6x Ecommerce Link Building Strategies That Still Work Today
Every ecommerce store wants to rank for the highest traffic and most valuable search terms on Google and AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT & Claude that are transforming how customers discover products.
After all, ranking for commercial keywords and having visibility for commercial questions in LLM’s lead to:
Here’s the problem:
Without quality links, you simply cannot rank in Google, or gain any real visibility in LLMs like ChatGPT & Claude.
So I’m sharing 6 ecommerce link-building strategies that my link building team uses to build hundreds of high-quality ecommerce links every month.
These strategies work for traditional search engines and generative engine optimization (GEO), ensuring your store ranks well across all channels of discovery.
Let’s jump in!
Why Do Ecommerce Stores Need Link Building?
Link building provides a ton of benefits for your online store.
If you haven’t already started building links to your ecommerce site, here are three reasons you should.
Increase Organic Search Traffic
Link building is one of the best way to increase your organic search traffic.
Why?
Because external links are one of the most important ranking factors for search engines like Google.
When you build more high authority links from other websites that Google already trusts – your rankings increase.
And as you know…
Higher rankings = More organic search traffic and sales.
Let’s look at an ecommerce client that my team was working with.
The client’s goal was to increase organic traffic to their ecommerce website and also grow organic sales.
We built high-authority links each month to the client’s ecommerce site.
Over time Google saw that the client’s store was trustworthy because tons of high authority sites were now linking to it.
As more ecommerce backlinks were added, two things happened:
- Google started ranking the client’s store higher in the search results pages.
- Their organic search traffic naturally increased.
It makes sense, right?
High-quality link building is one of the best way to increase your:
- Organic traffic
- Rankings
- Sales
Build Authority & Trust
Think of links like endorsements from other sites.
Google wants to know that they can trust you and your ecommerce website before they start showing you to their users in the SERPs.
How can Google be sure that you are legit?
By seeing how other websites and users respond to your store. Building links is the ultimate way to increase domain authority and trust with Google.
Think about it:
If your ecommerce site is relatively new and you get a link from an established website that Google already trusts – this will increase your store’s domain authority and trust.
Google already trusts the established site. The link from that site to your store tells Google you can be trusted too.
And not only that, 73.2% of SEO experts believe backlinks directly influence the chance of appearing in AI search results. That makes link authority crucial for both traditional SEO and generative search visibility in ChatGPT/Claude.
Note:
Gov backlinks and edu backlinks are some of the most authoritative quality links you can build.
Google tends to trust .gov and .edu sites more than other sites.
Building these high quality links can help grow your own website’s domain authority even faster.
Increase Brand Awareness
One of the most underrated benefits of ecommerce link building is brand awareness.
Link building increases brand awareness twofold.
Firstly, your rankings increase, which means you get more visibility in the search results.
You get a big boost to your brand awareness amongst your potential customers because you are ranking for the right relevant keywords.
And because people are more likely to trust ecommerce sites they find “organically” in the Google SERPs, it leads to more:
That’s a win-win-win.
But there is another way that links help you increase brand awareness…
When a link gets placed on a page, everyone who visits that page sees that link. Lots of links to your store on other popular websites means you naturally increase your brand awareness (and visibility).
Consider the types of relevant websites you are building links on.
You should build links on relevant sites with a similar target audience and a good amount of traffic.
That way you will be putting your brand in front of the right audience.
As an added benefit, your referral traffic will also increase, which can help increase sales.
What Makes Ecommerce Link Building Different?
Ecommerce link building is different because ecommerce websites need backlinks pointing to every different section of the site.
That includes, in priority order:
- Home page
- Category pages
- Product pages
- Content pages
Link building is hard work on its own…
But it goes up a notch when you have to build links to very specific ecommerce pages like categories and products.
The key to successful with ecommerce link building is ensuring that you have an even balance of links pointing to your store’s important pages.
This is different from a regular site, where you focus on building the site’s overall authority before building links to specific content pages that you want to rank in the SERPs.
With answer engine optimization (AEO) becoming crucial for ecommerce visibility, this diversified approach also ensures that your store appears when AI platforms like ChatGPT & Claude are recommending products or services to users.
Quite simple, ecommerce businesses need to be treated differently with specialized ecommerce focused link building strategies.
