9 Best Ecommerce Link Building Strategies [2024 Update]

💡 First Things First, What Are eCommerce Backlinks?

Let’s just quickly make sure we’re talking about the same thing when discussing ‘eCommerce backlinks.’ 

eCommerce backlinks are external links — i.e., links that point to eCommerce sites but are hosted on other websites.

• Example: Links from Wikipedia to your website.

Now, there are also so-called internal links. 

Internal links are links that point from one to other pages on the same website. While these can arguably be considered backlinks, too, that’s not what people usually mean in the context of eCommerce link building.

• Example: Links from your home page to your blog posts.

In this guide, we’ll focus on how you can build external links to your website. We’ll refer to them simply as eCommerce backlinks.

What Results Can You Expect From eCommerce Link Building?

eCommerce link building can help you increase your site’s search visibility and traffic. 

Consequently, it may also help increase your conversions — because the more eyeballs you reach, the more sales you can make. And that’s the ultimate goal of eCommerce websites. 

But it’s not just us saying that eCommerce backlinks have loads of benefits. Research confirms it, too. 

Here are 3 stats you may want to consider:

1. Top-Ranked Search Results Have 3.8x More Backlinks

The number one search result has, on average, 3.8x more backlinks than results in spots 2-10. 

This doesn’t mean backlinks are the only differentiating factor between these results. But they most likely are one of the most important ones.

2. There’s A Strong Correlation Between Backlinks And Traffic

‍Ahrefs’ study found a strong correlation between how many websites link to a page and its traffic and keyword rankings.

One of the conclusions is that ranking for highly competitive keywords is almost impossible without backlinks. 

Ranking for keywords with lower keyword difficulty is easier, but such keywords typically attract substantially less traffic. 

3. 92% Of SEO Experts Believe That Their Competitors Buy Links

53.9% of them also reported spending over $300 on one quality link.  

This shows you how important link building is for online businesses — they probably wouldn’t be investing as much money into it if it didn’t work. 

13 Best eCommerce Link Building Strategies

Now that you know why building links matters for eCommerce websites, let’s get to the how. 

Here are 13 effective link building tactics for eCommerce brands in 2024.

1) Niche Edits

Niche edits, or “link insertions”, involve adding links to existing content on other websites. 

👉 So, unlike many other eCommerce link-building strategies, niche edits don’t involve creating new content.

This makes them faster + less resource-intensive than most strategies.

• How to act on it: 
  • Find websites that frequently cover topics in your niche. 
  • Then, find a specific page that could host your link – i.e., a page that tackles topics you have covered in your own content. 
  • Find more information in our guide to niche edits.

2) Feature SMEs 

One of the biggest content creation trends in 2023 and 2024 is featuring subject matter experts (SMEs).

👉 Subject matter experts are people with specialized knowledge in a specific area, often with extensive experience and education in their field.

Featuring them in your content can help you achieve many marketing goals — such as building credibility and stronger relationships with your audience. 

• For example, if you sell skincare products, your audience would probably appreciate you featuring dermatologists and aestheticians. 

But featuring SMEs in your content can also help you build eCommerce backlinks: 

• Firstly, the SMEs you feature will likely share + link to your content themselves. 
• Secondly, you’ll likely get backlinks from other websites covering similar topics and looking for expert quotes to feature or refer to. 

You’ll win on multiple fronts. 

• How to act on it:
  • Consider which types of SMEs would be relevant to your audience and your niche. 
  • Then look for them on social media, Google, or other websites. (LinkedIn is probably your best bet though.)
  • Interview them and feature their quotes in your content.

3) Value-Packed Guides

Another way to build eCommerce backlinks via content is to write value-packed guides. 

💡 To pinpoint which types of guides would be popular, try talking to your customers and customer-facing teams, such as: 

• Sales teams
• Customer support teams
• Customer success teams
• Retail staff, etc.

You can inquire about common questions they get from customers, common misconceptions about your products or niche, or frequent customer objections.

Turn those bits of information into unique content ideas.

• How to act on it: Useful guides can naturally attract links. However, to ensure that happens, try promoting them on social media and other channels, like your newsletter. You can also try notifying other bloggers of your guides.

4) Tools

Creating niche-related tools is a great way to build eCommerce backlinks and attract qualified traffic to your site. 

You first want to understand what your audience usually struggles with in relation to your products or niche. Then simply make a tool for it and add it to your eCommerce site.

For example, if you’re a fashion brand, your customers may struggle with: 

• Determining their dress or shoe size
• Dressing for their body shape 
• Finding their unique style

You can develop tools, such as quizzes or calculators, that help your audience solve these problems. That’s how you’ll stand out from similar eCommerce brands and be top of mind for your audience when they’re ready to buy. 

(Btw, your tool doesn’t have to be fancy as long as it’s useful. Just check out the first search result for BMI “calculator” if you don’t believe us.)

• Example: An insurance app called Geico developed a free calculator that gives drivers custom quote estimates for their car insurance. According to Ahrefs, the app reaped the benefits of its efforts and attracted over 3,000 backlinks with this tool: 

5) Original Research

Conducting original research almost guarantees you’ll get quality links to your eCommerce website. 

