Ecommerce Link Building Playbook (2025): Rank Higher, Sell Faster

Do you know how many links your ecommerce site needs to rank among the top 3 results on Google? Around 780. That’s a big number, and it’s definitely not easy to achieve, especially when Google is coming down hard on spammy links.

But there are opportunities if you know where to look, or if you know a good link building specialist. But you don’t have to look further. This blog is going to be your ecommerce link building guide with proven tactics to rank higher on SERPs and sell faster.

Let’s Start With the Basics: What is Ecommerce Link Building

Let’s quickly make sure that we are on the same page about what link building for ecommerce really is.

So there are two types of links: internal and external.

Internal links direct users from one web page to another on your website. When a user clicks on an internal link, they’ll be directed to a new page but still remain on your website.

• For example, a link from your blog post to your homepage.

External links are links that direct the user to another website. These are also called backlinks.

• For example, if a blog about fashion trends includes a link to one of the t-shirts on your ecommerce store, it will be an external link, because users who click on the link will leave the blog and be directed to your site.

When we talk about link building for ecommerce websites, we are talking about backlinks, and backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for Google.

What’s the Big Deal With Ecommerce Backlinks?

So why are backlinks so important for Google? Let’s take a crack at it.

Imagine if you have severe tooth pain and you want a reliable dentist. Would you just go to any dentist who pops up, or will you check who’s more reputable, credible, and trustworthy? If you love yourself, we believe you’d go for the latter.

Similarly, if you want Google to believe you’re an expert in your field, you’ll need some authority in the industry and a vote of confidence from other websites, and the “vote of confidence” in SEO comes in the form of backlinks.

But who’ll link to a $5 packet of chips or a $50 t-shirt? Well, that’s the thing with backlinks for ecommerce – they’re much harder to get. But the good news is that it’s possible.  All you need are some effective link building tactics for ecommerce brands.

Backlinks Bring Traffic. This Free Guide Helps You Turn That Traffic Into Leads.

Link Building Strategies for Ecommerce: How to Get High-Quality Backlinks for Your Ecommerce Site

It’s the question every store owner has asked at least once in their career: how to build backlinks for ecommerce? And when they don’t find an answer, they give up and start spending money on paid ads, which don’t have any long-term effect.

The key to real and sustainable growth as a business is ecommerce SEO link building. And we’ll show you how to do it with 11 proven ecommerce link building strategies (with real-life examples).

1. Target Informational Keywords With Guides

Targeting informational keywords through a value-packed guide is a great backlink strategy for ecommerce websites. As an online store, you can access heaps of data about problems your customers face. Solving these problems through an ultimate guide makes your content relevant and authoritative, and it makes sense for other websites to link to your content because you’re providing value.

Here are a few tips that will come in handy:

• An informational guide should target 80% informational keywords and only 20% commercial or transactional keywords.
• Users need answers to their problems, so make your content solution-oriented instead of drafting a sales pitch.
• Consult your customers or customer-facing teams, like sales and customer support, to understand the problems from every perspective.
• Include a good number of facts and figures that support your solutions. Truly valuable content is the kind that other websites can get on board with (and link to).

2. Perform Link Insertions

Link insertions, also called “niche edits,” involve adding links to existing content on other websites. This is one of the easier ecommerce link building strategies because it doesn’t involve creating new content.

Here’s how you can do it:

• Find websites that cover topics in your niche. If you are in fashion retail, find fashion blogs. If you sell cosmetic products, find websites that frequently explore health and beauty.
• Find a specific page that could host your link, such as a page about the latest fashion trends in 2025that talks about a t-shirt design you sell on your store.
• Reach out to the website editor and pitch your link to them. Since they are already interested in the topic, there’s a chance that they will include your link as well.

3. Find Unlinked Brand Mentions

Unlinked brand mentions are exactly what they sound: a website mentioning your brand but not linking to your website. Since this website already mentions you, chances are they can also link to your website. All you need to do is reach out to the website owner and ask them to include your link.

