Tips for Link Building on your E-Commerce Site

05/01/2016

Tips for Link Building on your E-Commerce Site

For those with an e-commerce business, building links should be an important part of your marketing and SEO strategy. Not only does having links to your site from others help in creating new website traffic to yours, having a good quantity and good quality links can be instrumental in where Google places your site in the search engine rankings.

So we know that we need to have links to your site. But how do you actually go about getting them? There are a few strategies that are commonly used, some more effective than others, so here are some tips on building links to your e-commerce website.

Your website
It is not always easy to get people to link straight through to your e-commerce website. Afterall, who would want to include a link through to product pages without anything else interesting to show? Make your website interesting. Make your website unique. Make your website something that people would want to talk about. And this way you are much more likely to get yourself some external website links.

The best way to get a website that people will want to link to, is through its design. It is worth getting a good web designer to help you to come up with a beautiful, interesting or cleverly designed site, that people will want to talk about,create a hyperlink to link to and then help you to your e-commerce success.

Make sure that each product has its own page so that any product links can go straight through to the product.

Your Competitors
A good way to get started with e-commerce link building is to look to see what links your competitors have. You can use programmes such as open site explorer to see what their backlinks are, and from this see if you can use any of these links. This is a quick and easy way to get started in creating e-commerce hyperlinks from outside, to your site.

Your Products
If you are going to start pushing your products individually, start with your most popular and best sellers. For most business owners, the products to start with will be obvious, but you can also use Google Analytics data to help if you need it.

Make your individual product pages content rich, with the following…

• Good quality images, clearly showing the product, and preferably from more than one angle.
• Publish research data which is embeddable - such as buying trends or customer behaviour. If you can’t find this information, it is worth hiring a market research company.
• Contests are a good way of getting people interested in your business and visiting your product pages. Think about getting them involved with contests which have something to do with your business - for example, designing a new cake design or a cartoon about your product. You should also make the prize related to your products - this way you will get only people who are interested in your products entering your contest.
• By offering a gift or trial in exchange for a survey, you can not only gain valuable information, but also direct people to your product pages, also helping out your e-commerce SEO.

Your Friends and Family
It might seem quite obvious, but this is based on that old fashioned concept, if you don’t ask, you don’t get. For some easy link building, ask people to link to you. If you have friends and family with websites - especially one which have something in common with yours, why not just ask them to link through to your site?

Other people that you might want to think about asking to add in links include:

• Your business relationships - maybe your clients, or people that you buy from, manufacturers or agents
• Current or past employees who have a blog or website
• Any other websites that you might have - but make sure you don’t go over the top with too many links
• Any industry bloggers who you know or have contact with

Press Releases
Another great way of creating e-commerce hyperlinks is by doing something of note and then releasing the news as a press release. You can write about almost anything - from staff fund raising events, to a new member of staff, to expressing an opinion about newsworthy items in your industry. When your press release is published, (given that you have supplied a website link), you will be able to direct people through to your site.

Building Domain Authority
Another good way of boosting your e-commerce marketing and creating more links is through building your domain authority. You can do this by:

• Getting added to niche directories - find out what niche directories there are and get yourself added. It’s best to avoid free for all directories, however.
• Guest blogging - write articles and blog posts which can be posted on other websites and also guest blogging sites. You can then begin to build your name as an authority in your field. Make sure that guest blogs link back to your website.

Relationship Based Link Building
Use Open site explorer to find your competitor’s links which require a relationship. You can then start to work out how they forged that relationship and go about doing the same thing. Some ideas to build these relationships include:

• Starting a blog on your site and talking about industry news and other companies in your field - don’t just talk about you!
• Use this blog to help to start relationships with businesses and people in your industry
• Post in online forums and communities for people to start to get to know you, and eventually see you as an authority and start coming to you for advice
• Start a Facebook page, but don’t just leave it at that, use it to engage with people, gather interest in your business, and start building relationships.

Sponsorship
Another good opportunity to building links is by sponsoring something or an event. Preferably make it something that is related to your business. If you are a water bottle manufacturer, try a sports event, for example, or if you are a cuddly toy maker, you could sponsor a children’s event.

You might also want to think about getting involved in universities as you will not only be able to benefit from the links, but also the exposure that you could get. Think about sponsoring, offering student discounts or taking interns, for example.

Building links to your e-commerce website might seem a daunting prospect at first, but by starting with the simple, and having a website which people will want to link to, you can start to take the first steps. The value of having links to your site cannot be underestimated in your marketing strategy.

If you have any questions about e-commerce, buying and selling online, building effective websites and other online services, get in touch with Studioworx either via email ([email protected]), telephone (+44 (0)1603 274285) or the website (https://www.studioworx.co.uk).