third-party blogs and informational sites that accept contributor submissions. By securing guest posts on reputable platforms, e-commerce websites can net powerful backlinks directing authority and traffic back to their domain.
The key is identifying sites where you can provide expert guest posts that genuinely help their audience while organically linking back to your e-commerce store as a citation or recommended resource.
Types of websites that commonly publish guest contributions include:
- Industry news sites and blogs
- Market research publishers
- E-commerce resources hubs
- Local business directories (for local SEO)
Specific sites that accept and feature high-quality guest posts from e-commerce experts include:
- Practical Ecommerce
- Shopify Blog
- BigCommerce Blog
- Volusion Blog
- Retail TouchPoints
- Multichannel Merchant
- Total Retail
After connecting with the right publishers, craft your guest post pitch around insightful data or tips that align with their content strategy and readership – while carefully integrating natural links back to product pages or informational content on your site.
The high domain authority of reputable guest posting sites translates into valuable link juice and referral traffic that can considerably move the needle for e-commerce SEO.
Product Reviews and Giveaways
Product reviews from credible sources lend third-party validation while giveaways help increase brand awareness and links through co-marketing campaigns.
By reaching out to prominent bloggers, media sites, and influencers in your industry, e-commerce retailers can provide free product samples in exchange for an honest, in-depth review. To incentivize quality coverage, require links back to your online store or specific product page within reviews.
Similarly, collaborating with non-competitive e-commerce sites to organize product giveaways on one another's platforms can attract lots of social shares, foot traffic, and co-branded links – elevating domain authority for both parties.
Tools like Rafflecopter, Vyper, and Woobox help manage giveaways while aggregating multiple links and exposure. Product giveaways help garner attention and quality links
So whether earning links via expert reviews or strategic giveaways, raising brand visibility through creative partnerships pays dividends for link building success.
Technical Link Building Fundamentals
While securing backlinks relies heavily on relationships, creativity, and outreach efforts, optimizing the technical aspects of links themselves is equally crucial for succeeding with organic search.
Carefully structuring backlink architecture and deployment boosts both the quality and quantity of rankings potential.
Anchor Text Diversification
The visible, clickable text that users see for links – known as anchor text – plays a major role in legal search engine optimization.
The type of anchors used for both internal links and external backlinks that point to a page influence how search algorithms assess relevance and authority.
When building links, purposefully vary anchor text:
- Use descriptive, keyword-rich anchors where relevant – Associates pages with specific topics, products, and services by incorporating target keywords that play to search intent
- Avoid over-optimizing with exact-match commercial anchors – Strings of commercial keywords can appear spammy and manipulate rankings, risking penalties
- Blend some branded anchors – Sprinkling website name and branded anchors throughout looks natural for users
- Keep anchor length short – Clickable anchor text is most effective for users and SEO when kept between 2-6 words
Thoughtfully mixing branded, generic, and descriptive backlink anchors both capture clicks and elevate page authority and rankings potential for target keywords.
By blending technical optimization with creative relationship link building outreach, you accumulate high-quality backlinks at volume to drive results.
Avoiding Link Building Pitfalls
While most digital PR and outreach channels can be leveraged safely for backlinks with proper due diligence, search engines use sophisticated algorithms and manual review teams to identify and counter overtly manipulative tactics.
Staying on the right side of Google's ever-evolving standards requires avoiding known high-risk link building approaches:
Comment Spam
Plastering commercial anchor text links in blog comment sections often triggers automatic filtering or rejection before ever going live. Comment spam tactics are easy for algorithms and reviewers to identify and penalize.
Link Networks or Link Farms
Collections of thin content websites and blogs existing solely to boost affiliates through hyperlink exchanges lack substance and face routine bans. Providing no actual user value, their only purpose is manipulating search rankings.
Widget Comment Links
Embedding unsolicited or deceptive links via widgets and other plug-ins without publisher consent represents web spam. As algorithms advance, these approaches lose efficacy.
The most sustainable, future-proof link building strategy focuses on securing editorially given links through diverse channels based on merit and mutual value for the publisher and brand. This fosters lasting results and avoids the most common pitfalls.
No single tactic delivers overnight first-page rankings. However, an ethical, diversified, and persistent approach to organic link building and digital PR avoids the high-risk techniques that search engines quickly filter out and punish.
Internal Link Building for Enhanced Equity Flow
Internal links are a crucial but often overlooked aspect of e-commerce SEO. Link building is typically associated with procuring external backlinks, but strategic internal linking provides significant benefits by distributing authority and equity across website pages.
The Power of Internal Links
Internal links allow authority and rankings potential to flow seamlessly from popular pages to newer, deeper content across an e-commerce site. Pages accumulate equity through inbound links, and by linking internally between related content, all pages get a chance to share the rankings bounty.
