Building backlinks for your eCommerce site is a tricky process. But it helps build trust in Googles (think of them as likes in social media). They’re kinda a big deal.
So you have an eCommerce store and want to get free traffic from Google to stop losing your profit margins to Facebook ads.
In this post, we will cover:
- How link build correctly
- Common mistakes when building links
- Middleman method
- Influencer sponsorship
- How to do influencer jacking
- Unlinked mention
Let’s dive in and help you out.
Chapter 1:
How to link build correctly
In this example, you have an insulated water bottle eCommerce store. You know the ones that keep your water cold, great for travelling and saving the planet #noplastic. How do you build backlinks to an insulated water bottle? (Who in their right mind links to a water bottle from their website)
Well, it’s the same for almost every eCommerce product… Hence the problem of getting traffic to your store and your products sold. Sure, you can run Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Pinterest ads, run many social media accounts. However, then you’re flushing your profit down the drain along with a lot of time.
Building (the right) backlinks equals more trust in Google and more organic traffic.
Right, you get the point no one will link to your water bottle…… But they will link to:
- The dangers of drinking out of a plastic bottle.
- The benefits of drinking cold water.
You get the drift? You need a blog on every eCommerce website to do content marketing. Then use the tactic of building middle man pages, don’t worry I will explain how to master this later, but here is some vital information.
Common mistakes when building links to eCommerce
The most common and wrong way of building links is to build lots of backlinks straight to your money pages. Money pages are pages that bring money for your business.
You don’t want to build links straight to these pages because… they tend to be spammy paid for links, which Goggle HATES!
The main links built are ether from web.20 and PBN backlinks. Both will get found out by Google over time.
Web.20 backlinks are generally low quality with little authority and have spun articles plastered all over them.
Google finds these easily because they are from Blogspot or subdomains, and when they scan the articles, they can tell a human hasn’t built them.
PBN links can be done right, (but very rarely) if it’s hidden well but finding a vendor that knows what they are doing can be hard or next to impossible.
Plus, building links straight to money pages on an eCommerce site can be a warning signal for Google.
Let’s jump into the tips.
Chapter 2:
Middleman method
The middleman method is the type of example I gave before.
It’s content marketing at its finest, the content needs to be relatable to your product and link-worthy. In the SEO industry there’re called linkable assets.
In your middleman pages you add links to your product, passing link juice and traffic to the key money pages.
Remember you want the middle man pages to be of high quality and are link-worthy. Like the two examples I gave before. Check out our how to do keyword research. For the best chance of ranking your pages and gaining links and traffic naturally over time.An overview of the middleman game plan.
- You have your money pages. (Water bottle page)
- Websites are not interested in linking to your product (most of the time).
- Because no one wants to link to a water bottle (sorry), you create a middleman, which is a relevant blog post or informational resource.
- The blog post builds authority in Google, which can then be passed onto money pages using internal linking.
Pro tip: Do a little PR and send your article to newspapers. They always need content, and an excellent article will gain lots of high authority backlinks with not much effort.
Pro… Pro tip: You can combine this method with broken link building, skyscraper method, and any other link building activities.
Chapter 3:
Influencer Sponsorship
The rise of influencer marketing is a big deal (more significant than The Rise Of Skywalker). To optimise influencer marketing to its full potential, you do influence-jacking (Coining it!). Which is where you leverage other persons or businesses to gain more exposure.
You can do this for your eCommerce store in two steps:
- Step 1: Find Instagram influencers in your niche.
- Step 2: Ask for a promotion post.
Easy,However, there’s a skill to this, don’t go blindly asking for shoutouts.
How to do influencer jacking correctly
You want to find micro-influencers with around 10,000 to 25,000 followers that also have a website.
With our water bottle product, the niche can be travel, camping, eco-friendly, fitness… and the list goes on. (It’s a fairly broad item everyone drinks water but aims for one area.)
But honestly, it can even be less than 10,000. Generally speaking, it shouldn’t cost much to hire these influencers with this many followers, and the followers are mainly more engaged with their brand. You want to make sure they have a website so you can get a backlink to your eCommerce website along with brand exposure and sales from Instagram.
Plus when they have your product, you can ask for an honest review with whatever review platform you’re using like Google, Amazon, etc. (Four birds one stone) This is the sweet spot to an Instagram sponsorship deal:
- A backlink for your eCommerce shop
- Instagram followers boost
- Instagram brand awareness
- Sales through Instagram
- Product review
Pro tip: Make sure you have rights on the video so you can use it for any future marketing.
How to find influencers and what to message
Step 1: Do an Instagram search for a hashtag or location.
Step 2: Find influencers fitting your criteria. You can do this by accounts, hashtags, tags, places.
Step 3: Send them a message.
Hey {name} I love your feed and your last post about {what it is about}.
We’re a water bottle company that {relatable to the person} (Example: is trying to decrease plastic use. Etc) and looking for influencers to try out our product.
Would you be interested in this?
Personalising the message and not offering a price straight away gets a better response and makes negotiation easier. After the response, say you’re looking for a website post and link back to the product, etc.
That’s all there is to it.
This extra last step is vital, you need to track everything. Put all the information into an excel document with the name, prices, followers, etc.
And monitor for an increase in traffic, sales and ranking on your website you can do this with Semrush. Plus monitor your social media with excel like I have above.
Chapter 4:
Unlinked Mentions
Using the two methods above, you’ll start building traction and getting unlinked mentions about your brand and product. This is the easiest way to build backlinks to your brand and online store! Repeat: The easiest way!
But it won’t work if you have a new eCommerce site. Because no one knows about it… Yet
This strategy will work if you are already established and/or done the two methods above. You can use tools like Semrush to track anytime somebody mentions your website without providing a backlink. You can then kindly ask for a backlink to your site.
Follow those steps to get a list of websites mentioning your brand/website and send an email asking for a link.
Example:
Hey {Name}
My name is …… – I’m reaching out because you wrote an article {Title} and mentioned my {Website} First, thank you. I appreciate it.
I’ve worked laboriously to grow my website and my career, a link from your article would go a long way to help endorse me and build my practice.
I know that demands extra work on your end – so I’m ready to help any way I can. If you can add a link to my site {URL} from the article, I’m happy to promote your article on all of my social media and other promotion spokes.
Standing by…
As easy as that, you just need to find the unlinked mentions that build around the internet using Semrush. Then mentions will build up after doing the middleman method and influencer sponsorship. If you are already established try this out first, then repeat every 2-3 months after constant promotion.
The End.
That’s the end of the post on how to build links for eCommerce websites. What did you think?
Have you tried these tactics before? And which one are you going to try first? Let me know in the comments below.