Author: Ryan Walsh
Date: 06.06.2026

Running an e-commerce business means that most businesses will face absolutely stiff competition online. Therefore, e-commerce businesses globally need every conceivable marketing edge to help generate more sales.

Now this is where e-commerce link building comes into its own. As we are agency which has unparalleled experience in this space, well we are well place to help guide you on how to build more links for your e-commerce business

 

Key takeaways:

• We explain exactly what e-commerce link building is and how to implement correctly
• We explain how broken links can cause a negative user experience and also an opportunity for some businesses
• We explain how e-commerce business can start out in this competitive business sector

Why is e-commerce link building particularly difficult?

The reason that e-commerce link building is particularly difficult is very easy to explain, it comes down why would another company want to link to that page?

For example, if the page offers super valuable and helpful advice, well businesses need absolutely no encouragement to link to that page. The reason being is self-explanatory.

For example, if you run a business manufacturing paint, and the company manufactures paint brushes, explains in a very detailed yet informative way what makes a good paint brush, well, the company is going to want to link to that work.

Therefore, guides, such as “the ultimate guide” to whatever it is you’re talking about, give all the reasons and rationale in the world to want to link to that page.

However, e-commerce SEO is a completely different kettle of fish

When you have main category pages, and main product pages, what’s the reason for why another business would want to link to such a page?

Why, if you sell, say, a generic item such as a microwave oven, why would another business want to link to that page?

Therefore, this is what make e-commerce link building particularly difficult, because, well, often its products which are sold on mass by hundreds of other retailers. Therefore, the chosen digital marketing company does need to come with a compelling reason as to why another business, website would want to send a do-follow and link equity to that particular page.

How can an e-commerce business obtain more links?

Digital PR campaigns

If your say launching a brand-new energy drink, often the PR team, the SEO company and most certainly the web designers all need to work together in order to generate a buzz around that business’s

For example, there could be an accompany e-commerce shop that sells merchandise to further promote the brand. This could range from anything from selling branded energy drink skate boards through to baseball caps.

However, this is where PR campaigns come into their own. For example, the product might be sponsoring a particular sports super star, they may be putting on an exhibition or simply on stage at product launch.

Therefore, such events allow the e-commerce business selling the merchandise to gain publicity. Using tools such as Google Alerts you can quite simply see where your company or brand is being mentioned.

What you can do then, is perhaps some backlink outreach work. This for example contacting a newspaper who have mentioned your brand, and perhaps ask for a link.

 

Informational keywords

Perhaps through your keyword research, using tools such as Ahrefs, you can see that, people are asking for example, “what’s the best essential oils on the market today”. From this what you can do is start to write “pillar content”.

Pillar content, or content marketing with a very high “EEAT” score allows you to publish helpful and educational guides. These articles could help millions of shoppers around the world find answers to their questions.

Through your SEO team, they can then use something called internal links, helping to spread link equity to the pages which are selling products.

That link equity then helps to improve the DA score for that page. That page is then considered more authoritative by Google; therefore, this is what gives that page the edge, and helps it to rank higher than some of your direct competitors.

 

Brand monitoring

Brand monitoring is just a fancy marketing way of keeping an ear to the ground, and seeing where your business is mentioned and discussed online. Where its mentioned, you could see in what context, for example, it could be another business recommending and reviewing your product.

What a fantastic opportunity for you to then, ask that website for a link.

 

Broken link building

Sometimes you can have page which has the highest possible domain authority rating. That is you could have page which has say 98 DA score.

On that page it may offer very reliable and solid advice.

However, your SEO team has spotted a rather massive opportunity. That is you see a broken link pointing towards what should be helpful advice for any shopper to read.

What a fantastic opportunity for you to contact that website owner, you could then ask them for a backlink to an article that you have written on the subject. Therefore, highlighting the problem of the broken link, yet also offering a solution, perhaps offering a link to a page where you offer more up-to-date advice.

Therefore, SEO companies globally refer to this as “broken link building”- it provides a fantastic opportunity for businesses to acquire good-quality backlinks.

Now, when an e-commerce business acquires a much stronger backlink profile, SEO experts can use internal links to direct link equity to different pages.