The reason why is obvious: if you’re the only source of data someone can reference, you’re the only source they can link to as well. 

On top of that, doing your own research results in original content. And that’s important, too — it can increase your rankings, build your credibility, and much more.

• Example: Blume conducted a survey on how girls and women experience periods during puberty. After publishing the results, the wellness company got PR mentions and backlinks from high-quality publications like Forbes.

6) Invite Digital PR Mentions

PR mentions alone can make for an effective eCommerce link building campaign. The only problem is that landing those mentions, and landing them consistently, can be difficult. 

But some strategies work better than others. Here are three that work:

• Charity. Charitable activities increase brand loyalty—plus, they’re good for the community. If you want them to help you build links, too, announce your contributions on your website and share them with sites that publish PR content. 
• Controversy. Unique products naturally generate buzz and press. But you can create buzz around your product even if it’s already finished. Just add a unique feature and prepare a newsworthy press release. Publications will pick it up. 

‍For example, Fontus made self-filling bottles that supposedly turn moisture from the air into drinking water. It seems the story was too good to be true, and the company might have gone bankrupt in the meantime — but the controversial bottles got a lot of coverage from authoritative publications:

• Events. Many publications report on events, so hosting them could land you some backlinks. Consider which events your customers would want to attend — or host charitable events, like fundraisers.

For example, Moo Jersey, an ice cream company based in Hoboken, hosted “The World’s Largest Ice Cream Eating Contest” in June 2022. The event attracted Moo Jersey’s ideal customers, ice cream enthusiasts, and got the company some positive PR and backlinks:

7) Build Affiliate Partnerships

Affiliate partnerships can do more for your website than just drive sales. They can also play an essential role in your eCommerce link building efforts. 

The chances are, your affiliates already have the perfect places for your links within their content. So the links won’t feel salesy or out of place. 

But there is one problem. According to Google’s guidelines, affiliate links should be tagged as “sponsored.”

👉 And sponsored links have less of a positive impact than ‘normal’ links. 

They won’t have as big of an effect on your site’s rankings and domain authority, but they will still bring you some positive results.

• Example: This listicle by Byrdie lists 28 skincare brands and features their products. At the beginning of the article, Byrdie mentions that the links are affiliate.

8) Answer FAQs

Answering frequently asked questions on your product pages is a great way to earn backlinks and rank for bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) keywords. 

To demonstrate that, let’s imagine you sell smart locks. 

Through your research, you discover a popular long-tail keyword that’s relevant to your product: 

• “what happens if smart lock battery dies” 

Including this query on your product page could get you backlinks and sales. 

• You could earn backlinks because you’ll give important information that people search for. 
• Your answer could also eradicate some of the fears your customers have and lead you closer to making a sale. 

Think about it: the fear of getting locked out may be the only thing stopping a person from buying a smart lock. If your answer can mitigate that fear, you could make an instant sale. And that’s probably the ideal situation for any eCommerce owner.

• Example: SimpliSafe, a company that sells security systems, used the exact trick we described above:

9) Find Unlinked Brand Mentions

Unlinked brand mentions are what they sound like: mentions of your brand that don’t link to your website. 

Your goal is to turn those mentions into links. And that’s easy when you already get a mention because your link is relevant to the content. 

All you have to do is ask the website owners to include your link. Most will happily do so. 

But how do you find unlinked brand mentions? 

Luckily, you don’t have to go through infinite Google results yourself. Instead, you can use specialized brand monitoring tools or tools like Google Alerts. 

Google Alerts is free and easy to set up. Simply enter your brand name and adjust the notification options if needed: 

You’ll now be notified whenever your brand gets mentioned online. 

10) Partner With Influencers

Besides helping you make sales and raise brand awareness, influencer marketing can help you reach your eCommerce link building goals, too. 

To make this strategy work, we suggest partnering with bloggers instead of social media influencers. 

👉 The reason is that links from social media have little to no effect on your site’s SEO. And they won’t bring you as many long-term benefits as links coming from websites. 

That’s why we recommend you:

• Partner with an influential website owner.
• Choose websites with a domain authority (DA) score of 40 or above. 
• Check how much traffic your prospect sites get.

One downside of this strategy is that links coming from influencers should be tagged as sponsored (just like affiliate links). Unfortunately, that will slightly reduce their impact.

11) Partner With Other Businesses

If you like win-win situations, you’ll love this eCommerce link building strategy. It involves promoting other businesses in exchange for them promoting yours. 

💡 The best way to go about it is to partner with brands that sell products related to what you’re selling. 

Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

• If you sell skincare products, partner with a makeup brand;
• If you sell high-end suitcases, partner with an airline;
• If you sell clothes, partner with a jewelry brand.

Just ensure you let other websites know you’re promoting them or establish partnerships in advance. That way, you’ll know you’ll get a link back.