6x Best Ecommerce Link Building Strategies
These are the 6 ecommerce link building strategies that my team uses to generate results like this:
It’s important to note that the average company that outsources link building completely spends 25% of its entire SEO budget on link building alone.
So pay attention because the strategies I’m about to share might help you save money on your overall link building budget. Read through all the strategies, pick a couple you like and implement them until you get results.
1. Create Link Worthy Content
When it comes to ecommerce link building…
High quality content is still king.
Here’s why:
The best way to get more ecommerce links to your ecommerce store is to build them naturally.
“Naturally” means that other websites choose to link to your store because you have great content and products.
Creating link worthy content like this statistics post means you essentially pick up high-quality backlinks at no extra cost or effort.
People like your content, so you get the link.
For example, I recently published a 45-point SEO checklist that shows people exactly what they need to do to rank.
This is a super in-depth post that provides a ton of valuable information with examples of only what you need to do to improve your site’s SEO results.
This kind of link worthy content is very linkable because of the value it offers users.
So how do you create linkable content for yourself?
Start by producing blog posts regularly that your audience will love. You should post valuable in long-form content that:
- Provides tons of value
- Is interesting
- Is relevant to your audience
- Includes images and videos (where relevant)
Digital marketing statistics show that long-form content gets 77.2% more links than shorter content.
Not only that, but long-form content (3,000+ words) generates approximately 3.5 times more backlinks than shorter articles, while also performing better in search engines like Google, ChatGPT & Claude.
One of the biggest mistakes that lots of content creators make is having big chunks of text.
Ensure that you add relevant images to the content to make it:
- Easier to read
- Easier to understand
Leave plenty of “white space” in your content so it is easy to skim and flows nicely.
You should avoid long paragraphs and generally keep each paragraph to a maximum of 3 sentences.
Lastly, make sure your content is optimised for all search engines including Google and LLM’s like ChatGPT & Claude…
Your content needs to be optimised so that it ranks and people can find it. If they can’t find it, they won’t be able to link to it.
Check out this on-page SEO checklist to learn how to optimise your blog posts and articles properly.
2. Competitor Backlink Analysis
This is my favourite ecommerce link building strategy…
Here’s how it works:
Start by doing a Google search for your top 5 competitors with the target keyword you want to rank for.
You want to replicate the backlinks pointing at these 5 ranking URLs.
Why?
The reason that your competitors are ranking in the top positions is because Google loves their backlink profile.
If you can replicate competitor links, Google will likely rank you as well.
Once you have your top 5 ranking competitors, it’s time to find the links pointing at those URLs.
To make the next step even easier, I have built a backlink analysis tool that my team uses in our agency.
It does most of the heavy lifting by showing you which links you should be replicating.
Click here to download my competitor backlink analysis spreadsheet for free.
Now, paste the exact URLs of your top competitors into the spreadsheet.
Next, click the “Click Here” link to access all the backlink data.
Export all of this data as a .CSV file.
Make sure you export as much data as you possibly can.
The more backlinks the tool can find, the more opportunities you will have.
Now the last part…
Follow each of these steps to ensure you get the right data:
- Open one of the backlink files you downloaded from Ahrefs
- Delete the first row of data
- Highlight all of the remaining data and copy it
- Then paste it into Tab #2 of the backlink analysis Google sheet
- Repeat the process, adding each report
Loaded all of the data? You are ready to go.
Click on “Tab #3 – Plan Of Attack”.
You now have a complete list of the best ecommerce backlinks to replicate from your competitors. Work down the list doing outreach to each website.
This should help you snag some high-authority links for your ecommerce site.
Follow my complete competitor backlink analysis link building tutorial to get a more detailed breakdown of each step.
3. Niche Edits
Want an easier way to build links?
Niche edits (also called link inserts) might be your ideal ecommerce link-building strategy.
Most quality links are built through guest posts.
The value proposition here is obvious – you write a great piece of content for another website and in return, the website owners place a backlink back to your site.
Niche edits are different because you are asking the website owners to place a link to your ecommerce site without you providing any content.
So how do you get the niche edit links placed?
My two favourite ways to build powerful niche edit links are-
- Broken links
- Online mentions
Here’s how to do both.
Broken Link Building Niche Edits
Broken link building niche edits are when you find broken links on other websites and notify the website owner about them.
You can then suggest your own website or content as a replacement for those broken links.
Simple right?
It works because you are helping the site owners clean up their website and getting a link in exchange. And the best part?
