10 Effective Ecommerce Link Building Strategies For 2024

Boost your eCommerce site's visibility with these 10 effective link-building strategies for 2024. Enhance trust, drive traffic, and increase sales.

As of 2024, there are over 26.5 million eCommerce websites, making the competition steeper than ever. Many ecommerce owners are in search of ways to stand out from the competition and generate more traffic organically.

With more than 4.5 billion global internet searches daily for ecommerce products, your search engine ranking plays an important role in your success. Before Google will display your website at the top of the search engine rankings, you’ll need to prove that your brand is trustworthy.

Obtaining more inbound links from other relevant, trustworthy websites is the best way to establish Google trust and bring more traffic naturally to your online store. Ahrefs reports that the number of backlinks an ecommerce website has directly correlates to its search engine rankings.

In this guide, we’ll review what ecommerce link building is and why it’s important to rank for the most relevant keywords. We’ll also list a few highly effective techniques for ecommerce link-building. Then, we’ll conclude with a few of the most common questions that ecommerce site owners have about link building.

What Is Ecommerce Link Building?

Ecommerce link building aims to generate links from other trustworthy websites that point back to your own ecommerce business. Link-building strategies are necessary for ecommerce businesses to rank higher than the competition for targeted keywords.

Reports show that the top-ranking page on Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than the other websites, currently in positions two through ten. If you want your ecommerce brand to rank high, you will need to build quality links.

Is Ecommerce Link Building Effective in 2024?

Building links is an off-page SEO strategy and yes — it’s still a core ranking factor in 2024. Certain ecommerce link building tactics offer the following benefits:

• Better brand recognition and trust – External customers are more likely to trust your website when they see another trustworthy site linking back to it.
• Increased organic traffic– Inbound links directly correlate with higher search engine rankings, which, in turn, results in increased organic traffic.
• More direct sales – Link building can also help direct traffic to specific product pages, which can boost sales for underperforming items.
• Referral traffic opportunities – An ecommerce link-building campaign with guest posting or links pointing to your site puts your products in front of a new audience.

SEO, in general, is one of the most important methods of driving traffic to an online store. Backlinks should be a good portion of your SEO strategy, especially when it comes to off-page techniques.

10 Best Ecommerce Link Building Strategies in 2024

In 2024, the best strategy for link-building includes high-quality links from relevant industry websites. Here are a few of the best e-commerce link-building strategies to attract relevant links.

1. Create High-Quality Link Worthy Content

Quality is better than quantity when it comes to link building for an ecommerce site.

Long-form, high-quality content is much more likely to generate quality links. Long-form content tends to generate 77.2% more links than shorter ones. Additionally, content that highlights “why” and “what” posts, like FAQs, generates 25.8% more backlinks.

How-to guides, user manuals, and expert opinions on industry topics within your blog are just a few examples of link-worthy content. Relevant resource pages also encourage other websites to link back to your online store. High-quality research topics that cover niche websites can also generate more backlinks.

2. Utilize HARO Opportunities

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a website that connects journalists with industry experts. HARO sends out multiple emails per day with journalist requests for industry quotes. Scouring these emails and reaching out to relevant publications can be an excellent way to build links from reputable publishers.

HARO is becoming one of the most popular methods of building natural links for ecommerce sites. In fact, Authority Hacker estimates that 46.3% of link builders are using HARO in their strategy. However, HARO outreach can be time-consuming and tends to have a lower success rate than other link-building techniques, meaning it shouldn’t be your only method to attract links.

3. Generate High-Quality Shareable Infographics and Digital Assets

Leveraging resources to create high-quality, shareable infographics and digital assets is an excellent method of acquiring ecommerce site backlinks. A website owner who finds value in these generated assets is much more likely to link back to them, making it easier to generate organic external links. Contributing unique research increases the chances of other websites linking back to your blog post.

4. Digital PR Campaigns

Newsworthy PR campaigns can help ecommerce sites generate organic, quality links. Follow trending topics and news stories, and identify areas where your ecommerce business can contribute. Reach out to local and national publications before releasing new products or launching a new product line. In addition to boosting your link profile, you’ll also generate interest in your upcoming products.

