How to Build Links for an E-Commerce Website?
A lot of people, and even businesses, make the terrible mistake of underestimating the importance of link building. It is a challenging aspect of SEO, but it can also be quite rewarding.
For a successful link building campaign, it is vital for you to develop effective content and outreach strategies, as this will make it easier for you to build quality links. Additionally, it will also boost the visibility of your entire site. But if you are new to link building, and are looking for ways to make this happen, you may not be sure about the route you should opt for. Fortunately, here are a couple of link building tactics that will meet and exceed your expectations; despite the fact your E-commerce store has fierce competition. You always have the option to go with a link building service.
Start and Maintain a Blog
By having an optimized blog, or blogs for that matter, for your E-commerce website, you can get incoming links from trusted websites.
The blog you have for your E-commerce website needs to be a part of the domain of your website, or at least a subdomain. If your blog is on another domain, it will do more harm than good.
To get links from blogging, the content you churn out needs to be top notch. If you manage to pull through, other webmasters may share links of your blogs, but only as long as it offers real value.
Links pointing back to your blog pages will automatically improve the rankings of your product pages and domain.
Craft Compelling Blogs using Integrated Content Marketing
Google’s algorithms have evolved so much they only prefer natural links, which should explain why brands have started focusing on content as a major part of their strategy.
What you need to understand is that this strategy does not funnel customers to your product pages, in which case you will need to adopt internal linking to fully integrate your content marketing strategy. Apart from positively affecting your customer’s journey, it will increase the effectiveness of your link building tactics.
Your blog holds center stage for this link building strategy, which is made possible by hosting high quality and relevant content that successfully delivers authoritative links, while offering a natural channel to certain product pages.
Use your Blog to Link to Other Websites
When creating content for your blog, don’t hesitate to add links from other blogs or websites. This does not include your competition obviously, but only other websites that operate in the same niche as your E-commerce website. This is known as guest blogging.
If you are wondering why this is a good idea, it is mostly because webmasters will take note of the link, and if they find your websites to be equally useful, they just may return the favor.
It may sound like an exchange, but it is not. This is actually recommended by Google.
Contact Manufacturer’s for Links
This one is relatively easy to pull off. All you need to do is to contact manufacturers for backlinks. Here are a couple of tips to make this possible:
- Visit manufacturers’ websites and look for a section featuring links from retailers.
- If such a section does not exist, contact the manufacturer to find out how you could be featured.
- If they maintain a blog, ask them if you can contribute.
- If they have a showcase section instead, feel free to participate.
Welcome Video Marketing with Open Arms
By embracing video marketing, you will allow your products to come to life. This can be made possible by creating narratives, walk-throughs and instructional videos.
The medium has a lot of potential, even allowing you to create different content types for your target audience. The types of video content can range from slapstick comedy to how-to.
Video content can make all the difference in the world when it comes to engaging with your customers. If you play your cards right, it can also increase click-through rates. If that is not enough, such content is ranked well by Google.
You can always expand your reach by uploading any and all videos created to YouTube. Once that is done, keep checking back to see how well each video does using Analytics. You will also find out who embeds your video from YouTube. This way, you can talk to said people and request a backlink to your website.
Build Content Assets via Influencers
According to research, millennials are quite skeptical about sponsored messages and big brands these days. This makes it difficult for E-commerce websites to build quality links.
One way of overcoming this problem is by building content assets via influencers. Influencers are those empowered individuals that have a massive fan following.
You can tap into influencers’ followers by offering sponsored content to them. For instance, if you are selling branding clothing, ask your influencers to dress in them and upload pictures on their social media platforms. The pictures would have links to encourage their users to buy the look, and could even have fashion and lifestyle content to avoid looking spammy.
Agreed, these links from social media platforms will not make much of a difference on your site’s organic rankings, but it will attract referring domains.
By following this strategy to the word, you will put yourself out there naturally without having to rely on a high-cost link building campaign.
Look for Complementary Products or Services
Think about the products you are selling to your customers, are there any complementary products or services that should go along with it? If yes, then you can contact other E-commerce websites to collaborate with you.
Feel free to exchange links with producers or shops that sell complementary products or services. If you want to go the extra mile, publish blogs with a backlink to each other’s website.
Set up an Affiliate Program
Setting up an affiliate program is no easy task. You will need to plan things through without putting yourself at risk.
Google recommends that links on ads and affiliate links are no follow, so you need to make sure that this is the case. This way there is no gain, except for the link building benefits you will desperately need.
Regardless of the platform you end up choosing, the links need to be no follow. But if you have your own platform, then the links should be followed.
To prevent your affiliates from getting in way over their heads, make sure they follow a few simple rules:
- For ads that you create and share with your affiliates for advertisement purposes, make sure the links have a no follow tag. These ads are site-wide and can be found in the sidebar, so unless there isn’t a no follow tag, you may end up getting do follow links from the same website.
- For text links your affiliates use, like blog posts, leave the links as they are.
Offer your Product(s) for Reviews
It would be a great idea to identify all those influencers that cater to your niche. Once that is done, send them your product(s) for them to review.
You have to understand this will only work if your product is uncommon, something that is unique. Influencers already get numerous products to review, so yours has to stand apart from the crowd.
If and when you feel confident about product, contact all those influencers from the list you drafted. Keep contacting different influencers until you get the results you wanted in the first place.
Offer Coupon Codes
In the last couple of year, online couponing has become increasingly popular. Thanks to rough economic conditions, buyers are constantly looking for ways to save money. One such way of making this possible is by using coupon codes.
All you need to do is to create a coupon code, and then plaster it across coupon sharing blogs and sites. And since most coupon sharing blogs and sites offer do follow links, you will be able to make links easily and create brand awareness too.
If you are willing to go above and beyond the call of duty, in that case offer exclusive discount coupons for people visiting popular sites and blogs. This way, you will also be able to plan extensive marketing campaigns.
As can be seen above, there are a number of ways you can build links for your E-commerce website. Really, it all depends on your E-commerce store, and what you hope to achieve.
Working with customers, influencers and other retailers will take a lot of effort to get quality links. For your campaigns to succeed, you will need to build new relationships. But the good news is you can always rely on link building strategies to increase your E-commerce store’s visibility online.
There is a chance that you may still be uncertain about your E-commerce store and how to tackle link building effectively. There is no harm in asking for help, especially if you don’t want to take unnecessary risks. For this reason, it would be best you contact the professionals at Link Building HQ.