Posted by Everett Sizemore
There are tons of ways to build links into the home page or blog/article pages of an e-commerce website. But most e-commerce SEOs suffer from the same problem: It's not so easy getting links into categories or product detail pages (PDPs).
The e-commerce SEO's conundrum: The pages that generate revenue are the ones you hope to rank highly, yet they're the ones to which nobody wants to link. Of course, you've already done all of the interlinking from your most linked-to pages into your product and category pages right? So now it's time to take the next step and get external links directly into products and categories.
The first thing I want to mention strategy-wise is that you don't always need to go after the keyword anchor text for which you want to rank. While that text should play a significant role in your link profile, I often purposefully build a few "click here", "domain.com" and other types of non-keyword targeted deep links. We get those types of links quite readily into our home pages, but since most of our deep links aren't coming to us organically, they tend to lean too heavily toward keyword-text. Make your link profile look natural, even if it isn't.
The second thing I'd like to mention is that you should also build links into category pages. These are the pages that pass page rank into your products internally. If your category pages have high page rank and lots of quality external links, it will be much easier for you to rank for a newly launched product even before you've had time to build links directly into the new PDP. Putting static content on these category pages, and paying attention to best practices when it comes to pagination also helps.
The List of Ways to Build Deep Links Into E-Commerce Pages
Product Reviews
This is one of the easiest ways to get a link into a PDP, and often includes the product name as the anchor text. In the end, it would probably cost you less than outright buying a link, and is not only safer, but does a better job of expanding your brand recognition, reaching new customers and getting feedback about your products. Not all reviews are going to be glowing recommendations, but I have found that (assuming you have a good product) anyone who gets a free thingamabob from you is going to at least give you a fair analysis - more often than not, it's a darn good review. Don't "ask" them to link to your PDP with any specific keyword text. Nine times out of ten, they're going to link to you anyway. Every once in awhile they'll use an affiliate link. If that happens, just make a note not to send them anymore product to review (if an organic link was your goal) and move on. If they don't link at all, it might be worth a quick follow up to give them the PDP URL "in case you'd like to provide it as a convenience to your readers" or something like that. Assuming you sell BBQ grills, here's an example of how to find those opportunities:
BBQ grill inurl:review
Sponsorships
Is paying to sponsor an event the same thing as buying a link? My personal opinion on that matter is that it depends on what you're sponsoring. For instance, it is not unreasonable for you to sponsor a marathon and have your logo on the marathon's sponsor page linking back to your running shoes category. As an example of how to find such an opportunity:
Marathon inurl:sponsors
Or you could go local and search for Denver Marathon inurl:sponsors which would be doubly-relevant if you owned a Denver shoe store.
People will no doubt comment that having "sponsor" or "review" in the URL (or title:) is a "footprint" and will advise against building links this way. They have a good point, but so far I have not seen this to be a problem. There are many legitimate sites out there linking to other legitimate sites organically from pages called links.html, sponsors.php or product-X-review/. In the end, it is up to you as to what you see as a risk, and whether you are willing to take that risk. Obviously, you don't want to take any link building strategy too far, or make your link profile rely too heavily on it. Here's a post I did awhile back with even more queies used to find such opportunities.
Guest Posts
Writing high-quality content for other websites is one way to get deep links back into your own. When first building a content distribution relationship with another website, avoid dropping the links directly into the body unless they have already said this is acceptable. Even then, one or two links is the max. I usually start by just putting one deep link into the footer. The article will be on a topic that matches what I'm linking to (e.g. "Preview of the Hottest Sneakers for 2011" linking in the bio to the sneakers category). As you develop ongoing relationships with other sites, they may be more amenable to having one or two links put into the content (if appropriate and not forced) instead of the bio. Personally, I'd rather it be this way on my sites because giving the author a bio makes it apparent that it's a guest post and sometimes I'd rather it just seem like I wrote the content. I use MyBlogGuest regularly, and recommend getting the pro account so you can upload your content to the articles directory. This makes the job of getting it placed on other sites much easier to manage. The quality of sites varies, but you have the choice to decline an offer to post your content if you don't think the site is worthy.
