Driving traffic to the pages of your e-commerce site is essential. Without eyes on the pages, you have no sales. Link building is a great way to get people to connect with your pages and products, but do you know how to do it?
E-commerce link building is not the same as getting links to other types of sites. Google applies a particularly high level of scrutiny to sites where money changes hands.
Professional link builders devote entire teams and specialties just to e-commerce, so consider passing this task on to a company that can do it for you while following the latest regulations and utilizing the latest technologies. They’ll use strategies like these to make sure you get the best, most valuable links and avoid penalties:
#1. Update Your Product Listings
Before you do anything else, take time to polish your pages. Your product listings need to be updated and complete before you make an effort to increase your page rank with links. Although you may not consider your product listings “content,” Google does and will view your site as less authoritative if they are out of date, inaccurate, or simply copied and pasted. Make sure each product has its own unique, clear, and succinct description.
#2. Get an SSL Certificate
Making your site safe is also essential to establishing authority and credibility. Google will want to see that your site has features to prevent data theft and keep the site and its users secure. These features also make potential customers feel more secure, increasing the chance that they will make a purchase on your site.
A good way to do this is to obtain an SSL certificate. The certificate enables an encrypted connection, authenticating your website and communicating to visitors (and Google) that it is safe and secure. An SSL certificate is essentially a requirement for any site that asks users to input personal information and credit card data.
#3. Cultivate Customer Reviews
Customer reviews do more than give people the opportunity to evaluate your products. A review feature is a helpful tool for many reasons. It allows you to showcase the value and quality of your products to potential buyers. It can also help you to evaluate your products and notice patterns of negative feedback.
Consider customer reviews to be E-A-T content—they help you organically establish expertise, authority, and trustworthiness by providing unbiased opinions about your products. By building your site’s credibility, reviews signal Google that you deserve a higher page rank. Google tends to rank sites with a lot of positive reviews higher when presenting results. When you set up a review feature, be sure you can check the posts before they go live. This allows you to sort out any spam reviews or unfairly or excessively negative comments that could hurt your site.
#4. Create a Blog For Your Site
A blog is another valuable tool for creating E-A-T content to raise your authority in the eyes of Google’s search rankings. By posting regular, high-quality, and valuable content on your blog, you show Google and others that you are an expert on your topic. This gives you authority and establishes trust with readers.
It’s helpful to have more content on your site than just product pages. A blog diversifies your page and should not be an afterthought. Create fresh, well-written content that is relevant to your products and readers. Link to high-authority sites as sources, and consider employing professionals to help you build links from high-authority sites back to your own pages.
#5. Use a Content Explorer Tool
Setting up your page for link building can get complicated. You can do everything right and still struggle to rank. Take your efforts to the next level by gathering and using data to your advantage. A content explorer tool is essentially a searchable database for keywords, content, and trends your competitors use.
There are nearly endless ways to use this kind of information to your advantage. For instance, use the tool to find out which keywords your potential customers search for most. You can then organize your product listings and pages to match those searches.
Using these tools can seem overwhelming, but SEO specialists have created guides, like PureLinq’s overview of using Ahrefs Content Explorer for e-commerce link building, which can help.
Building E-Commerce Links Takes Time and Expertise
These tips should get you off to a good start in your link-building project. Because e-commerce is more complicated than other types of sites, be patient. It will take time and learning to launch a successful link-building campaign, but the payoff will be evident when your brand is elevated, and the orders start rolling in.