How to Build Links That Benefit Your eCommerce Store

We'll admit it, building links for your Ecommerce store has got a bad rep. With Google penalizing bad techniques, it's understandable that you'd be cautious when approaching this topic.

The truth is, link building is still one of the best ways to move your store up the search rankings. But these links have to be high-quality, they have to be valuable and they have to come from authoritative sites.

So how do you build high-quality links for your Ecommerce store? You're about to find out...

1. Start guest posting

Gaining links from high authority websites can be a difficult task, but that's why guest posting can work to your advantage. There are many influencers and bloggers out there who have high ranking websites and are looking for people like you to write a post for them. It helps them create unique content that drives traffic, and it helps you get a valuable link back to your store.

When researching influencers make sure that the person you are writing for is relevant to what you're selling. You can easily find people who rank high for blogging about your product on places like BuzzSumo or Traackr. To make your post even more valuable, make sure you link to other authoritative domains and remember that it's best practice to only link back to your site once in the post.

Top tip: If you aren’t sure how authoritative a website is then check out tools such as Alexa or Moz's Open Site Explorer to find out its page rank score.

2. Interview an expert

An interview with an expert is another awesome tip – and we've got Neil Patel from QuickSprout to thank for this one!

In fact, Neil is actually asked to do an interview at least 4 times a week and he never says no! So imagine if you can find an expert within your niche and interview them for your blog? Presumably this expert or influencer will have a huge following, so once you've conducted the interview, it's likely that they will share your post with their own followers – either on social or on their own website!

Neil states that 90% of the time, influencers will share the interview via Twitter and Facebook, and 40% of the time they will link from their website to the post. When approaching somebody to ask them for an interview, make sure you do your research. Find out everything there is to know about them, go with ideas in mind that you'd like to talk about, and make it your goal to build a long-lasting relationship with them.

Top tip: Use TwtrLand to search for influencers in specific skills, so you can base it around the products you sell.

3. Ask your manufacturers

The manufacturers that you work with can be a great source to link back to your page. You probably already have a good relationship with them, so send them a quick email and ask if they'll link to your product pages.

Many manufacturers will have a list on their site that states where customers can buy their products from, so this is the perfect opportunity for you to ask for a link to your site. It's a win-win situation for both you and the manufacturer, so it's definitely worth asking the question.

Top tip: Ask them if they will add you to their 'Authorized Retailers' page, as most manufacturers will use this to direct people to their products.

4. Create valuable content

We've already talked about writing a guest post, but blogging on your own site can also help you gain links! How's that? Well, if you start creating valuable content that people are interested in, you will help encourage other people to link to that content.

The trick is to become the influencer within you niche – and it all starts with the content you create. Your niche is essentially the product you sell, and you will have an audience who is interesting in reading about content that is related to that.

But how do you create content that people will link to?

Your content has to be awesome. Now this is not easy - but with the help of the skyscraper technique – it's possible. Made popular by Brian Dean, the skyscraper technique is a great method to creating awesome content. The idea is that you find the top performing content in your niche, and then build upon that content to make it better.

Come up with a different angle for the argument, update the post with the latest findings, or find something within the content that is missing and add to it. Whatever you can do to make it better, will help give the content more value.

But don't just stop there. Once you've posted it on your own blog you need to outreach it to those people who originally wrote about the topic in question. Let them know that you've added a different insight to the debate, or updated their content. This can help encourage them to link back to your post which will in turn create another valuable link to your online store!

Top tip: Don't just stop at blog posts. Find out what your audience likes and create different types of content such as infographics, e-books, videos and whitepapers.

5. Find broken links to update

This is another Brian Dean technique, but one that works so well. There are plenty of links across the web that have broken links. The aim here is to locate these links and ask the author if they will update it with your relevant link.

Many website owners probably don't even realize that their links are broken, so essentially you are doing them a favor by asking them to do this! A great tool to help you do this is Chrome plugin – Check My Links. It does exactly what it says, helping you locate links that are broken.

Top tip: If you're struggling to find the website owner's contact details then check out Whois, as it will give you the contact info that you need.

Final thoughts

Building high quality links isn’t easy, but it's one of the best ways for search engines to understand how valuable your site is. Your goal should be to gain links from authoritative sites – such as those from influencers and experts. Make sure you don't focus any time on gaining links from spam sites, as Google prefers quality over quantity.

Looking for an Ecommerce solution with pro-grade tools? Then contact us today to see how we can help you sell more stuff!