Type-A Parent lets you post on their site and connect with parents. Think of the possibilities if you sell anything to do with kids and/or parents.
One last tip on the guest post thing: I know it's tempting to keep all of your best content for your own blog. And in many ways that makes sense. But if you're going to get into guest posting, don't try and get away with writing ehow-level content. This is only going to get you placed on inferior blogs. Many PR 5+ blogs out there accept guest posts, but none of them accept the kind of junk you can pay someone on Mechanical Turk to write for $5. I will easily spend three or four hours researching and writing a guest post if I have a specific host blog in mind. In the end, it's still cheaper than buying an equal-caliber link with cash. In fact, most of these tactics are cheaper and more effective than buying links. They just take some elbow grease and thought.
Putting Linkbait on PDPs
While this won't work with every kind of linkbait, there are certainly opportunities to use a PDP as the landing page for a piece of linkbait without taking too much away from the actual selling of a product. I'll give a few examples to illustrate:
- A really cool product demo. We're not talking run-of-the-mill product demonstration here. One of the best all-time examples of this is the WIll It Blend series by Blendtec. While they created a separate site for that series, showing the videos on the blender PDPs would have been a great way to get deep links into those product pages. I would have just given them one. ;-)
- A free download. Who says your downloadable eBook, game, app, etc… has to be on it's own landing page? If one of your best-selling products is a wooden toy truck, hand-made in the USA - why not offer a downloadable eBook on that page that discusses how to test for lead paint on toys, or the dangers of BPAs in toys, etc… ?
- An Infographic. You obviously wouldn't want this to be full-size. And if you just give a link to the full-size version, the links you'll get back are going to go to the full-sized URL. Instead, use a small preview size and then show the full size in a Jquery modal window or some other visual effect that keeps the user on the product page.
Give More Details Than Your Competitors
Anyone can describe the product in a few paragraphs, but sometimes there's more to it than what can fit into a typical product detail box. Using tabs in your product description area allows you to fit a lot more content into the same amount of page real estate. This opens up the door for you to make a PDP into a real informational resource. It all depends on the type of product, but here's one example: You sell solar panels. Provide an "Installation" tab on the PDP that goes over how to install your own solar panels. It would include all of the hardware you need (of course, with links to the places on your website where that hardware can be purchased) as well as step-by-step instructions and maybe a video showing how to install the product.
Give-Aways & Contests
The idea of co-sponsoring a give-away on another website is very similar to the review and sponsorship opportunities, but can be expanded upon to get more bang for the buck. Back when I was working for a company that sold eco-friendly household products we were having trouble getting direct links into a product page for a rug made from recycled plastic soda bottles. Instead of just giving the rug away on our site, we gave one away on a popular green-living blog. And instead of "just" giving it away to anyone who commented, we required them to visit our website and come back posting something they learned about this product, or about the company in general. In this way we introduced all of those people to our brand and actually got them to spend time exploring our website and products. Most of them came back with very positive things to say about our brand, products in general, or this one product in particular. One of them came back with a question about the product, which helped us improve our product description and keyword use on the page. The blog owner gave us a great keyword-rich link, and lots of other people posted about the give-away on their blogs, always linking to the green living blog's post, often linking to our PDP as well. Then there were social media mentions and some direct sales too. All of this costs less than the price of a crappy link on a PR-2 blog that may get discounted a month later.
Ask Your Brand Evangelists for a Link
This one sounds simple, but it's surprising how few merchants actually do it. The idea of cultivating evangelists or ambassadors isn't new. In-fact, it's how pro athletes make a good deal of their money. But you don't need to hire a professional ball player for millions a year; Get the people who already love your brand to share that love, especially when it comes to their favorite products on your site.
A good example of this is the Lululemon Ambassador Program.
