Link Building for Ecommerce Websites: 8 Strategies That Fit Online Stores in 2026

Quick quiz

How should you get links from other websites?

Question 1 of 425%

Does your site already have useful content?

Very littleSome good pagesLots of articles and guides

Link building for ecommerce websites follows the same principle as any link building: a link from a relevant, trusted site tells Google that your page deserves to rank. What changes is the raw material. An online store has hundreds or thousands of commercial pages, products that appear and disappear, and very little content that a blogger would cite spontaneously. Google lists what it treats as manipulation in its spam policies (checked October 2026); this guide covers what remains, tactic by tactic, for a store.

Why is link building different for an ecommerce website?

Three features of online stores shape the strategy.

• Commercial pages attract few links. Editors link to sources that help their readers. A product page with a price and an "Add to cart" button rarely plays that role, so links have to be earned through content, partners or press, then passed on internally.
• Category pages carry most of the revenue keywords. "Women's trail running shoes" or "oak dining tables" are category queries. These pages compete with marketplaces and big retailers, which is exactly where external authority makes the difference. Our guide to ecommerce category page SEO covers the on-page side.
• URLs change constantly. Seasonal collections, discontinued products and replatforming create dead URLs. Every link pointing to a 404 page is authority lost.

The consequence: an ecommerce link strategy combines a few pages built to earn links with a clean internal linking structure that passes their authority to categories and products. Google's ecommerce documentation recommends designing the navigation and linking between pages so that Google understands which pages matter most.

Which store pages should your backlinks point to?

Each type of page plays a different role. The table shows where links come from naturally and where they help most.

Aim for a mix: most links will land on the homepage and the content, and a meaningful share should reach category pages directly, with descriptive anchors such as the category name rather than "click here", as Google's link best practices recommend. Then check that every guide links to the relevant categories and product pages: this internal step is where external authority becomes sales.

What are the best link building strategies for ecommerce?

The eight strategies below are ordered from the quickest wins to the most demanding projects.

1. Get listed on supplier and brand "where to buy" pages

Many manufacturers and brands publish a list of authorized retailers or stockists. If you sell their products, ask to be listed with a link. These are some of the most relevant links a store can get: same niche, trusted domain, and often a direct path to buyers. Start with the brands that represent the largest share of your sales, and check the request process (a form in the brand's retailer area is common).

2. Turn unlinked brand mentions into links

Once a store has some visibility, it gets cited in gift guides, forum threads, local press and reviews, often without a link. A short, polite message to the author asking to add a link converts a fair share of these mentions, because the editor already chose to talk about you. Our method for finding unlinked brand mentions covers the search operators and the message to send.

3. Reclaim links that point to dead product URLs

When a product is discontinued or a collection is renamed, the external links pointing to it now lead to a 404 page. Find these pages (the Links report in Search Console and a broken link checker help) and redirect each one with a permanent 301 redirect to the closest equivalent: the replacement product, or the parent category. Google treats a permanent redirect as a signal that the target should be the canonical page, according to its redirect documentation.

4. Publish buying guides that answer real questions

"How to choose a road bike size", "Which espresso grind for a moka pot": buying guides earn links from forums, bloggers and Q&A sites because they answer a question once and well. Each guide links to the matching categories and products, which passes on the authority it collects. A store that publishes regularly builds a stock of linkable pages without outreach for every link. If you lack time to write, an article generator can produce the guides from your keywords.

5. Run digital PR with your own store data

A store holds data nobody else has: best-selling sizes by region, seasonal demand peaks, the share of returns by reason, price changes over a year. Turned into a short study with a chart and a clear finding, this data gives journalists and bloggers a reason to cite you. One solid study can bring links from media that would never link to a product page. See our guide to digital PR for the campaign steps.

6. Send products for review, with the right link attributes

Sending products to bloggers, creators or specialist sites builds awareness and reviews. Google's position is explicit: links that pass ranking credit in exchange for goods are against its guidelines. In its best practices for bloggers reviewing products (Search Central blog, March 2016), Google asks bloggers to use nofollow on these links and to disclose the relationship. Treat reviews as a source of traffic, trust and brand mentions, and expect qualified links (rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow").

7. Target the sites that already link to your competitors

Sites that link to several stores in your niche (comparison articles, gift guides, specialist directories, partner blogs) are your warmest prospects: they cover the topic and they link out. List the referring domains of three to five competitors with a free backlink analysis, keep the ones that link to several of them, and offer something more useful than what they cite. Our method to find competitor backlinks details each step.

8. Build local and partner links

A store with a showroom, a warehouse or local roots can earn links from its city: local press, events, clubs, trade associations, neighbouring businesses. Complementary brands (a coffee roaster and a grinder shop, for instance) can also co-create content or a joint offer that both sites present. Our guide to local link building lists the sources. If a partnership involves payment, such as a paid event sponsorship, the link should be marked rel="sponsored".

Summary of the eight strategies

Which link building tactics should online stores avoid?

Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links primarily to manipulate rankings. For a store, the common traps are:

• Buying followed links on blogs or link marketplaces. Paid links are allowed only when qualified with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". Our article on buying backlinks explains the risks.
• Excessive reciprocal linking ("link to me and I'll link to you") between stores, listed by Google as link spam.
• Low-quality directories and bookmark sites, also named in the policies.
• Automated link creation with software or services that post links in bulk.
• Requiring a link in a contract, a terms of service or an affiliate agreement without qualifying it.
• Exact-match anchors everywhere: a profile where most anchors read "cheap running shoes" looks built, not earned.

The cost of these shortcuts goes beyond a possible manual action: Google can simply ignore unnatural links, so the budget spent brings nothing.

How do you measure ecommerce link building?

Track a few indicators each month rather than the raw number of backlinks:

1. New referring domains, and their relevance to your niche.
2. Links reaching category pages directly or through a guide that links to them.
3. Rankings of target categories in Search Console (average position and clicks on their keywords).
4. Organic revenue by landing page in your analytics tool, the indicator that matters to a store.
5. Lost links, especially those pointing to URLs that now return an error.

Links act with a delay: expect several weeks before a new link shows an effect, and several months before a category moves on a competitive keyword. The most useful comparison is the trend over a quarter.

How do backlinks help an online store get cited by AI?

ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews answer more and more shopping questions ("best waterproof hiking boots under 150", "where to buy organic bed linen"). To build these answers, they draw on the pages that rank and on the sources they trust: comparison articles, reviews, forums and media. The same links and mentions that help on Google therefore increase the chances that an AI names your store. Our study of the platforms AI assistants cite most shows which types of sites weigh the most.

Two practical consequences for a store: aim for mentions in comparison and "best of" articles in your niche, even without a link, and keep your brand name, categories and product names consistent everywhere they appear.

How can you build ecommerce links without a dedicated team?

Most stores do not have the time to run outreach every week. Prioritize the low-effort strategies (suppliers, mentions, dead URLs), publish a buying guide regularly, and plan one data study per year. For the steady flow of links, Sorank, our SEO and GEO software on autopilot, obtains natural backlinks automatically from the sites of its 5,000+ users, in addition to writing and publishing optimized articles for your store. It suits ecommerce sites that want links and content without managing outreach.

The links that work for an online store come from its suppliers, its content, its data and its reputation, and they pay off when internal links carry them to the category pages that sell. To start, check the Sorank plans: there is a 3-day free trial and a 90-day money-back guarantee.