 

How do Digital PR Campaigns work

PR work is all about generating a buzz around your brand.

Now, you might think that you need a million-pound marketing budget, but sometimes you do not.

For example, a social media influencer could sometimes just simply talk about your products, or review it and that’s all that’s needs for your brand to be mentioned on hundreds of different websites.

Then the digital marketing team can then use outreach to start to contact those websites and obtain backlinks in return.

Now, even since the very start of Google’s algorithm, when the company used something called Google PageRank, links were an incredibly important aspect when figuring out where to rank businesses.

Businesses with the strongest links often ranked at the top of Google’s SERPs.

This is very much the case today, businesses which have strongest backlink profiles often rank right at the top of Google.

Its then using clever website architecture, in terms of setting out the pages, and how they interlink which then spreads this link juice or link equity across the website.

This is why PR teams need to work with the copywriters and SEO experts within the company very closely.

 

Content marketing is still massively important

If you just had an e-commerce website, which just had products listed, and nothing else, its not likely to rank well in SEO terms, GEO or even AEO.

To improve the number of products being sold, you need to add high-quality content marketing.

 

This means writing guides such as:

• “The ultimate guide to…”
• Publishing thought leader articles
• Publishing original research
• And offering tools and services for free, such as, for example, if you were an SEO company, offering a free serp checker, this can bring in a massive number of visitors and backlinks.

 

Look for mentions of your brand on a routine basis

We would highly recommend that you use tool such as Google Alerts that you will let you know when your company is mentioned. It’s also important to know that backlink building is an ongoing effort, therefore, don’t just build links on a one-off basis.

It’s important to keep building links.

For example, tools such as Google Alerts could be used on an ongoing basis, so that after PR campaigns have run, you can see where your company has been mentioned.

 

You will want to obtain a mixture of do-follow and no-follow backlinks.

When you have a very strong backlink profile, you have the perfect opportunity to improve organic rankings.

That’s not just improving the organic rankings for certain blog posts, but also you can improve the organic ranking for your product keywords as well.

Therefore, this is why the best SEO consultants in the whole world, split their time between optimising on-page and off-page.

You can write the best product descriptions, yet often if there’s not enough incoming link equity then the e-commerce business won’t be seen as authoritative. Therefore, you need to earn many more backlinks with a very high Ahref DA score to bring more link equity to the pages.

How do you carry out broken competitor link building

Websites will often have a number of broken links. That’s pages which are carrying 5xx or 4xx errors. There are some great tools, such as

Screaming Frog which can help you to locate these pages.

However, when your marketing team finds links which are broken on businesses websites, which have high domain authority, this presents a marketing opportunity.

You could simply create content marketing that answers the page that should exist.

Alternatively, you may already have a page which answers that exact question. Then it’s just a matter of contacting the website, informing them of the broken link and then offering to replace it.

The company will often be pleased that you have contacted them, as broken links cause a negative user experience.

What can also happen is that if the company accumulates too many of them, it can negatively impact their search engine optimisation.

Because Google will view a website with too many broken links as offering a negative user experience.

Meaning the website is unreliable: instead of taking a shopper to various pages and offering quality advice, it leads to pages that display a 404 error.

Therefore, you can step in and offer your website link, which allows you to earn a new backlink in return.

Should we be paying for backlinks?

A lot of businesses, such as e-commerce companies, may consider buying backlinks.

But we wouldn’t recommend doing that at all.

The reason is Google states businesses shouldn’t buy backlinks.

Therefore, part of Google’s webmaster guidelines and the guidelines in Google EEAT simply state that businesses should buy links.

Buying links is trying to fool Google’s algorithm into thinking that the website is more authoritative than it actually is. Therefore, often what are purchased are low quality and spam links.

Spam links get indexed by Googlebot.

Once Googlebot detects too many spam links, often a manual penalty or an algorithmic penalty is placed on the website.

How can your agency help us to obtain more e-commerce backlinks?

We have been working closely with businesses to build more links for well over 10 years.

Whether you run a service sector business, or perhaps a e-commerce company, you will often need a lot of backlinks.

These backlinks need to be high quality.

This is where our agency can help.

 

Why not call the team today?

If you run an ecommerce business, and need to obtain more links, then do call our team today.