Link Building Strategies for Ecommerce Sites
Link building for ecommerce is fundamentally different from link building for blogs or service businesses.
Product pages don't naturally earn links the way informative articles do. Collection pages are commercial entities that publishers hesitate to cite. The transactional nature of ecommerce means many traditional link building tactics simply don't apply in the same way they work for content publishers.
But links remain crucial for ecommerce SEO. Domain authority influences rankings across your entire site, and competitive categories often require substantial link profiles to achieve visibility. This guide covers link building strategies that actually work for online stores, focusing on tactics designed for commercial sites rather than content publishers.
Why Ecommerce Link Building Is Different
The Product Page Problem
Blog posts earn links because they provide information people want to reference, cite, or share with their audiences. Product pages exist to sell products, which is fundamentally different from being citable resources.
The challenge manifests in several ways. Product pages rarely earn natural links because they don't serve as sources for other content creators. Collection pages are inherently commercial, making them inappropriate for most editorial linking. Traditional "create great content and links will come" advice doesn't directly apply when your primary pages are designed for transactions.
The solution requires creating linkable assets separate from your commercial pages. By developing resources that earn links on their own merits, you build domain authority that benefits your entire site. Internal linking then passes that authority to your commercial pages, improving their ranking potential.
Commercial Intent Bias
Publishers and bloggers typically hesitate to link to commercial content, creating a structural barrier for ecommerce sites.
The perception problem runs deep. Linking to stores feels like endorsement or advertising to many publishers. Product pages don't add informational value that would justify citation in most editorial contexts. Commercial links can feel inappropriate or even suspect to readers, making publishers cautious.
The solution again involves earning links to non-commercial content that establishes your authority and expertise. A comprehensive buying guide or original research earns links on editorial merit while building domain-wide authority that benefits every page on your site.
Linkable Asset Strategy
Resource Content
Creating genuinely useful resources in your product space provides the foundation for sustainable link building. These assets earn links because they help people, not because they sell products.
Buying guides represent one of the most effective resource types for ecommerce. Comprehensive guides to product selection in your category help potential customers make better decisions. The key is creating genuinely helpful content rather than thinly-veiled promotion. A mattress retailer creating "The Complete Guide to Mattress Types and Which Is Right for You" provides real value that other sites will reference when discussing mattress selection.
How-to content addresses problems your customers face, creating citation opportunities. Instructional content related to your products helps users accomplish goals. A running shoe store creating "How to Choose Running Shoes Based on Your Foot Type" serves potential customers while earning links from fitness publications, running blogs, and health resources.
Educational resources establish expertise through deep dives into topics your audience cares about. A coffee equipment retailer creating "The Science of Coffee Extraction" demonstrates expertise while providing genuinely interesting content that coffee enthusiasts and publications will reference and share.
Original Research and Data
Data earns links because it's quotable and unique. Original research provides something other content creators can't find elsewhere, making your site a necessary citation.
Customer surveys leverage your access to people in your market. Survey your customer base about their preferences, challenges, or behaviors, then publish findings as industry insights. A home fitness equipment retailer publishing "2025 Home Fitness Equipment Consumer Survey" creates citable data that fitness publications, industry analysts, and other content creators will reference.
Internal data, properly anonymized, provides unique insights into your market. Aggregate sales trends, popular product patterns, and seasonal shifts all tell stories about your industry. "What 10,000 Orders Tell Us About Running Shoe Preferences" offers insights no one else can provide, making it highly linkable.
Product testing results from systematic comparisons establish authority through rigorous methodology. "We Tested 15 Standing Desks: Here's What We Found" provides objective evaluation that other sites will cite when discussing the category.
Interactive Tools
Tools earn links because they provide ongoing value that content creators want to share with their audiences.
Calculators solve specific problems users face. Product sizing calculators help customers choose correctly. Cost comparison tools aid purchase decisions. ROI calculators demonstrate value for considered purchases. A jewelry store's ring size calculator becomes a resource that wedding planning sites, fashion blogs, and other publishers link to as helpful for their audiences.
Quizzes provide personalized recommendations that engage users. Product recommendation quizzes help customers find the right option. Fit finders match body types or preferences to products. Style matchers connect aesthetic preferences to product selections. A "Find Your Perfect Running Shoe" quiz earns links from running and fitness publications directing their readers to helpful resources.
Configurators enable customization that demonstrates product possibilities. Product builders for customizable items create shareable experiences. Bundle creators help customers assemble complete solutions. Comparison tools enable side-by-side evaluation. A custom PC builder tool becomes an industry resource that tech publications and forums reference.
