“I have been behind the fastest growing bed company and the fastest-growing work uniform company in the UK, and spent less than 5% of my time building links.”
You may have heard the term “building links” used by many people selling SEO services, but what they fail to mention is that many people don’t try to build them, they try to buy them.
This is not only a bad practice and often a waste of money, it can also get you penalised by search engines.
When I talk about link acquisition, I talk about building links naturally. I run a white hat agency, and I don’t purchase links or employ bad practices that can damage your business in the long run.
This means building good content that is shareable, and the links grow naturally.
Links Are a Result of Ranking, Not a Cause of It
There is a lot of assumption that if you get good links you will rank well. I flip this concept: if you rank well, you will get good links.
Think about it. If you rank high in search engines, more people will see your website. The more people that see your website, the more the chances increase of them using it as a source for information or sharing your content. The more people will want to reference your site or use your website in industry articles and guides.
Getting a page good enough to rank and get cited in the first place does not happen by accident. It takes content that is genuinely better than what is already out there, built and structured the right way.
I Know What I Know
This may seem counterintuitive to what you will hear from most SEO agencies. But I only know what I know through experience.
I know that by focusing on quality and relevancy, you build links at a slower rate. I am comfortable with this, this is how it is supposed to be, after all, natural.
I have ranked websites above others with much stronger domain authority on paper. I have resisted offers for link exchanges and manipulative schemes, as it does not fit with my approach to growing ecommerce brands.
Most of my approach was formed just after I left university in 2013. When I began learning SEO, multiple companies had just been hurt by a Google algorithm update in 2012 called the Penguin update.
This was massive in the industry at the time, as Google penalised companies for link manipulation practices. So from the outset my thought process was, I’m going to keep on the right side of search engines by following best practice guidelines, and it has only served me well.
I have spoken to many SEOs in my industry who still act in shock when I tell them I do not place too much time on link acquisition for clients. But I have achieved so much success without devoting a large proportion of retainer time to them, so why would I start now?
Before I set up Frankenstein Digital, I worked for another agency as an SEO consultant, and more traditional link building was part of the general work employed there. I never saw any benefit of it to the clients for whom this was performed.
Sure, it may be easy to put on a monthly report: thirty backlinks built this month. But were they worth it? Relevance and quality beats quantity all day long, this is a very important consideration.
All good things take time to build, and link building is like this too.
Also put yourself in the shoes of search engines. They can spot link manipulation a mile off now. They have a good idea of sites who sell links, PBNs, link exchange patterns, and red flags in the number of links you are acquiring over specific time frames.
In fact, I would say I have spent as much time dissuading business owners about links as actually promoting them.
I have had many business owners spring on me, “I’m buying 100 links from some guy on Fiverr,” or, “this company has offered to link to my site for £500.”
In most cases they are throwing money away, in the worst cases they are actually harming their website.
A big part of this comes from impatience in my opinion. You can’t blame a business owner for wanting his site to rank really well, but the danger is that with this impatience, comes risk taking.
If you set up a new shop it will take time for search engines to trust it, especially if you are targeting competitive national terms.
Good Links
When I look for links for ecommerce brands, I want to focus on related and authoritative links. Simply put, these are links from places of high relevance and high trustworthiness.
The rest of the links you pick up are natural and not forced. A distinction is made when comparing link acquisition for a business targeting national terms compared to a local business focusing on local SEO, where the strategy is slightly different.
Highly Relevant Links
Say your retail business sells furniture, and you are a stockist for 100 brands. These brands often have websites where they list their retailers who sell their goods.
This is the type of highly relevant link you should be acquiring for your website. You can simply email them and ask to be placed on their retailers section.
High Authority Links
When a journalist from an authoritative source such as the BBC is doing an article about the pros and cons of wooden outdoor furniture, sometimes they seek an expert opinion on the topic and link back to your website.
You want to be in the mix here, using your expertise to your advantage. By sharing your knowledge with the world, you will be rewarded with links from authoritative sources, and they pass some of this trust through to your website.