Also see Rand's Headsmacking Tip on Linkbuilding via Confirmation Emails
Make Your Holiday Landing Pages Evergreen
I can't count how many times I've seen a URL like this www.ecommercesite.com/category/top-gifts-2008 . These are inside pages that often get a lot of links. So why start from scratch again every year? Put the year in the title and the content, where it can easily be changed, but keep it out of the URL. This way you can use the same page again and again without dealing with redirects. Speaking of this type of landing page, if you don't have them for Christmas, Fathers Day, Mothers Day, Valentines Day, etc… then you should (if appropriate).
Crowdsourcing
Create a social media crowdsourcing campaign around a product. Let's say, for instance, that you're going to change the design on a T-shirt. Why not let the community submit their designs and vote on their favorite one? Be sure to mention the URL to the current design (i.e. the PDP) to give everyone a starting place and product URL to which they can link.
This is part of Threadless's "submit a design" page. If the community is scoring my design for a t-shirt, I surely will be linking to the page from my blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc!
Keep The Links You Have
There's an old saying about how much easier and cheaper it is to keep a customer than to replace them. The same is true of links. Be sure to 301 redirect the URL any time you remove a product from your online catalog (especially if it has external links). You may think this one is a no-brainer, but it happens all the time because the merchandising team responsible for choosing which products to show isn't always in communication (sometimes not even in the same building) as the SEO team.
Likewise, it may be easier to do link reclamation than link building when it comes to product pages. See Tom Critchlow's post on link reclamation queries.
Local Links
If you have brick-n-mortar locations, like a kiosk or store in the mall, build a locations page. It isn't quite the same as getting a link into your categories or PDPs, but it is a deeper link than your home page, and is an easy win in most cases. For instance, every mall, local chamber of commerce, local directory… is a potential source of links into this page.
On-Site Hosted Affiliate Pages
The health supplement and real estate industries have been doing this for as long as I can remember, although most of them do it the wrong way. The idea is you let affiliate (mostly brand evangelists) have their own co-branded page on your website. It will be an easy URL that they can put in their business cards (maybe you even send them a pack of 100 free business cards with the URL pre-printed after they sell their first $100 of merchandise) and link to from their social media profiles. You could offer this benefit only to a select few evangelists, or you could open it up to anyone. You could let the pages be public (if they each have enough unique content) or you may choose to add a robots index,nofollow tag in the header. I suggest the latter since you'll be paying the affiliate commissions on those sales. A note of caution: Pay attention to how these people are building links and promoting their page. If they get the bright idea to start leaving a bunch of spammy blog comments you could end up with a problem on your hands. That is one reason you may consider opening it up to a select few (especially celebrities or personalities in the industry) people instead of everyone. And you would need a clear TOS that they must agree to, which forbids them from marketing their page in certain ways.
Here is an example from BeachBody.
Make Your PDPs Shareable
Here's another no-brainer that most sites are already implementing these days, but may be going about it the wrong way. First, let customers review your products, and show those reviews on the PDP. When a customer's review has been posted on the site, send them an automated email with a link to their review (using a # tag on the end of the URL that jumps to their review) so they can share it. You may go so far as to put sharing buttons in the email as well so they can quickly post to FB or Twitter. Second, make sure the product itself is sharable. But understand that you're not going to get anywhere sharing a product on Digg or Reddit (there are some exceptions to this rule, but very few indeed) so try to stick with sites like Twitter, Facebook and social shopping portals like Kaboodle if you're going to put social media links on a product page. They may not be followable links, but they'll help get the word out.
Do a PDP-focused Link Analysis on Your Competitors
Most of us are analyzing our competitors' backlinks, but it may be necessary to filter the data a little more to show only backlinks going into your competitors' category and/or product detail pages. There tends to be so much noise from links going into their home page and blog that these deep links don't even show up on our radar. For instance, one of their PDPs might only have one external link going into it, but that one link is a high-quality, deep link with good anchor text. When you're looking at a report showing thousands of links, it is quite easy to miss links like these unless you filter out the noise. You can do this by reasearching backlinks using OSE and just looking at results from other domains linking in with the word "product" or whatever it is that appears in the URL of the competitor's PDPs.