It’s completely scalable. Look at my broken link building guide to learn how to build these niche edit links at scale.
Online Mention Niche Edits
Online mentions might be the easiest (and most passive) way to build high-quality niche edit links.
It’s common for people to mention your business online but forget to link to you. It’s also a pretty easy fix if you just reach out to them and ask them to place the link!
The key to making this work is setting up automated alerts whenever you are mentioned online. My favourite free tool for this job is Google Alerts.
Login to your Google account and set up an alert for your:
Every time you are mentioned online, Google will send you an email alert with the site that mentioned you.
All you need to do is contact the site and get the link placed.
Cool right?
If you want to step this up a notch, you can set up an alert for your top target keywords and reach out to sites that mention them in your content.
This way, you can build relevant links to your stores most important pages which are usually the homepage and category pages.
Want to learn more about niche edits? Follow my complete niche edit link building tutorial.
4. Sponsored Product Reviews
Do you use tools and software to run your ecommerce business?
With just a few emails, you could create strong homepage links that boost your store’s domain authority. And the best part is you likely already have everything you need.
Let me explain what I mean:
You can offer reviews for those products and tools that you already use. When they publish the review, they place a link back to your online store.
Win-win, right?
I used this exact strategy to get a link from my Surfer SEO review.
Start by writing down a list of every kind of service/product you use:
- Tools
- Software
- Plugins
- Apps
- Physical products
- Services
Now, use a tool like Hunter.io to find the email address of the right person to contact.
Now, it’s time for outreach.
Send an email and pitch your review.
There are some specific things that you need to include in your pitch:
- Introduce yourself
- Tell them how their tool/product has helped you
- Include specific results
- Ask them if you can put together a testimonial
- Keep it simple
The secret to this kind of link building is ensuring that you provide valuable information to the business you are reviewing.
It will make it much easier to get the link later.
(Write your product reviews faster with my product review template).
5. Use HARO
HARO stands for – Help A Reporter Out.
This cool little platform could be your secret weapon for gaining links from high domain authority sites.
What sites almost always have a huge domain authority?
News sites.
Getting a link from a prominent news website can do wonders for your store’s organic rankings and reputation.
HARO is a platform that connects news sites to sources.
Here’s how it works:
A journalist will create a source request on the HARO platform.
This means they are looking for a relevant and reputable source that they can use to quote in their article.
Then a relevant source (i.e. YOU) answers the source request with a quote.
If the journalist uses your quote in their article, they will reference you as the source and give you a link. Sometimes journalists will follow up for more information and even recommend you to other journalists.
Tons of our clients have noticed huge rankings and traffic increases after getting a single link from reputable sites like Business Insider or Entrepreneur.
What kinds of journalists use HARO?
There are lots of different news sites that use HARO including:
- Reuters
- TIME
- Wall Street Journal
- Fox News
- Mashable
- New York Times
And so many more. Getting a link from a site like this is every SEOs dream.
HARO makes that dream possible!
6. Find Unlinked Mentions
In ecommerce link building strategy #3, you saw how to monitor any “new” mentions you didn’t get linked for.
But did you know that you can find old mentions that are unlinked for free?
Let me show you how:
For this, you will use search operators on Google to make very specific searches for your brand and website mentions.
Head over to Google and search:
- Intext: “Your Brand Name”
- Intext:yourstore.com
This brings up a ton of results that could potentially have unlinked mentions of your brand/store.
This strategy won’t cost you any money, but it does take time and patience.
You have to sift through all the search results to find actual mentions of your brand.
After you have found a mention, just reach out to the site owner, thank them for the mention and ask them if they would put a link to your store.
Most site owners in my experience are more than happy to do it!
Wrapping It Up
Now, you have 6 powerful ecommerce link building strategies to help you build more high-authority links.
The truth is that ecommerce link building is hard work.
You need to commit the time and energy to your favourite link building strategy to really start seeing results.
Don’t have the time?
Lots of ecommerce store owners don’t have the time to build high-quality links through effective link building campaigns. That’s why they outsource their link-building needs to professionals.
If you’re looking to buy backlinks, I recommend you use LinksThatRank.
They specialise in building high-quality links for ecommerce stores and have a reputation for delivering outstanding results for their clients.
They’ll take care of the links while you focus on growing your store!
But remember…
Before starting building links, make sure you have read the full link building checklist that explains all the link building process.
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