But how do you find unlinked brand mentions? Here are a few tools that can help you:

• Google Alerts. It’s free and very easy.
• Brand24. It’s not free. But it is more comprehensive than Google Alerts.

If you are a new brand, chances are that you won’t find any brand mentions. In that case, you should move on to the next strategy.

4. Replace Broken Links

Replacing broken links is a common link building ecommerce strategy that involves identifying broken links across sites and replacing them with your own.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to replacing broken links:

1. Identify: Use a tool (Semrush or Ahrefs) to identify backlinks to your competitors’ sites.
2. Filter: Check if any of these links return a 404 or 505 error, which means the link is “broken.”
3. Wayback: Use Web Archive to see what the linked page used to contain.
4. Replacement: Find a relevant page on your site that could replace the broken one.
5. Offer: Reach out to the external site owners and offer to replace the broken link with your own.

No one likes to link to a broken page, so chances are the website owner will be happy to replace it.

Keep in mind: It only works if your site has suitable content to replace the broken one. If not, you need to create relevant content and not bombard potential partners with irrelevant links.

5. Learn from the Competition

An easy technique in link building for ecommerce website is to follow what your competitors are doing. This helps you find websites that link to your competitors’ sites but not yours.

• Make a list of competitors in your niche.
• Find the websites linking to these competitors but not to you.
• Reach out to the sites and create a link building opportunity.

Since the websites are obviously interested in your niche, they shouldn’t mind linking to you as well.

But—it’s not that simple. Some websites have exclusive deals with brands, which hinders them from linking to any other site in the same niche. For example, if a fashion blog is linking to a brand that sells t-shirts under an exclusive deal, they won’t link to you even if you sell the best t-shirts in town.

There’s a way around it, though: Search for websites that link to two or more brands in the same industry instead of just one. That way, you’ll know the website is not under an exclusive deal with a brand in your niche and is more likely to link to your site as well.

6. Feature Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

Subject matter experts, or SMEs, are people who have specialized knowledge in a specific area due to their extensive education or experience in the field.

For example, for an online fashion retail store, an SME to target would be the CEO of a popular fashion apparel brand or an experienced textile designer. Similarly, if you sell food items, you can target health gurus, doctors, nutritionists, and dietitians.   

But what does featuring SMEs do for you? Well, two things:

One, featuring SMEs through quotes or anecdotes, will help you build a better connection with your audience. A cosmetic brand featuring a quote about a dermatologist is something the audience probably wants to see, right?

Two, that SME will probably see that you’ve linked to their profile, website, or publication, and they might link back to you and share your content. Also, there’s a high chance that other websites that are looking for similar quotes or stories will link to your website.

7. Develop Special Promotion or Discount Page

Developing a permanent special promotion or a discount page is a great ecommerce link building tactic that can help you get links all year round.

• For example, Amazon's website has a live BlackFriday page, which is currently receiving 24,000 backlinks. Now, Amazon hasn’t landed these links in a year or two. They’ve been accumulating ever since Amazon launched a Black Friday category.
• Nike is another example. Its permanent Birthday Discount page receives over 100 backlinks (at the time of writing this article). And it’s not even Nike’s primary product category page.

Pages like these might not get many links each day, but they harbor a lot of link juice over time.

Now, of course, we don’t expect you to be Nike or Amazon. But as an ecommerce store owner, you can create a promotional strategy similar to the ones mentioned above and target more and more websites to link to you.

You don’t have to run a discount all year. You can do it in cycles, like a Winter Clearance Sale or Back to School, but to avoid losing link equity, you can “retire” the pages when they are not in season and keep static URLS.

8. Build Tools and Interactive Elements

One of the best ways to get links from websites is to build useful tools and/or interactive elements on your site.

• Think of Buzzfeed’s Harry Potter Sorting Hat Quiz. It currently has 700+ backlinks.

But Buzzfeed is probably not the ideal example for an ecommerce business.

• So, let’s take Gucci as an example. Gucci partnered with Snapchat to launch a virtual AR try-on for sneakers. The success story on the Snapchat website is currently receiving nearly 200 backlinks.
• In another story, Nike’s Running Show Finderreceives over 50 links.