Outreach-Based Link Building
Digital PR
Earning press coverage that includes links requires treating media outreach as a distinct discipline from other link building approaches.
Product launches provide natural news hooks when executed strategically. New product announcements to relevant media can earn coverage when products are genuinely newsworthy or trend-relevant. The key is identifying what makes your launch interesting to publications beyond the fact that you want coverage.
Founder stories offer human interest angles that publications often seek. Business origin stories with compelling narratives attract entrepreneurship and business media. Mission-driven companies with authentic purpose can earn coverage in publications covering social enterprise or values-driven business.
Expert commentary positions you as an industry voice. Industry trend commentary on developments in your space demonstrates expertise. Responding quickly to relevant news through newsjacking connects your expertise to current interest. Offering expert quotes for journalists establishes relationships that lead to ongoing coverage.
Executing digital PR effectively starts with building a media list of relevant journalists and publications covering your industry. Create newsworthy angles for your business or products that give journalists reasons to cover you. Craft concise, professional pitches that respect journalists' time and clearly communicate value. Follow up appropriately without becoming a nuisance. Build relationships over time rather than treating each outreach as a transaction.
Manufacturer and Supplier Links
Leveraging existing business relationships often yields easy wins that require little creative effort.
Retailer pages on manufacturer websites often list authorized sellers. Many manufacturers maintain "where to buy" pages or authorized retailer directories. If you sell products from known manufacturers, check whether they offer retailer listings and request inclusion if you're not already featured.
Supplier links through featured retailer programs or case studies provide additional opportunities. Suppliers who value your business may be willing to feature you as a success story. Co-marketing opportunities that benefit both parties can include link exchanges that serve legitimate business purposes.
Executing this approach involves identifying all manufacturers and suppliers you work with, then checking their websites for retailer or partner pages. Request inclusion where you're not already listed. Propose case studies or feature opportunities that serve their marketing needs while providing your link.
Resource Page Link Building
Getting included on curated resource pages represents a targeted approach to earning relevant links.
Industry resources like association resource pages, buying guide roundups, and category resource lists often accept submissions of genuinely useful content. Search for "[your category] resources" or "[your category] buying guide" to identify pages that link to competitors or similar content. Reach out with your relevant content as a potential addition, focusing on genuinely useful resources rather than product pages.
Broken Link Building
Replacing broken links with your content provides clear value to site owners while earning links for you.
The process involves finding resource pages in your niche, then identifying broken links on those pages where the original content is no longer available. Create or identify existing content on your site that could serve as a replacement for the broken link. Reach out to the site owner offering your content as a replacement that helps their readers while fixing their broken link problem.
This approach works well because you're helping the site owner solve a problem they may not have known about. The value proposition is clearer than cold outreach asking for a link without offering anything in return.
Product-Specific Link Building
Product Reviews and Features
Getting products reviewed by relevant publishers creates links while building awareness.
Product seeding involves sending products to relevant reviewers. Target publications your customers actually read rather than just sites with "review" in their name. Include non-obvious reviewers who might find your products genuinely interesting.
Affiliate relationships with quality publishers can generate links through editorial content. Ensure partners maintain editorial standards rather than publishing low-quality promotional content. Focus on relevant, high-quality partners whose audiences match your customers.
Important considerations include FTC disclosure requirements for any relationship where products are provided or compensation is involved. Focus on quality over quantity, as a few high-quality reviews from respected publications outweigh many low-quality mentions. Ensure relevance to your actual target audience rather than pursuing reviews just for links.
Product Mentions
Monitoring and converting unlinked mentions provides relatively easy wins.
Unlinked brand mentions represent existing awareness that just needs a link. When sites mention your brand without linking, outreach to request link addition often succeeds because the site has already demonstrated they consider you relevant.
Product mentions in roundups like "best of" articles, comparison content, or gift guides sometimes mention products without linking. Identifying these mentions and requesting links converts existing visibility into SEO value.
Monitoring tools like Google Alerts for brand and product names provide free basic monitoring. More comprehensive tools like Mention or Brand24 offer fuller coverage. Ahrefs Content Explorer enables searching for historical mentions that might not appear in ongoing monitoring.
Local Link Building (for Stores with Physical Presence)
Local Directories
For ecommerce businesses with physical retail presence, local directories provide relevant link opportunities.