• Example: Uber partnered with Pandora and Spotify so customers can play their favorite music during rides. As a result, Uber got links from Pandora and Spotify and numerous PR mentions in publications like BBC and Business Insider.

Now, you may be thinking: all that sounds great, but how do I actually find businesses to partner with? 

Here are three strategies we use ourselves:

• Reach out to current partners. If you work with other businesses, you may already have suitable link building partners in your network. For example, you can check if one of your suppliers or clients would be interested in building links with you. You may discover some hidden opportunities.
• Network offline. If you don’t find suitable connections in your network, it’s time to expand it. One way to connect with other business owners is to attend networking events. It doesn’t even matter if the events are purely local, as long as you meet business owners with websites.
• Network online. Alternatively, you can network online on professional platforms like LinkedIn. Try creating content and engaging with others, and you’ll grow your connections in no time. 

12) Replace Broken Links

Broken link building is a widespread SEO strategy. It can be useful to any online business — but especially to eCommerce brands with limited link building opportunities. 

This strategy comes down to finding broken (404) links and replacing them with your own: 

You can use a tool like SEO Minion to find broken links faster. 

When you find them, check if you already have URLs that could replace them: 

• Consider the context — does your page match the existing anchor text and the content surrounding it? 

👍 If yes, then you only have to ask the site owners to replace the broken link with one to your page. Most will be happy to do so, as they don’t want to direct their readers to 404 pages anyway.

And if you can’t find contact info on the website, use Hunter — a tool that scrapes the web for email addresses.

👎 If you don’t have suitable content, you first need to create it. It’s important you don’t bombard potential partners with irrelevant links, especially if you want to build long-term relationships. 

If you can’t create suitable content yourself, hire a writer or have a link building agency do it for you. 

13) Steal Your Competitors’ Links

A competitor backlink analysis can help you pinpoint easy eCommerce link building opportunities.

This strategy helps you find websites linking to your competitors but not to you. 

In theory, the majority of those websites will want to link to you, too, because they’re obviously interested in your niche.

However, some website owners make exclusive deals with eCommerce businesses that don’t allow them to link to or promote similar brands. 

So, you shouldn’t expect to get a link from every site linking to your competitors. In fact, reaching out to some of them may end up being a complete waste of time. 

To find websites that are likelier to link to you, do this: 

💡 Search for sites that link to two or more of your competitors instead of sites that link to only one. 

Most link building tools will let you set filters that make that possible. 

Moz’s Link Intersect tool, for example, let’s you analyze multiple URLs at once. Your report will only include domains linking to all the sites you’ve entered:

Again, these domains are likely to link to your eCommerce site because they’re already linking to several of your competitors. 

This tells you two things. 

• One, the domains you find are probably interested in your niche.
• Two, they probably don’t have exclusive deals with your competitors.

All that’s left to do is reach out and see how you can get a placement. 

Which Link Building Strategy Should You Choose For Your eCommerce Business?

eCommerce brands should combine different strategies to reach their goals. 

In the beginning, you may want to invest in more cost-effective strategies, like creating FAQ sections or finding unlinked brand mentions. 

As your business grows, you’ll probably need to diversify your methods to find new link building opportunities. That may be the right time to invest in influencer or affiliate marketing. 

But it’s always best that you decide for yourself. Here are three questions to help you determine which strategy to use:

• Do I have the necessary expertise? — Some strategies require more expertise than others. For example, answering FAQs is relatively easy, while establishing affiliate partnerships is relatively difficult for most people.
  
  
• Can I afford this? — Some strategies also require bigger investments than others. For example, well-known influencers often have high fees, while you could find and replace broken links for free.

• Do I have time for this? — How much time you’ll need to build links using any one strategy is subjective because it largely depends on your expertise and budget. But you could say that some strategies require more time than others. For example, attracting links with FAQ sections usually takes more time than getting links from influencers.

If you don’t have the necessary expertise or time to build links, you can always hire a link building agency to do it for you.

FAQs

What is eCommerce link building? 

eCommerce link building is the process of building links to ecommerce websites for SEO purposes, such as improving rankings on search engines.

Do eCommerce sites need backlinks? 

Yes, eCommerce sites need backlinks if they aim to rank high in search engines (like Google) and get more organic and referral traffic. Other factors influence this too, but experts generally believe that backlinks are the 3rd most important ranking factor — just after high-quality content and keywords.

What do backlinks look like? 

Backlinks look like normal links; they’re only considered “backlinks” from a website owner’s perspective.

Which backlink is the best? 

There’s no one best backlink. But there are low- and high-quality links. The quality depends on the DA of the referring domain, link type (dofollow vs nofollow), anchor text, etc.

Getting high-quality links is difficult. But we can guarantee it. 

We’ve been in the link building industry for almost a decade, so we now have access to exclusive publications like Forbes, IB Times, Entrepreneur, and many more. 

When you work with us, you get to place your links on these and similar authoritative websites. That means you get high-quality links that can provenly increase your rankings and traffic in a matter of weeks.

If you’re interested in available link placements, set up a free consultation today. 

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