Agencies or link-building experts commonly employ digital PR campaigns, but with the right resources, you too can leverage them for your own ecommerce brand.

5. Use Product Feedback Technique

Requesting product feedback is another great link-building method. Encourage customers to share honest reviews of your products. Doing so on their own websites or social media accounts helps your ecommerce site build links. You could also reach out to journalists or leaders in your industry and request that they try out one of your products in return for a review.

6. Do a Competitor Backlink Analysis and Reach Out to Linker’s Website

A competitive backlink analysis allows you to compare your link profile with that of your biggest competitors. Sometimes, these links are all that’s standing between you and achieving those higher-ranking positions in the most popular search engines.

After performing a competitive backlink analysis, you can identify the links your industry competitors have that you don’t. Then, you can reach out to the website owners and offer a guest post or contributing snippet that offers value to their readers. Regularly monitor your competitors to find new valuable backlinks.

7. Broken Link Building Strategy

The broken link strategy involves taking advantage of broken links on other websites. Scour potential link-building opportunities in existing blog posts to find articles or content with broken links. A broken link can harm a website owner’s own rankings, so many are willing to swap out the link for one you’ve provided.

Many ecommerce sites will also use competitive analysis to implement the broken link-building strategy. Find external links on other websites that may have previously linked back to other ecommerce brands but are products that are no longer available, and offer to replace them with your own link. Sometimes, offering to write blog posts or create content for these sites improves the chances of the other sites agreeing to the replacement.

8. Request Product Partners to Link to Your Site

Many ecommerce websites partner with product suppliers to source their inventory. Requesting these partners to add a link to your own site can result in better rankings. Larger suppliers typically have higher domain authority, which means a link from them can significantly boost Google’s trust in your website.

You could also expand your link-building efforts to include industry-specific directories. A quick search for (Industry) + Directory will provide you with a list of online business directories. Some of these may allow you to submit your website, which leads to natural backlinks to your ecommerce store.

9. Start a Discount or Affiliate Campaign

Affiliate or discount programs offer multiple benefits to ecommerce website owners. In addition to regularly getting featured on coupon websites, affiliate programs typically lead to thousands of inbound links for an affordable price. Publishing discounts can also lead to more brand mentions and social media links from relevant websites.

10. Reach Out to Industry Experts and Influencers

Partnering with industry experts or influencers can help boost your brand’s reputation while also generating high-quality links. Collaborating with other experts or influencers can generate co-branding opportunities and more traffic. Partner with other relevant sites or ecommerce brands that complement your products for strategic internal linking opportunities.

These link-building tactics aim to generate natural links. Search engines consider various factors when determining where a website should rank, with trustworthiness being one of them. Backlinks tell Google and other search engines that users trust your website and that it deserves a higher ranking.

Conclusion

Whether reselling, dropshipping, or selling your own products, site visibility and trust are important ranking factors. The number of internal links pointing to your category pages and homepage directly affects where your website ranks for relevant search words. Implementing certain link-building techniques, like HARO outreach or guest posting on trustworthy blogs, helps expand your customer reach while generating more organic traffic.

FAQ

Is it OK to pay for link building efforts?

In some cases, it’s okay to pay for link building efforts. However, Google tends to penalize and deprioritize websites that obtain backlinks through unnatural, manipulative methods. This means that paying for backlinks requires a careful strategy with reputable partnerships.

Do affiliate links count as backlinks?

Yes, affiliate links are backlinks. Starting an affiliate program for your own website can be a great way to acquire relevant backlinks. However, while valuable to an overall SEO strategy, they’re not considered as useful as other acquired link types.

Which backlinks should be avoided?

Ecommerce websites should avoid low-quality, low-relevance backlinks. Remember, quality is more important than quantity when it comes to link-building for ecommerce. Ecommerce brands should also avoid PBNs, which are networks designed specifically for generating unnatural backlinks.