Without internal links, the homepage and other popular pages would hoard all the authority. But linking builds pathways for equity to trickle down to lower-trafficked pages. This gives new arrivals, accessory items, and category pages an SEO boost.
Crafting an Internal Linking Strategy
The foundation of an internal linking plan is connecting related content pages and product categories. These contextual links reinforce site architecture and signal to search engines the relevance between linked pages.
Interlinking product pages and buying guides weave critical contextual links across reference materials and items for sale. For example, linking a “Best Running Shoes” guide to each recommended shoe product page.
Cross-linking best-selling items and the newest arrivals draws user attention between trending and popular products. This tactic capitalizes on shifting consumer demand.
Connecting accessory product pages ensures complementary items link to each other. For example, linking a camera case page to the related camera product page.
Featuring categories within relevant blog posts drives direct category pageviews which lifts category rankings. For example, linking to the camping gear category within a “Summer Camping Trip Packing List” article.
Linking brand and key product pages from the website footer provides site-wide visibility and equity distribution.
Executed thoroughly, these internal linking strategies concentrate authority signals and ensure all pages fully participate in the rankings game. Consistency and persistence pay dividends.
Breadcrumbs Boost Usability and Internal Linking
Breadcrumb trails are a type of secondary site navigation that visually displays the current page's position within the website hierarchy via a string of clickable links.
For example, a breadcrumb trail may show:
Homepage > Electronics Category > Headphones Subcategory > Bluetooth Headphones
In addition to usability perks like improved orientation and navigation, breadcrumbs also provide e-commerce SEO advantages:
Keeping Users on Site
By clearly displaying site hierarchy, breadcrumbs reduce confusion and decrease exit rates as visitors remain oriented. Visitors are less likely to leave when it's simple to navigate further.
Distributing Rankings Equity
The clickable category and subcategory links in breadcrumbs pass authority and equity from higher-level pages downstream to deeper category and product pages through internal links.
Analytics Insights
The aggregate click data from breadcrumb links provide valuable insights into site navigation habits and patterns. Analyze existing page titles and URLs to identify problem areas.
Optimizing Breadcrumb Performance
Once installed, closely monitor breadcrumb click interactions and refine structure and link paths to plug equity leaks or address navigation issues.
As pages accumulate equity from breadcrumb links, product pages gain more opportunity to rank for their target keywords.
With internal link building covered comprehensively, including both interlinking content and breadcrumb site navigation, let's shift our discussion to tracking SEO progress.
Monitoring and Optimizing Backlink Building Efforts
Executing link acquisition strategies is only half the battle. To assess effectiveness and strategize improvements, e-commerce sites should continually monitor link building metrics.
Link Building Analytics and KPIs
Tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Moz offer analytics dashboards for tracking key link building performance indicators (KPIs) month-over-month:
- Domain Authority score
- Total backlinks
- Referring domains
- Linking root domains
- Link equity flow
By logging into analytics accounts regularly, e-commerce sites can audit backlink profiles, quantify growth, identify toxic links for disavowal, and double down on high-performance tactics.
Assessing Organic Performance
The true test of link building success lies in actual search visibility improvements. Using Google Analytics and Search Console, compare organic traffic, rankings, and conversion rates of targeted keywords quarter-over-quarter.
Rising numbers signal that link building efforts are paying dividends in the form of enhanced visibility and discovery. If progress stalls, however, re-evaluating link tactics may be needed.
Through routine analysis, e-commerce sites can fine-tune link building strategies over time to cost-effectively move the rankings needle.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How often should I audit my e-commerce site's backlink profile?
Industry experts recommend auditing backlink profiles at least quarterly. This allows e-commerce sites to promptly identify and disavow spammy or manipulative links before they dilute domain authority or trigger penalties.
- What is the role of social media in e-commerce link building?
While social media links don’t directly influence search engine results, increased brand visibility and engagement on social platforms can lead to higher-quality referral traffic and indirect links over time. Hence maintaining an active social presence complements link building initiatives.
- Can product pages themselves be effective tools for link acquisition?
Absolutely – product pages rich in educational content, buyer advice, engaging visuals, and special offers can attract publishers to reference them as resources. The key is creating link-worthy, unique value on product pages beyond basic e-commerce functionality.
Conclusion
As online competition continues intensifying across niches, investing in ethical link building strategies for e-commerce SEO represents a proven tactic for improving domain authority, organic visibility, and conversions over the long run.
By leveraging a balanced combination of creative content marketing, strategic partnerships, technical optimization, and analytics, e-commerce sites can secure the quality backlink profile necessary for search dominance.
The time is now to start executing this complete guide’s advanced link building techniques if you haven’t already. Be patient and persistent with SEO, and your e-commerce site will reap the referral traffic, brand visibility, and customer trust that enables sustainable e-commerce success.
