Every successful website will have a good link building strategy in place. So, if you run or own an ecommerce website, it’s a good idea to have a well-thought-out strategy in place that focuses on building lots of high quality, relevant links. The good news is, having an ecommerce website does provide some additional opportunities for links that other websites don’t. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the prospects to gain good, high-quality links that will help raise awareness for your business and move the needle in the rankings.
Link building opportunities for ecommerce businesses
There are a few general link opportunities an ecommerce website can submit to, some of which we’ve highlighted below.
Online shopping profiles and directories
There are plenty of profile and directory sites that list shopping websites; these will provide some good quality backlinks for your website. There are likely to be several niche shopping directories to help you get some good relevant links.
Supplier websites
If you own an ecommerce store, it’s highly likely that you’re supplying products from various suppliers or manufacturers. Often, these websites will have a ‘where to buy’ or ‘our stockists’ page which is the perfect opportunity to earn a quality backlink to your site.
For even better results, try to earn a link from this page to the exact category page on your site which sells those products. This is a hyper-relevant link as the brand itself is now linking to your site – which means that when someone searches for the brand name in Google, your category page may rank higher than the brand itself (depending on their authority).
Shop comparison websites
Shopping comparison websites (price comparison) provide an opportunity for a link and also to bring in potential customers to your website. Some examples include:
- Kellkoo
- Price Runner
- Price Grabber
- Voucher Code Websites
Similar to price comparison websites, these allow you to post special offers and coupon codes for people to save money when they shop through your website. There usually aren’t any special requirements for submissions as long as the offer saves the customer some money. Voucher code websites are few and far between; this gives you many potential link opportunities.
Wish Lists
Wish List websites are about listing products you want or own and sharing them with different online communities.
These websites present the opportunity to build links to certain product pages, sometimes with the option to optimise the anchor text. This is a great way of creating deep links to individual product pages; you could create grouped lists of similar products to make the links more relevant.
Google shopping listings
Google shopping listings sometimes show up when a product search is taking place, searchers can also browse shopping listings so they can compare prices from a variety of online stores. Getting your products listed in Google’s shopping results is a good strategy; link building isn’t essential for this though, as you simply need to submit your product pages to Google’s Merchant centre.
Alternative ways to build a web presence
Email is a great way of keeping in touch with previous and potential customers. You can request a customer’s email during the checkout process when they’ve bought a product from you. Alternatively, you can include a form on your website and attract users to sign up their email for news, promotions and new product information. Although this doesn’t directly build links, you have the opportunity to regularly update your customer base who may in turn link to your website online or interact with your social profiles.
Social Media Presence
A social media presence for an ecommerce company is great for communicating with your customer base and keeping them updated with new products and special offers. If customers feel like they’re able to get special deals before anyone else or even directly contact you should they have an issue, they’re much more likely to buy from the site time and time again.
A good start would be to explore what channels your target market is using and create accounts on those platforms. You can then start to post details of products, competitions, special offers etc and build up a fan base. These fans are then able to share your content with their friends. The potential for building lots of quality social links here is endless and could dramatically improve your online presence and authority.
Video
Video sharing websites can create links back to your website. You could create a company profile on YouTube or TikTok for example and use it as a platform to showcase products, review products, advertise or even create a competition for your audience. Once the profile builds up authority, the link back to your website becomes stronger. Videos can also display in Google’s result pages; by optimising your video titles and descriptions with keywords it can improve the chances of the video displaying.
Things to avoid
For all the different link building strategies highlighted above, it’s important to provide something useful or interesting for your customer base. If you attempt to spam each and every platform just to get a link back to your website, you have a high chance of people avoiding it completely. You should aim to provide useful information, offer an incentive with exclusive deals and competitions, and interact with your followers.
You don’t have to always talk about your company, products or services either. Making yourself seem genuine and friendly will allow consumers to connect better with your brand and in turn this should improve your customer loyalty.
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