In the industry, people use terms such as link juice or link equity to describe how one website can pass some of its authority from one site to another. This is where the value behind links comes from.
If a trustworthy site links to your website, you build confidence with the search engines that you are a reputable outfit, and in theory have a better chance of ranking for the terms you target with your website.
Link Acquisition by Page Type
Not every page on an ecommerce site earns links the same way. Product pages, collection pages, and your homepage each need a different approach.
Product pages tend to earn links when they are featured for solving a specific problem, or when you are listed as an official stockist. Gift guides, “best of” roundups, comparison articles, review sites, and manufacturer retailer directories are the places these links tend to come from.
Collection pages earn links a little differently. Rather than being featured for a single item, they earn links by being a genuinely useful resource, not just a grid of products. Buying guides, industry blogs, and local directories and press for local pages are where this tends to happen.
Your homepage usually earns links through brand mentions and coverage rather than a specific piece of content, things like business directories, partnerships, and supplier lists. Because the homepage usually carries the most authority on the site, these links matter, they pass that authority through the rest of the site.
My Approach to Links
When I look to build links for an ecommerce brand, my first thought is not to look outside the website, my first thought is to look inwards.
Is your content worthy of being shared? You need to go above and beyond your competitors in any areas you can, to make your page the best it can possibly be, from both a written content and functionality perspective.
In practice, that means I do the research to find out what is actually worth writing, build it properly, and make sure it is structured on your site so it gets found and cited. Sometimes that is turning your own sales data or trends into something journalists want to reference, other times it is building the guide or tool that is better than anything else out there in your sector.
Once this is achieved, your pages will have a better chance of ranking higher, and you will then pick up more backlinks from a higher placement in search engines. This is the objective and the approach I take for clients: content-led link acquisition.
A Risk-Free Link Strategy
If you have an ecommerce store and want a long-term link acquisition strategy, you can follow this simple guide.
Step 1
Get a list of every relevant directory in your area. If you sell furniture, Google as many furniture directories as you can and try to get listed in them. If they want money for placement, check their domain rating and traffic first.
Get in touch with furniture magazines, podcasters, thought leaders, and influencers, and explore any opportunities for exposure.
Step 2
Go through all your suppliers to see if they have a place to link to your website as an official stockist. Speak to the rep or email your contact there.Anyone you have business dealing with in your industry, see if an opportunity exists to link to your site that will help buyers find your site.
Step 3
Sign up to a digital PR platform like Qwoted. Set up an alert for your target terms, such as “furniture”, and if a journalist ever requests expert input, you will get an alert and can send them your pitch. If successful, you could be rewarded with a link in a highly authoritative publication.
And that’s it, rinse and repeat. This is a solid, no-frills link building guide that will put most e-Commerce businesses in a good place.
Building Brand Entity
Links are not the only signal that tells search engines who you are and whether to trust you. Search engines, and now of course AI platforms, understand brands as entities; they are not just judged on follow backlinks.
An unlinked mention of your brand, in an article, a forum thread, or a social post, still tells search engines that people are talking about you. You do not need a hyperlink attached for that mention to count towards how your brand is understood.
Consistency also plays a part. The same business name, description, and details appearing across your website, social profiles, directories, and review platforms all reinforce the same picture of who you are.
This is why I think about digital PR and brand visibility alongside pure link acquisition, not as a separate activity. Getting your business talked about in the right places builds brand entity and authority over time, whether or not every mention comes with a link attached.
What I Won’t Do
I run a white hat agency, and I won’t pay for links or build links using unethical practices. I have been around long enough to see many businesses impacted by chasing misplaced promises, only to cause themselves damage in search engines through spammy practices and link manipulation methods.
If you are after this kind of service, this isn’t the agency for you.
If you want to build genuine, lasting link acquisition for your ecommerce store, get in touch and I will talk you through how I would approach it for your site.
