So, you just opened an ecommerce store?

That's fantastic!

I'm guessing you might be a little overwhelmed and unsure where to begin. How do you spread the word? How do you increase your site's SEO (search engine optimization)? There are a lot of questions to ask and oftentimes not enough answers to go around. One helpful thing that would be helpful for you as a new ecommerce store owner is link building. What's link building? Well, it's simple. At the very least, it can be described as an SEO strategy that will boost visibility without doing too much work. There's still work to be done, mind you, but using this strategy can be done on a basic level.

Blogging

As a new store owner, you may not know that Google is constantly analyzing sites and ranking them. They've always done this and a little tidbit to keep in mind is that now Google actually leans more toward ranking mobile sites than desktop sites. It wouldn't hurt to make sure your pages are mobile friendly. In addition to ensuring the mobile friendliness of your page, blog about it. If you're constantly updating content on your site, whether it's a tutorial or new products or something else, you're telling Google's spiders to index your site frequently.

Not only are you forcing the spiders to index your page, but you're also forcing your potential consumers to visit your page often to check back and see what's new with your site. Because of this strategy of keeping things new and exciting, you're also more likely to have others use the links from your site and share them.

Utilize Influencers

One thing that would be helpful in link building is influencer marketing. As an ecommerce store owner, you probably have very few resources in terms of marketing. But, as a store owner, it goes without saying that marketing is going to help contribute to your bread and butter. Some might even argue that it is your bread and butter. So, if you have a very small budget and know very few people in marketing or public relations. What do you do?

Get in touch with a few influencers.

Influencer marketing is a fairly new marketing ploy. Millennials have become increasingly less likely to trust the word of a paid sponsor or celebrity. They tend to stick with products that are recommeneded by everyday people like us. What many sites are doing now is using influencers to increase visibility about their product. Oftentimes companies will send influencers merchandise and request the influencer to write a review about it.

Just in case you're wondering why it should matter to your site how millennials shop, keep in mind that they are now the largest demographic in our society. You want to pay attention to their shopping behaviors.

The thing about influencers that almost anyone can get behind is the fact that they are generally honest. They aren't paid to say nice things about a product, which is what millenials love. If they hate a product they will say so. Of course, you don't want them to say negative things, so you'll want to do the research and find the best influencer for your brand. Make sure you find an influencer who can relate to your brand (i.e. don't send a fitness influencer your makeup products to review).

Create Relevant Content

So, say you sell handmade crochet blankets and scarves on your site. Well, there are plenty of those out there, how will you make yourself standout? A good thing you could do would be to create a tutorial in the form of a video or article. It could be something simple such as making a granny square or a slip knot. Don't directly reference your product, though. The way this works is, because the tutorial is related to your site, and because of the relevant content, it's possible that other sites will pick it up and link to your page.

If you pay attention, many sites do this. They'll have a plethora of tutorials that can work for their products. Some mention how this tutorial relates to their products specifically, but many of them don't. They key here is not to do it. Avoid the urge to do so because anyone can share their own products. People do it everyday. The key here is to showcase the relevanvy of the tutorial to your products so that someone else will more or less do the work for you.

Giveaways

So, as I mentioned, influencers are a good way to increase visibility. But they aren't the only way. You could have something as simple as a giveaway or sweepstakes for your everyday consumers. They could share, like, or tweet your page for a chance to win. Or maybe they could subscribe for a chance to win. People love getting free stuff, even if it's not something they might use themselves. The next phase is the icing on the cake: they're usually so excited about their winnings that they'll share or link your site and tell people where they got the products from. This creates more link building for you!

Conclusion

There are no shortage of ways that you can use link building to your advantage. The goal is to continue doing it even when you don't necessarily feel that you need to do so. You want to keep building links so that you have a solid chain linking back to your site. You want to build a strong foundation. These tactics are easy enough for any beginner to use without being overly complicated. The best part about this is that, if done right, the work could potentially done for you. You provide the base chain and everyone else will provide the links back.