E-Commerce Link Building Guide for 2019

With the evolving digital world, more websites are indexed by search engines and competition for the top of the search result page is increasing massively. This can be quite a tricky task and this is precisely the reason why companies hire SEO professionals.

If SEO is the driving factor behind ecommerce websites, link building is the gasoline. Efficient and effective link building is responsible for more than 50% of SEO success.

Link building has always been a critical component of SEO, if not the most essential aspect. It all began when Google arrived fabulously on the screen in era of late ‘90s with a radically different and much more effective approach to web search than any other company. This approach was heavily based on the various links pointing at your site from other websites. The more links that you had, the higher you’d rank in Google.

Link building has evolved over the years, making the race quite harder for spammers to compete. Today, what Google really wants to see are editorial links- organic, natural links that publishers include voluntarily. Designing a high converting E-commerce website is impossible without credible links and your website will never live up to its true potential without effective back linking.

Facts & Figures

• The list posts, on average, get 74% more links than any other content type.
• Infographic receives 62% more back-links than other content.
• In a study conducted of 1 million Google search results, links impacted rankings more than any other factor.
• According to Google, backlinks are among the search engine’s top three ranking signals.

Furthermore, if you take search ranking data into consideration, you will notice how high ranking websites all incorporate links and high-quality content.

Link Building Guide for 2019

There is a great deal of misunderstanding surrounding SEO strategies, and therefore, you must follow a reliable and authentic guide that can pave way for your success in the year 2019. Following elements can be of considerable help:

●      Effective Use of Influencers in Building Content Assets

There are different researches which suggest that millennials (who are now the prominent consumer demographic) are increasingly cynical of mega-brands and sponsored messages, which as a result, makes the entire process of link building even harder for e-commerce brands.

This is a challenging task, which has been performed professionally by ASOS, as their ASOS Insiders campaign empowered individual influencers to form strong content assets and build links on their behalf.

ASOS came up with an idea to create sponsored accounts for selected influencers and created fashion bloggers, who would then post images of themselves on the medium of Instagram, and other social media channels wearing clothing by the brand. These pictures would be accompanied by selected links that encouraged customers to buy the look, while also including fashion tips and informative lifestyle content.

This campaign paid an instant dividend to the brand. It promoted products in a real-world setting and offered a unique insight into the identity of the brand. The results have been magnificent; ASOS able to develop an organic and low-cost link building campaign that boosted customer retention rates, and tapped out to new demographics.

●      The Growing Phenomenon of Video Marketing

Video content significantly helps you bring your brand’s products to life through the walkthrough, narratives, and in-depth instructional videos. The biggest gain of this medium is to help you create different types of content for your target audience, from educational how-tos to humorous stories.

This medium of marketing proves invaluable in the quest to build effective links that engage customers and drive higher CTR (Click Through Rates). The other benefit that comes with video content is it tends to rank well on Google with potential for featured snippets.

The most important question for any brand is to precisely know their intended market. It is quite normal to arrive at a position where you end up identifying their differences. Based on these differences, you can categorize them into different buyer personas. This is, in fact, good for the organization as it diversifies their brand’s portfolio.

One good example of clarity of aimed audience and the use of video marketing is of Sophie & Trey, who has been quite definite in their projection of the target market. They are an online boutique and clothing store for “women”, based in the United States. This has helped customers bond with the brand. The firm has enjoyed great success in recent times, thanks to their clear vision.

The brand has come with an innovative idea of coming into direct contact with customers via live video session, where the customers can directly interact with the specialist and can easily convey their requirements, making it extremely easy for both the customers and the business to come up with a win-win situation. This not only helps the brand in resolving queries of customers but has enormously helped the brand in marketing their products.

●      Broken Link Building

Most websites have hundreds, if not thousands, of links. Majority of them internally, while others prefer doing it externally. These links can easily break, and stop working. This can happen due to various reasons. Finding broken links represent a captivating opportunity for you to

• Build a good relationship with the website owner
• Add extra value to them
• Most importantly, get a high-quality link

●      Prime Focus on Product & Link with Stories

Storytelling has been a critical ingredient of convincing bloggers and other people to link to your product and category pages. The best combination is to design your pages with a blend of high-resolution images, videos, and even documents. If done professionally, then these elements help to broadcast a scintillating story for your brand and its audience.

Trifecta Bike Company took the world by storm after introducing a new category high-performance e-bike combining power, function, and design. The company has made amazing videos for people to see the bike in action, specifications, and loads of images from almost every angle. The text used tells a wonderful story.

●      Feature Customer Stories

This has been a good marketing act. When your potential customers can see positive stories from your current portfolio of customers, it makes them highly more likely to convert. This can be extremely helpful for the purpose of link building.

A good customer story can serve as a sample or a case study. For Instance, a writer claiming that a good pair of running shoes really does make a significant difference would definitely link to your customer story about someone who increased their running time after buying your shoes.

The Bottom Line

Backlinks have always been at the crux of SEO, and 2019 is going to be no exception. The sheer number and quality of backlinks that websites have managed to acquire over the passage of time always have been and can still have a detrimental impact on its search engine rankings.  There is hard and fast rule to obtain links. It all depends on how effectively you work on your website, and digital marketing efforts. So, while starting link building activities, it is important for you to keep a check on the content you are putting, and the engagement it is getting. Only then you will be successful in making the most of your efforts.

Author Bio:

Jenny Harrison is a passionate marketing and business blogger. She loves to engage with readers who are seeking B2B and B2C marketing related information on the internet. She is a featured blogger at various high authority blogs and magazines in which she shared her research and experience with the vast online community. Currently, she is associated with www.PncDigital.com, an Orlando based E-Commerce Development Company specializes in OpenCart, Magento, Shopify Web Development. Follow her on twitter @MJennyHarrison for more updates.