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A recent study by Statista shows that nearly a third of all internet traffic comes from search engines, which shows just how important visibility in the SERPs is for ecommerce websites.
Backlinks are an essential part of your overall marketing plan – they boost organic rankings, encourage social sharing, and make you come across as credible. But how do you go about getting quality links?
In this blog post, we will explore five quick ecommerce link building strategies to build quality links that can help boost your ecommerce brand's online presence and drive sales. They are as follows:
Running an affiliate program is a brilliant way to build links for your ecommerce brand. By partnering with other websites and individuals to promote your products and services, you can create valuable backlinks that speed up results for your ecommerce site.
In addition to generating backlinks, running an affiliate program can also provide several other benefits for your ecommerce website.
First, affiliates can help increase your brand awareness and reach a wider audience. They do this by introducing your brand to potential customers who may not have otherwise heard of you.
Besides, affiliates can help drive more sales for your business by encouraging more people to purchase from your website in return for a commission.
Finally, affiliates can provide valuable insights and feedback on your products and services. Through them, you can learn more about your target audience, their preferences, and their pain points, which can help you improve your products and marketing strategy.
To get started, create a well-thought-out program that offers attractive rewards and incentives to affiliates. This can include commission on sales, promotional materials, and access to exclusive deals and discounts.
We recommend checking out this detailed guide by Shopify for a breakdown of everything you need to know about creating an affiliate program.
Next, identify potential affiliates who have a relevant audience and are likely to be interested in your products. Reach out to them and offer them the opportunity to join your affiliate program.
You can also use affiliate marketing platforms and networks like ShareASale and LeadDyno to connect with affiliates and manage your program.
Once your affiliate program is up and running, track and monitor your affiliates' performance to ensure they are driving valuable referral traffic to your site while also generating high-quality backlinks.
Provide support and resources to help them succeed, and regularly review and update your program to ensure it is meeting your goals and the needs of your affiliates.
Finally, offer even more incentives and rewards to top-performing affiliates, such as increased commissions or exclusive access to new products. This will help motivate and retain top affiliates, leading to more valuable backlinks and revenue for your ecommerce brand.
This is hands-down the most effective tactic to build high-quality ecommerce backlinks for your online business for a couple of reasons. For starters, you can reach out to thousands of website owners with a few clicks of a button requesting link placements.
Also, with guest post outreach, you have more control over where your backlink can be placed, which results in better-quality links than when using most other strategies covered here.
To get started with guest posting, identify websites and blogs in your industry or niche that you’d be happy getting linked from. Research their content and style to ensure your guest post will fit in and be of value to their readers.
Next, reach out to the site owners, preferably using cold emailing. You can learn more about how to run a successful cold email campaign for guest post opportunities in this guide.
In a nutshell though, you need to collect emails, create a messaging template and use an emailing tool such as Instantly or Woodpecker to automate your emails. This is exactly how we do it when building links for our SEO clients here at Profit Engine.
Video marketing is another powerful (but highly underutilized) ecommerce link building strategy. In an era where video content consumption is at an all-time high, you cannot afford to not use videos to capture the attention of your target audience.
The idea is to create high-quality videos that showcase your products and services, while also providing value to potential customers and establishing your brand as an authority in your industry or niche.
To get started with this link building strategy, first identify the types of videos that will be most effective for your business. This can include product demonstrations, tutorials, customer testimonials, and behind-the-scenes footage.
When creating your videos, consider using a keyword research tool to identify relevant keywords and phrases that your target audience is searching for, and incorporate them into your videos to improve their SEO.
We also recommend optimizing your videos for search engines by including a compelling title, description, and tags, and include a call to action that encourages viewers to visit your website.
Next, distribute your videos on relevant platforms and websites, such as YouTube, Vimeo, and social media. Don’t forget to include a link to your ecommerce website in the video description and use relevant hashtags and keywords to make it easier for users to find your videos.
To generate even more backlinks other than those of social media, consider reaching out to bloggers and other websites that embed similar videos and offer them a high-quality, ad-free alternative.
When they embed your video, request them to include a link to your ecommerce website in the video description and any accompanying text. This will create a valuable backlink to your website and help improve your search engine ranking.
If your ecommerce business sells third-party products, one strategy you can incorporate in your ecommerce link building campaign is to get listed as a stockist on “where to buy” pages. This method involves finding and getting listed on third-party brand or manufacturer pages that showcase where to buy their products.
Before anything, it’s important that you follow all of their provided guidelines for listing to ensure a smooth, successful process.
The first step when using this strategy is to research “where to buy” pages that you could potentially get listed on. Many third-party brands and manufacturers list vendors that stock their products on these pages, so that should be a good place to start.
To do this, use this search string on Google once you’ve compiled a list of target brands or manufacturers:
[brand name] intitle:("where to buy" OR "stockists")
Other possibilities to research include websites, directories, forums and other online markets.