Advertise Product-Level and Category-Level Discounts
Having a "Discounts" page or an "Outlet" category is a great way to build links and increase sales on overstocked items. However, most of the links will go to this page, not the product page. And most of the discounted products tend to be either poor sellers (thus overstocked) or soon-to-be discontinued items. It is a good idea to put up some deep discounts on your more popular products from time to time. Instead of "Free shipping on all orders over $75" try "Free Shipping on All Blue Widgets" or "$10 Off Acme Blue Widget". Put up an offer display on these PDPs or categories and always link to that page when advertising the offer, such as in Facebok ads, PPC, display ads, email, social media posts, blog posts, or on your home page. As long as you're not creating special "sales" landing pages and are using your main PDP for that product, most of the links will stay active even after the sale is over.
Obligatory Grey Hat Tactic - Bait N Switch
As long as the campaign landing page was on-topic, it is not unreasonable to 301 redirect that page to a category or PDP several moths after the campaign is over. Let's say for instance you run the campaign above where you crowdsource T-shirt designs. The campaign runs from April-July and you announced the winner on that page in August with a link to the new PDP for that shirt to show off the new design, and prove that you actually did put it into your catalog. You'll probably get few more links through August, but by October everyone has forgotten about the campaign and the page isn't getting anymore links, and very little traffic. Now would be a good time to redirect that page to the T-shirt design's PDP. You could go darker shades of gray with this tactic. For instance, you could 301 redirect a social media hit (e.g. and infographic about famous ball player's shoes that went popular on Stumbleupon and Digg) to your basketball shoe category several months after the hubbub dies down.
Widget Links
This one is iffy, but it is my opinion that it's still a good idea if done right. For instance, don't buy a link for "Cheap Hotels" on a widget showing movie times. In fact, don't "buy" links on widgets period. And don't make a widget that is totally off-topic and link back to one of your product pages with highly specific anchor text. Hypothetically speaking, if I were going to make a widget for linkbuilding into an eCommerce site, I would want the widget to be distributed from my site and relevant to my site. For instance, the widget could be as simple as converting shoe sizes between the US and UK, and the bottom of the widget could have a followable link that says "Data provided by MyStore.com" with a link to your shoe category.
Sourcing Unique Products
Even though these may not turn out to be best-sellers, they'll usually hold their own and generate a lot of deep links into their respective PDPs. One of the most linked-to product pages on a site I used to work on was for a sink made to replace your toilet lid so that you get to use the clean water from the pipes to wash your hands before you flushed. If it's a product that makes you laugh or blush; that you can't believe people actually buy (but they do); or that is otherwise unique - it will generate links. An alternative tactic is to have one or two products that are just outrageously expensive. Who knows, you might actually sell a couple!
Good Ol' PR Footwork
I have yet to find a replacement for good old fashioned PR - the kind that requires you or a PR company to contact magazines, news stations, morning shoes, and major online publications to pitch a story. EVERYONE has a story to pitch. Maybe it's something easy like "Top Ten Fitness Crazes You'll See in 2001" with some blurbs/quotes from your CEO thrown in to make it easy for a journalist to use them. The trick here is not to try and pitch a story about "you" or your products (unless you truly have something unique at the time, like Groupon did earlier this year) but to pitch a larger story idea about your industry, and offer yourself, or your CEO, PR person, public face… up as an "expert" who they can quote. This usually only gets links into your home page, but if you work the story angle right you can get deep links. For the above case, maybe you have an infographic timeline of fitness crazes from the 70s up through today. Want to get started on this type of thing but don't know how? A good first place to look would be Help a Reporter.
OK, I think I've about exhausted my ideas for the day. Maybe there are a few more floating around in there, but the coffee wore off a long time ago so I'm leaving the rest up to YOU! What did I leave out? What other angles can be taken on these ideas? What are some potential dangers that I failed to mention? Everyone has a few tricks up their sleeve so spill the beans!
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