Though social link building is hot, hot, hot, traditional forms have not lost their importance. This post looks at (trust me) ten ways you can find valuable backlinks to help your ecommerce site’s search rankings.

Low Hanging Link Fruit

Ounce of prevention

Before you look to build new links, why not protect the ones you have? How does your site handle product pages for items you no longer carry? It’s a bad user experience to keep them in the catalog, but dropping them means spoiling some SEO. Make sure you have a plan to either keep them (and updating the page to the new product version, merchandise with alternative product suggestions), or 301-redirect to somewhere on your site, be it your home page or a category page or the new version of the product.

Repeat business

Another trick is to reach out to sites that already link to you and look for new opportunities. Was it a blogger that loved your product? Was it a news item? It’s easier to get “repeat business” than approach brand new sites, so check your backlink results for opps to reach out again.

When evogear.com changed its domain to just evo.com, the team reached out to me to update links, and I ended up blogging about their brilliant idea here on Get Elastic, which earned them another link.

There are a number of backlink checking tools out there, both free and paid. The paid tools are worth it if you want to do serious link analysis (e.g. SEOmoz’ Open Site Explorer and Link Research Tools) will show you segmented links like social, news and blogs, and domain authority scores to help you hone in on the most valuable targets first. If you want a freebie, BackLinkWatch is decent.

Social circle

Not only can you create business profiles on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and others and link back to your home page, most social networks allow you to place links to other websites from your personal profiles as well. Encourage your employees to create LinkedIn profiles and add our site, even if they move on from your company these links can stay in their profiles.

But social profiles are typically low-value links because they are easy to set up. Help build up their clout by linking back to them from your site. Not just your business profiles, but also personal ones. Do you have a page with your employees listed?

Howdy partner

Partners and suppliers are great sources for links, but so are your technology vendors. Why not participate in a case study (your vendor will love you), and negotiate a direct link to your site as part of the deal? Bonus points if you can get a brief description of your site with semantically relevant keywords, for example “online textbook marketplace UniXchange…”

Blog Baiting

Blogs are great to target because they are so plentiful, tend to be topical, have regular, subscribed readers and often list the blogger’s name and email address for easy contact.

There are a few ways to get on bloggers’ radars. Here are just a few:

PR pitch

Blogger outreach is very much like traditional PR — blogs are online media, after all. Remember, to get any traction you must first have something remarkable to pitch.

What makes a remarkable story? Check out what these retailers did:

Best Buy Remix

Best Buy’s Remix program offers developers a crack at building their own shopping apps with Best Buy’s API. Major tech blogs like Mashable licked this story up.

Moosejaw Mountaineering X-Ray App

The jaw-dropping moosejaw app that reveals what its catalog models are sporting underneath their gear was perfect fodder for the Huffington Post, Mashable and more.

Sears’ People’s Pick

Doing something innovative with social media will also get you buzz. Sears’ People’s Pick crowdsources its Black Friday deals.

Here’s a sampling of the sites that found this story blogworthy.

But don’t just send bloggers copies of your press releases, and please don’t start off the email with “I love your blog and really enjoyed reading {insert last post here}.” Rather, demonstrate that you understand the audience and the type of content the blogger usually writes about by explaining (briefly) how your story will delight the blog’s readers.

You can also pitch your executives as experts for interviews, for example to provide “predictions” or other business stories to various media (not just blogs).

Bonus tip: Infographics are also so-hot-right-now, so coming up with a killer one is a trendy way to win you some blog love.

Guest post

Offering to guest post can help you build backlinks via your author byline, often from a URL that is topically relevant to what you are selling.

Here’s a tip, use the Dogpile search engine that shows results from both Google, Yahoo and Bing using the term “your keyword] + “guest post”, and repeat searches with “guest author” or “guest writer” to find opportunities.

Don’t take it personally if a blogger no longer accepts guest posts or declines your offer. Bloggers often blog because it’s a way to get their own voice out there. Just keep hunting and you’ll certainly uncover opportunities.

