Every website should have a good Link Building strategy in place. If you run or own an Ecommerce website, your strategy shouldn’t be any different to other websites; the main aim is still to build lots of good quality and relevant links.
An Ecommerce website does however provide some additional opportunities for links that other website do not.
Link Building Opportunities
There are a few general link opportunities an Ecommerce website can submit to, some are 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 a number of niche shopping directories to help you get some good relevant links.
Supplier websites
If you own an e-commerce 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 juicy 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 your want or own and sharing them with different online communities. Check out our previous post on how to link build using Wish List websites.
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 have 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 (e.g. become a Facebook fan).
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 are able to get special deals before anyone else or even directly contact you should they have an issue, they are much more likely to buy from the site time and time again.
A good start would be to have a Twitter and Facebook profile, begin posting details of products, competitions, special offers etc and build up a fan base. These fans are then able to Re-Tweet your messages and share information 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 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 of the different Link Building strategies highlighted above, it is 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 the customer loyalty.
Image Source
Shopping trolley cart via BigStock
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Hi, thanks for the comment.
E-commerce websites have a tendency to acquire links as you mentioned, probably more so than some other types of sites. It is always good though to have a strategy improve the number and type of links coming into your website, for a more varied link profile and to gain a leg up over the competition. The methods listed above should also help improve brand presence online and find new customers.
I didn’t know that there are many ways to create links for e-commerce websites since I thought those kind of websites already got links from established brands they are promoting like amazon and eBay. It is also nice if there is also word of mouth from their satisfied consumers. In that way, they could already provide honest feedbacks from their viewers too. Maybe I should try what you have suggested so that I could create links too.
What do you think?
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