Depending on your industry, here are some interactive elements you can build on your website:

• Fashion: Virtual try-on tool, size recommendation tool, style quizzes
• Food: Flavor or preference quiz, dietary filter & smart search, build-your-own box
• Health & Beauty: Shade finder / match my skin tone, before & after sliders, skin or hair diagnostic quiz

These are just some ideas. There’s a high chance that some of these are already available on your competitors’ websites. So, brainstorm as much as possible and try to be a first-mover with a unique tool or an interactive element.

9. Conduct Original Research

Original research is one of the most effective tactics of link building for ecommerce sites. E-commerce websites regularly come across large amounts of data, which can be refined into original research articles informing your audience about what’s happening in your industry.

• For example, Shopify’s Global Ecommerce Statsreport has gotten over 55k backlinks.

Shopify is a giant, but original research is also a good strategy for link building for small ecommerce sites. All you have to do is dive deep into:

• Latest trends
• Numbers and figures about your niche
• Find out what’s working and what’s not
• Identify where your market is headed

And publish.

You are not even required to do all the primary research yourself. But knowing where to find data and how to refine that data into readable chunks is an art. Master that art and you’ll soon get links left, right, and center.   

10. Invest in Digital PR

Digital PR is a great linkable asset that can hype you up in the press and attract links. But—it has to be done right!

Digital PR involves doing something noteworthy to set you apart from the crowd and reaching out to journalists to cover it. If a reputable journalist picks your campaign, it may snowball and provide more and more links over time, depending on how credible your campaign is.

Media outlets usually like to pick up:

• Controversies(yes, some brands engineer controversies to get PR mentions, but we don’t recommend)
• Business partnerships (Disney with Lego, Shopify with TikTok – these partnerships were all the craze at the time of release)
• Celebrity partnerships(Our Place, a cookware brand, partnered with Selena Gomez and got massive links)
• Creative promotions that offer great value (Barnes and Noble launched a unique promotion where it discounted Paramount films by 50%)
• Charity and socially responsible initiatives(REI, a fashion retail store, gave its employees an off on Black Friday under its OptOutside The result? The campaign got picked up by Forbes, The Guardian, Fox, and more)

Digital PR is not that easy – it requires a good amount of resources to pull off a great campaign – but it’s much better than black hat link building that drains your wallet and does little for your actual brand reputation.

With digital PR, you may actually see your sales go up instead of just manipulating search engine rankings.

11. Write Guest Posts

Guest posting or “guest blogging” is by far the most popular link building strategy. A guest post is a blog or an article that you write and publish on an external website, with a link or two directing readers to your site.

Different blogs have different requirements for a guest post in terms of topics, word count, images, and number of internal and external links. A high-DR site may have stricter requirements, but its links also have more equity.

Here are a few tips to find websites for guest posts:

• Look up websites in your niche like Health, Beauty, or Fashion, followed by terms like “write for us,” “guest post,” “submit guest post,” “contribute to our site,” and “guest post wanted.”
• Find guest posting directories and see which ones are ideal for your ecommerce website.
• If you know a reputable blogger in your industry, find websites where that blogger is published.
• Check your competitors’ backlink profiles and look for high-quality guest posting sites.

Remember, Quality Beats Quantity

Link quality matters more than quantity. There’s no debate around it. So your focus should be on getting high-quality links from relevant websites instead of running behind the numbers.

Yes, ecommerce link building is a bit harder. But paying endlessly for press releases and affiliate links is a bit dated now. These strategies are also manipulative and don’t generate any long-term value for your ecommerce business. On top of that, there’s a high chance that Google identifies your black hat tactics and doesn’t rank you.

On the other hand, investing in ecommerce link building with a concrete strategy can generate high-quality links that boost your brand reputation through the roof.

Start your strategy with short-term goals like capturing broken links, finding unlinked brand mentions, and high-quality guest posting. But keep your eyes on the big wins like digital PR, special promotions, and interactive assets. That’s where the real benefits lie.