Give it away now

Giveaway blogs are a great way to build links and get your product exposed to potential buyers. Giveaway bloggers are already open to promoting commercial businesses, so you’re likely to have better luck than with other types of pitches. Of course, you want to go for the higher trafficked blogs first, but even the lesser-read ones are still worth it for the link value.

Do-Gooding

Sponsoring good causes or holding charity events can get ya links and help out your fellow man. Just sayin’. evo is an example of both.

Find What is Broken

Here’s a trick from my link building days – it had a higher “conversion rate” (links gained/contacts made) than any other method. Find a page that links to your competitor or a related site and run a backlink check on it. If there’s a broken link, contact the webmaster to report the bug and suggest 2-3 additional links that may be of interest (including yours). Make sure they’re relevant! You’ve already offered something of value, which gives the webmaster motivation to actually go in and change code. But keep it ethical and be transparent about your affiliation with your own link suggestion.

I like to use iWebTool because it’s fast and free, but you can use any broken link checker you like.

The Old Fashioned Way

Of course, there’s the old-skool way of link building, scoping the backlinks of your competitors. So long as you’re patient to wade through spammy sites, you’ll find some good opportunities.

And don’t forget, social link building. Put these all together and with a little elbow grease you’ll have a nicely rounded link profile.

Got your own killer link building tip for ecommerce? Please share in the comments.

Looking for help with ecommerce strategy? Contact the Elastic Path Research & Strategy team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy services can improve your business results.

Also coined “remarketing” (by Google Adwords) or “remessaging” (by Microsoft AdCenter), retargeting gives you an opportunity to re-engage site visitors with targeted messages and offers that appear when site abandoners surf other sites around the Web.

This “get started guide” explores how retargeting works, what you need to know to shape your strategy and some campaign management tips.

How it Works

Top players in this space are Google Remarketing, Microsoft AdCenter, Criteo and Retargeter. For simplicity, we’re going to look at Google Remarketing specifically, though the strategy principles apply to all three.

Tags and Audiences

Retargeting relies on tags and cookies. Create tags for the various customer segments or “audiences” based on where in your site the abandonment occurs, what content was viewed or actions were taken, and place them on the appropriate pages on your site.

For example, create a “customer” tag for visitors who have completed a purchase, or a “subscriber” tag for those who have joined your site (free or paid). Or, tag with category or product names. Of course, tagging shopping cart and checkout abandonders is a no brainer.

The system places cookies on visitors’ machines to identify which audiences they belong to, and serves ads corresponding around the Content Network, matching them to the audiences you configure in Adwords.

Cookie Duration

Cookie length can be set so campaigns expire after a short window (such as with checkout abandonment) or longer, up to 180 days. Long windows are helpful for products that may have new releases or upgrades such as software, or require replenishment after a period, like consumable office supplies.

Here’s the catch – each remarketing list requires 500 cookied visitors before ads can be displayed. This is important, as timing is a big factor with remarketing. Lists can grow stale before the first ad is triggered. Abandoned carts should be retargeted relatively quickly. If it takes 30 days to build a list of 500 abandoned carts, your campaign will already by moldy. You may find your traffic only supports more general behaviors such as site or category visits.

Getting Started

Google Help has a straightforward guide for getting started, so I won’t reinvent the wheel by outlining the technical steps. But before you even think about setting up your campaign, you need to work out your strategy.

Crafting Your Remarketing Strategy

Begin with an understanding of who you want to target, after what actions are taken on your site. Jot down a few scenarios. Here’s a sample format:

SCENARIO A (General Campaign)

Objective: Keep brand top-of-mind for visitors who abandon the site and communicate our value proposition
Site pages (to tag): All
Audience (Positive List): General site visitors
Exclude (Negative List): Visitors who viewed Affiliates or Careers pages
Cookie duration: 180 days (maximum allowed)
Maximum exposures: 11
Creative: TBD, A/B test
Notes: (If any)

SCENARIO B (Flagship Product Campaign)

Objective: Retarget visitors who view our flagship product
Site pages: Amazing Product 1.0 product page, “amazing product 1.0” search results
Audience: Visitors to these pages
Exclude: Completed purchasers
Cookie duration: 14 days
Maximum exposures: 11
Creative: TBD
Notes: (If any)

A good understanding of your own industry and customer behavior is valuable. What is the average days to purchase (or average visits to purchase) for your entire site? For product categories? Do you have many competitors and is comparison shopping common? Are your customers motivated by discounts or value-added features and services? Do your customers shop for merchandise across departments? The answers to these questions will shape your scenarios so you’re not mis-targeting customers with the wrong strategies.

