The popularity and ease of shopping has made e-commerce websites a part of our daily lives. They are easy to use and provide shopping facilities while you enjoy the comforts of your home. Such popularity has led to the creation of hundreds of e-commerce and web stores, if not less to cater to the growing demands of worldwide customers. But in order to make your e-commerce website a profitable venture, you need to make sure that ample customers and traffic is directed to your website. You need to ensure that your website has proper structure, appeal, easy to use and is search engine friendly.
One factor that improves the visibility of your e-commerce business is your website’s page ranking. Page ranking tells the search engine how relevant and popular is website is and decides your website’s position in the search results. There are different ways by which you can improve your website’s page rank, and link building SEO is one of them. So in this article we would find out the importance of backlinks and different e-commerce link building strategies.
What are backlinks?
The literary meaning of backlink is intentionally leaving behind HTML hyperlinks on others’ websites. These hyperlinks are the links of your website or one of your web pages. There are a number of places where you can leave your backlinks which can later prove to be useful for you. But generally website owners leave their website’s links either in the comment section, while writing posts or during guest blogging.
But building backlinks is always not as easy as you may think. In some websites, webmasters make sure that no one other than the administrator can add links while commenting or posting. Even the administrator can moderate your comment/ post consisting of the backlink and disapprove it if they please. Thus under favorable conditions, you can leave multiple links of your website on other websites using this link building strategy.
Importance of building backlinks
So far we unraveled what backlinking is, but you might be thinking why is there a need to create backlinks at the first place? And improvement would it bring in e-commerce link building? Well, backlinking is considered important mainly for the following reasons:
– SEO – Backlinking is a SEO technique which increases the visibility of your website. It helps users to discover your e-commerce website easily. By link building, you spread your website’s link in a number of websites which increases your reach. So, the more backlinks you provide to different websites, the higher the possibility of population penetration, thus higher incoming traffic.
– Page rank – It is said that page ranking is an important factor that decides the position of your e-commerce website in the search results. So by link building SEO, you spread the reach of your website. But you need to make sure that pages in which you are providing your backlink to is relevant to your website. For example, if your e-commerce store is known for selling mobile accessories and you are posting your web store’s link in a blog that writes about motorcycles, then the backlink is most likely to be considered as irrelevant and won’t improve your website’s page rank. So backlinking to relevant websites is the key.
– Post Panda update – Google changes it’s algorithm of the search engine from time to time, and these changes can affect your website’s organic traffic and page ranking. Earlier in 2014, Google came up with Penguin. In this update, the backlinks with appropriate link and link text, that too on a relevant website was considered the best practice. But with the Panda update it has all changed. Panda update emphasizes on social presence of a backlink. So if your e-commerce backlink is only present on different websites for link building SEO, it would be a red flag. So you need to ensure that you also share your website link and content on various social media networks as well, to improve your website’s rank. Also, Panda update gives total focus on good quality content to reduce spams and improve search efficiency.
Tips to acquire quality backlinks for e-commerce websites
Now that you are well aware of the potential of backlinking and its importance for the e-commerce website, it’s time to find out the different ways to implement link building SEO for your e-commerce site.
– Guest posting – You can create a good quality informative content and publish it as guest posting. If you web store sells classy shoes, you can guest post in other website mentioning, “The health concerns related to wearing high heels”. The topic is not related to the shoes you sell but is related to a general yet popular topic of discussion. In the posts, you can provide your website’s link, thus creating quality backlink for your e-commerce website.
– Tracking your competitors – It’s good to be aware of the proceeding of your competitors, as it keeps you ready for what might come ahead. Also, you get to learn a lot and evolve accordingly. But you should make sure that you never copy or imitate them. In the case of your e-commerce website, you should learn from your competitors, especially their marketing strategies. You need to create quality content (as Google’s Panda algorithm swears by it), and adhere to good SEO practices while creating backlinks.
– Product reviews – Product reviews are a good platform to build quality backlinks, given the review is genuine and devoid of any improper content. As the number of unique visitors to these reviews increases, the backlinks tend to become much more potent.
– Infographics – Infographics are considered to be gold mines for getting backlinks. They are generally saturated with tons of information and are really sought after. All you need to do is create a cool and interesting infographics about your web store and publicize it in the best possible way.
– Social bookmarking & blogging – There are a number of potent social bookmarking sites the likes of Fiverr, Reddit & Pinterest which can be used to showcase unique, gripping and quality content pertaining to your e-commerce website and also provide an escape for bookmarking.
All in all, link building for e-commerce websites is an important step and should be dealt with utmost care. You should follow the search engine policies and read about their search techniques to unravel the best possible way to backlink your e-commerce website.