Priority directories start with Google Business Profile as the foundational local listing. Yelp, Facebook, and Apple Maps represent tier-one priorities. Industry-specific directories relevant to your products come next, followed by general local business directories.
Consistency across all listings is crucial. NAP (Name, Address, Phone) must match exactly everywhere to avoid confusing signals. Consistent business category selection and complete profiles maximize the value of each listing.
Local Community Links
Community engagement creates natural link opportunities for businesses with local presence.
Sponsorships of local events, sports teams, community organizations, and charity events often include links on organization websites. Partnerships with complementary local businesses, local influencers, and community groups create reciprocal relationships that may include links.
Local press coverage through newspaper features, community news sites, and local business journals earns authoritative local links while building community awareness.
Link Building Pitfalls to Avoid
Paid Links
Buying links violates Google's link spam policies and risks penalties that can devastate search visibility.
What to avoid includes direct link purchases, "guest post" marketplaces that are really link selling operations, link schemes and networks, and PBNs (Private Blog Networks). These tactics may work temporarily but carry significant risk.
What's acceptable includes sponsored content with proper disclosure and nofollow or sponsored link attributes, advertising with appropriate link attributes, and affiliate links with proper disclosure. Transparency about commercial relationships keeps you within guidelines.
Low-Quality Link Tactics
Some tactics that seem like link building actually do more harm than good.
Avoid mass directory submissions to low-quality directories. Article spinning and submission to article farms provides no value. Forum spam and comment spam damage your reputation while providing minimal link value. Link exchanges arranged purely for link purposes rather than genuine partnership signal manipulation.
Irrelevant Links
Links from irrelevant sites provide little value because relevance is a factor in how Google evaluates links.
Focus link building efforts on industry-relevant sites where your products would make sense. Target sites your customers might actually visit. Ensure content context is topically related to your business.
Measuring Link Building Success
Metrics to Track
Quantity metrics include new referring domains per month, total referring domains over time, and new links per month. These show the volume of your link building activity.
Quality metrics assess the value of links earned. Domain authority of linking sites indicates their strength. Relevance of linking sites to your business affects how much value those links transfer. Traffic of linking sites suggests potential referral value beyond SEO.
Impact metrics connect link building to business outcomes. Ranking changes for target keywords show SEO effect. Organic traffic growth demonstrates aggregate impact. Domain authority trends indicate overall strength improvement.
Attribution Challenges
Link building impact is often indirect and delayed, making precise attribution difficult.
Realistic expectations acknowledge that impact takes months to materialize after links are acquired. It's difficult to attribute specific ranking improvements to specific links when you're earning multiple links over time. Domain-level authority benefits all pages, meaning links to your blog content help your product pages rank better.
Link Building Prioritization
Quick Wins (Month 1)
Start with tactics that leverage existing assets and relationships. Claim unlinked brand mentions by identifying mentions without links and requesting addition. Request manufacturer and supplier links by auditing existing business relationships. Update directory listings to ensure consistent, complete profiles. Audit your existing link profile to understand current state and identify issues.
Medium-Term (Months 2-6)
Build assets and relationships that generate ongoing returns. Create linkable resource content including guides, research, and tools. Begin outreach for resource page inclusion using your new content. Start digital PR efforts with initial media outreach. Develop relationships with relevant publishers through consistent engagement.
Long-Term (Ongoing)
Sustain effort that compounds over time. Publish original research and data on a regular schedule. Develop additional interactive tools that serve your audience. Create consistent content that attracts links organically. Build relationship-based link earning through industry participation.
The Bottom Line
Ecommerce link building requires a fundamentally different approach than the content-based link building that works for publishers.
Key strategies that work for ecommerce include creating linkable assets like guides, research, and tools that earn links on their own merits. Leveraging business relationships with manufacturers and suppliers provides relatively easy wins. Pursuing digital PR opportunities earns links while building brand awareness. Converting unlinked mentions to links capitalizes on existing visibility. Building local links matters for stores with physical presence.
Focus on quality over quantity throughout your link building efforts. A few links from relevant, authoritative sites provide more value than many links from irrelevant or low-quality sources. The wrong links can even cause harm, making selectivity important.
Link building is a long-term investment rather than a quick fix. Consistent effort over months and years builds the domain authority that lifts all your pages in search results. Patient, sustained effort yields compounding returns as your authority grows.
Want a professional assessment of your link profile and link building opportunities? Book a free CRO audit and we'll analyze your current backlinks and recommend strategies to build authority for your ecommerce site.