Things to keep in mind:

• You need enough traffic to get your campaign off the ground, so don’t get too granular. Use your analytics and start with your highest traffic areas.
• Certain leads “go cold” as time passes. Plan shorter windows for actions like abandoned carts.
• Don’t be too desperate. Targeting offers immediately after site abandonment may cannibalize your margin for customers who were going to come back to pay full price. Consider A/B testing offers against non-offers, or staggering your creative to kick in offers after X days or X exposures.
• Consider excluding geographies that typically convert less or that you can’t ship your full product line to.

Remarketing Creative

There are many styles of display ads that can work for you, for example:

• Branding
• Last category viewed
• Last product viewed
• Abandoned cart reminder
• Sale and promotional messaging (general)
• New product awareness
• Post-purchase events (replenish consumables, submit review for chance to win gift card, etc)

As with all online advertising, it’s important that “scent” is maintained. This means your ad creative matches the behavior that triggered the ad, and the landing page delivers on the promise made in the ad. And as with email, make sure your creative has a clear call to action, even if it’s just for “branding” purposes.

You’ve heard of “banner blindness” but are you familiar with “banner burnout”? After a certain threshold of exposures, seeing your ad everywhere may be more annoying than admired, so you should consider mixing up your creative (showing a different design after X days or X impressions), or use frequency caps in your campaign set up. Experts believe 7-11 exposures is ideal before burnout kicks in.

Remember also to design for various ad formats for maximum placement (skyscraper, sidebar, etc).

Examples:

Up high

Along the side

Campaign Management Tips

Once you’ve nailed your strategy and designed your ads, it’s time to set ‘em up. Here are some tips to remember:

• Start fresh. It is recommended to create display advertising Ad Groups in brand new Campaigns. You’re building Ad Groups around customer segments, rather than keywords, which requires a different structure.
• Block wisely. You may choose not to initially block domains from the Content Network that you find convert poorly with your other text and display ads. Because retargeted ads are more relevant, they may perform much better on these domains. If they prove to still convert poorly, remove them after you’ve collected enough data.
• Be negative. Leverage “negative audiences” to ensure your ads don’t appear when they shouldn’t. For example, visitors who convert should be placed in a list that is added as a negative to your other targeted campaigns. You may also wish to exclude visitors referred by other ad networks like Bing ads or affiliate campaigns.
• Bid smart. Naturally, some visitors will be tagged multiple times. For example, a cart abandoner likely has a “general visitor” tag. Bid higher for behaviors further down the conversion trail to ensure they override the other Ad Groups you may have running.
• Rotate evenly. Like with text ads, you can test a few versions of your creative (great idea, by the way). AdWords has a tendency to default your ad rotation to optimize for clicks (show your winning ad more often). But as you know, for good A/B split testing, your creative should be shown evenly. I recommend you change it to “show ads more evenly.”

If retargeting looks enticing to you, tag your pages as soon as possible to build your audience memberships before you work on strategy, creative and account set up. This makes it much quicker to reach the 500 member mark, take advantage of the holiday traffic surge!

Post-script

While this post was geared more towards Google’s solution, Criteo is another player to investigate if you want harder-core targeting than what’s currently available with Adwords. Criteo provides dynamic ads that merchandise with the products a customer last viewed on your site. Customers include Zappos and Overstock.

The Zappos example above also links to an opt-out page that explains the ads and enables the customer to “turn them off” and provide feedback on how the ads made them feel.

Looking for help with ecommerce strategy? Contact the Elastic Path Research & Strategy team at consulting@elasticpath.com to learn how our ecommerce strategy services can improve your business results.