When conducting research, try to narrow your search to relevant “where to buy” pages. For example, if your ecommerce store specializes in selling beauty products, then it’s a good idea to focus on finding “where to buy” pages related to makeup, skincare, haircare, etc.
Once you have identified some relevant “where to buy” pages, the next step is to reach out to the owners of those sites. In most cases, you will need to contact them to provide more details about your store, and to explain why you should be included in their list of stockists.
When connecting with site owners, it’s important to ensure that your email is professional, provides all the necessary details, and explains the advantages of including your store in their list of stockists. It’s also vital to make sure that you include a link to your ecommerce store in your email.
A sample email template could look something like this:
“Subject: Partnership Opportunity”
Dear [Brand/Manufacturer],
I am the owner of [Company Name], an ecommerce business in [location]. We specialize in selling [products] and we currently stock [Brand Name] products.
I am writing to request that [Company Name] be added to [Brand Name]'s “Where to Buy” page. I believe our website represents the perfect platform to expand [Brand Name]'s customer base and boost its revenue.
We are dedicated to providing excellent customer service and a great customer experience each and every time.
Attached to this email is additional information about our company and our products. Please let me know if you have any questions or need any additional information.
I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards,
[Your Name].
Once your store has been listed as a stockist, be sure to monitor the page and maintain your listings. This might involve updating your contact information, providing more details about your store, or uploading pictures of the products you sell.
Finally, to monitor the success of your outreach program, we recommend setting up a spreadsheet system to track each contact attempted, their response, and any corresponding action made. Doing this will help you to keep organized and informed of past outreach attempts and any new stockists acquired.
This can also be a great way to keep notes on the process and to indicate any areas where improvements can be made in the future.
Creating backlinks for your ecommerce business requires a multi-faceted approach. A crucial piece of this strategy is to leverage content marketing through a blog.
Your blog should serve as the hub for all SEO efforts and will be the base upon which all content marketing and ecommerce link building tactics are built. For example, having a blog allows you to update your website with relevant content that can attract visitors and attract links, both of which are vital for optimizing your site's search engine rankings.
To get started, you’ll need to first create a blog. This should be attached to your main ecommerce website and should have the same look and feel as the rest of your site.
More importantly, make sure that the layout and design is correct to provide a great experience for your readers. Ensure there is an easy-to-follow menu, clear call-to-actions and a search facility that allows for easy navigation around the website.
While at it, strive to make your blog informational, relevant, and informative, while offering customers value in addition to the products they are purchasing.
To develop a content marketing strategy for your ecommerce business, first try to identify your target audience. Who are your customers? What are their interests?
Once you have answers to these questions, start out by brainstorming possible topics your readers may find interesting and create a content calendar that outlines blog posts, videos, podcasts, or any other content that can be used to promote your brand.
Using SEO tools such as Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest and Ahrefs, identify a list of relevant keywords that you’d like to target for your content marketing and SEO efforts.
Take the time to research your topic and create content that is well-researched and well-written. Relevant and useful information attracts attention and often singles you out for citation amongst other authoritative sources.
Taking the time to develop the best possible content and share it with your audience yields much better returns than simply publishing run-of-the-mill content. Additionally, having a “thought leader” mindset—wherein you incorporate industry-relevant and original ideas—can provide the basis for your content’s authority.
Useful tip: Don’t just limit your blog to written articles as this can quickly become dull; rather, introduce variety in the form of, but not limited to, reporting on data, offering resources, interviews, infographics and short videos.
Once you’ve developed content, consider linking pages on your website to related content. This will help visitors find valuable information more easily, as well as help boost your website’s SEO by increasing the number of internal links on each page.
While creating quality content is just one of many components that help you build a readership and backlinks, it’s important to have an effective distribution strategy so you can reach and engage a wide audience. To do this, you can repurpose your content using different distribution channels, including social media, press releases, email newsletters, and industry-specific forums.
You’ll also want to encourage readers to share it through social media channels. You can do this by including sharing buttons on each post and ensuring that your content is formatted to make it easy to share.
Finally, use digital PR and outreach to reach out to relevant journalists, bloggers, and websites. Ask if they would be interested in featuring your content on their platforms in exchange for a link back to your business.
Finally, don’t forget to analyze the performance of your blog content. Focus on key metrics such as page views, social media shares, email sign-ups and backlinks acquired.
The goal should be to determine if your content marketing strategy is working and if any changes are needed to drive more traffic to your site.
So, there you have it — a complete guide to link building for ecommerce. If you're serious about improving your search engine ranking and bringing in more traffic (and sales) in 2023, then start implementing some of these techniques today.
We highly recommend you mix up your link building strategies so that you're not just relying on one type of link. By diversifying your banklink profile, you'll be able to better withstand any algorithm changes or other challenges that might come up.
And, as always, if you need help getting started or want someone to handle the entire process for you, feel free to contact us. As a Link buildingWe'll be happy to help!