Why Is Link Building Crucial for Your E-Commerce Business?

When you own an e-commerce website, your main goal is to collect revenue. Revenue is the lifeblood that keeps your business running. So, how do you bring it in?

If you ever wondered why some pages climb the SEO ladder faster than others, a little research will point you to a powerful tool that is link building.

Look, link building is not just stacking up links. Rather, it’s about layering them strategically. In this article, we’ll mainly focus on why link building is something you shouldn’t look past.

What Makes a Quality Backlink?

The top 3 bars that determine the quality of a backlink are:

• relevance
• authority
• power

A backlink can totally help your rankings as long as it’s strong in one of the main three factors. Overall, the more of these factors a backlink hits, the better it’ll perform in Google’s eyes.

• Relevance

  Link relevance tells search engines what your website is about. Google accumulates information on keywords, domain names, etc., and cross-references it to any inbound links pointing to your site.

  It is definitely non-negotiable to keep relevant links to your website but that doesn’t mean you cannot cheat once in a while. Don’t worry about always having highly relevant links. And don’t think of vaguely relevant links as totally useless, because some relevance is still better than no relevance.

• Authority

  Authority is level 2 of your link-building strategy. It is determined by the referral domain. A referral domain is a website that links to your website through a backlink. In other words, it’s the domain that “refers” traffic to your site.

  For example, if a blog includes a link to your website in one of its articles, that blog’s domain is considered a referral domain for your site. It’s like getting endorsed by a celebrity.

  You need to show Google that you have some of the delicious link juice from other, more successful, sites. This will make your site seem all the more credible.

• Power

  With authority, comes power. This boosts your site’s organic traffic.

  Imagine your site is linked in an article on Forbes. Since Forbes receives tons of backlinks, the article linking to you is already seen as authoritative by Google.

  By having your link in that article, some of that authority gets passed along to your site, boosting your e-commerce SEO and ranking power.

Try to Keep Your Link Footprint Natural

Google periodically reboots its algorithms to see whether a link is natural or not. This prevents SEOs from exploiting the system by using spammy links.

All your backlinks together make your link profile. Google’s algorithms continuously keep tabs on these footprints to reward or penalize your rankings. This is why you need to keep things as natural as possible.

In website SEO, a natural link is a backlink that feels like it was earned without any coercion.

But the good news is that Google is a machine and it doesn’t always know the nuance. When you use safe link-building tactics and follow best practices, Google won’t spot anything suspicious. One of the best ways to do it is through diversification.

Link Diversity

Link diversity is the randomness that shields your website from being flagged as predictable or spammy.

Google is really good at detecting patterns. It can always point to how and where you are getting your links. If the links are only coming from one or two sources, it’s bad news for you. To prevent this, use a variety of keywords and a mix of branded, generic, or naked anchors.

Your link profile should contain a mix of authoritative links, and pillow links as padding and pushing links. However, you shouldn’t stack up only one kind of link. For example, you have social links or guest blogs— don’t add too many of these as it rubs the algorithm the wrong way.

Link Building: White Hat Version

White hat link building refers to the safest form of link building. Links are usually considered to be white hat when they’re placed in the content after some oversight. This means, the link should be there for a reason, not because you’re getting paid for it. Basically, it shouldn’t feel like you’re trying too hard.

• Use Your Blog Section

  Making link-worthy, shareable content is very important because it helps you get noticed and spread the word about your website. Whether it’s blog posts, videos, or guest articles, you want to keep relevant stuff that’s interesting, useful, or trending.

  Having a blog is a great way to talk about what you’re selling and show off your knowledge. It’s a chance to create fun content that grabs attention and gets people linking back to your site.

• Purchase an Expired Domain

  A pretty sweet strategy is to buy an expired domain and take advantage of its existing backlink profile. In most cases, you’ll want to use a 301 redirect to point that domain to your e-commerce site.

  Google has confirmed that using 301 redirects won’t hurt your ability to rank, so this method is still a solid option for link building. But please maintain quality control!

• Find Broken Links

  Your brand might already be getting attention online, but you’re missing out on traffic because those mentions aren’t linked to your site. In some cases, a link exists but leads to a broken or unrelated page.

  This is a great opportunity to snag some quick wins by using automated tools to fix your broken links, find mentions of your products and reach out to webmasters to add a link.

Link Building: Black Hat Version

Black Hat link building is a bit of a risky territory. However many webmasters still follow tons of black hat techniques to secure backlinks. It’s up to you whether or not you want to go forward with these.

• Managed Link Building

  Managed link building is basically an off-page SEO service offered by backlink experts who focus on e-commerce. And if you’ve got a decent budget, hitting up an expert link-building service would be a smart move. Just let the pros handle it for you.

• Buy Backlinks

  Buying links from a third party is a smart way to build your backlink profile. There are vendors out there who specialize in selling different types of backlinks.

  High-quality links don’t always have to break the bank—you can find good ones at affordable prices. Sometimes, you might even see mediocre links priced higher than expected because website owners set the rates for things like guest posts.

• Guest Posts

  Guest posts are fresh articles published on the inner pages of niche websites and blogs. They offer contextual, niche-relevant backlinks and can be naturally acquired from high-authority sites.

• Pillow Links

  Pillow links give your site some cushion by mixing up your link profile. It boosts trust, relevance, and visibility. Things like blog comments, forum posts, and directory links are examples of pillow links.

Wrapping Up

E-commerce link-building is more important than ever. If you want traffic and sales, you’ve got to focus on building strong links.

Keep your link profile looking natural by mixing up your links and anchors as your site grows. Follow the basics, don’t overthink the whole white hat vs. black hat thing, and just be smart about how you build your links.