Search engine optimization (SEO), the process of generating more organic traffic from sites like Google, Bing and Yahoo, is critical for eCommerce merchants. When done well, SEO can help your store rank higher in search engine results and help provide a strong stream of traffic to your site. Successful eCommerce stores know to not overlook SEO, particularly since paid ads keep getting more expensive.

SEO can be thought of in either on-page and off-page categories. On-page SEO involve optimizations you do with each of your webpages to help search engines understand what your site is about so they can show it at to the right people, at the right time. Meta descriptions, title tags, alt text, and filenames with keywords are essential for on-page SEO.

But let’s talk about the off-page SEO improvements you can make. Off-page SEO further help tell the search engines who’s more relevant and important. A fundamental part of this comes from backlinks. Backlinks are basically links from other sites that point to your site. Link-building, the means of getting links from other websites, should be a big part of your SEO strategy. So, let’s get into some of the many ways that you can get other sites to backlink to your site.

Create Compelling Content Others Will Want To Share

Content marketing is essentially creating great content that is so compelling, people naturally want to share it. It can be in written, visual, video or audio form. This continues to be one of the best ways to get a great number of backlinks to your store.

Have Your Products Reviewed

An excellent way to get backlinks and quality traffic is to ask bloggers and influencers to review your product. This will naturally garner a link back to your site.

To get started with this, get acquainted with the blogs in your niche and their relative size/influence. You can get on an author’s radar by engaging in their posts. Post comment on their blogs. Once you’ve built a connection with the authors, go ahead and pitch them on your product(s). You ought to get some responses, as bloggers/influencers are always looking for more content.

Write Guest Blog Posts

Another well used approach to getting a high quality and relevant backlink is to write a guest blog post on popular blogs in your niche. This is a win-win for you and the blog owner since it gives the blog owner content that they didn’t have to create, and of course you get exposure. Reaching out to bloggers as a potential guest contributor is a great way to get a valuable backlink.

Get In The Press

The press generates powerful backlinks. Getting in the press, even locally, will be very advantageous. Start by getting into local publications and work your way up to bigger publications. You’ll garner more and more backlinks and credibility.

Conclusion

Link building is an important part of any store's long-term SEO strategy. You can work on your on-page SEO approaches. However, you’ll need to round out your SEO strategy with off-page SEO in the form of backlinks. Getting others to vouch for you is powerful in the eyes of the search engines.