Your category and product pages are where sales happen, and they are exactly the pages that almost never earn links on their own. Ecommerce link building closes that gap: articles on authoritative sites in your niche, with links pointing to the categories and best-sellers you want to rank. Those links are what make search engines and AI assistants see your store as a trusted source, not just another shop selling the same products.
On Prensarank you pick each site with its metrics in front of you, we write the article in the site's language at no extra cost, and half of all orders go live within 24 hours. There are no subscriptions or lock-in, sign-up is free, and you can browse the sites and their prices before deciding anything. Below, we explain which pages to link, which strategies work and what it costs.
An online store competes against giant marketplaces and dozens of shops listing the same products, often with the manufacturer's description. And category and product pages almost never earn links by themselves: nobody spontaneously links to a page of hiking boots. That is why link building for stores needs a plan of its own.
Links from other sites build your domain's authority, mostly through the home page, and internal linking passes it on to categories and products. With more authority, your pages compete better in organic results, free shopping listings and the AI answers that recommend products. Backlinks for ecommerce sites are what turn good pages into pages that rank.
Off-page ecommerce SEO is everything that happens outside your store and still affects how it ranks:
The off-page ecommerce strategy that works combines links that build overall authority with links that point straight at the pages that sell.
Link your categories and best-sellers from sites in your niche, writing included. No subscription.
Backlinks for ecommerce work best when each one has a clear target page. In the market, about a third of links point to the home page and around 60% to product or service pages. For an online store, this is how it breaks down:
| Page | What links do for it | Recommended anchor | Tip |
|---|---|---|---|
| Home page | Brand authority that spreads to the whole site | Brand name or URL | The base of any profile |
| Categories | Rank the transactional keywords with the most volume | Descriptive ("waterproof hiking boots") | Usually the best return per link |
| Star products | Capture long-tail searches with clear buying intent | Product name or model | Pick products with stock and margin |
| Buying guides and blog | Earn links more easily and pass them on | Descriptive or question-style | Link from the guide to the category it supports |
Categories are usually the priority: they target broader searches, stay online for years and pass authority to every product inside them. Product pages change more often, so link building for product pages makes most sense for flagship products; if one is discontinued, redirect it to its category to keep the link.
Before buying a single link, decide which page should rank for which search. For each target page, look at:
With that map you can give each link a page and an anchor, and plan how to build backlinks for ecommerce without spreading the budget too thin. Every off-page ecommerce campaign that works starts here.
Then choose where to publish. Compare each site's DR, DA, outbound links (OBL) and organic traffic before buying, right in the Prensarank catalogue. In the market, a DR or DA of 25-35 already moves rankings, and relevance counts as much as authority: a home décor blog linking to your cushions category is often worth more than a general site with higher metrics.
These are the ecommerce link building tactics that work best for online stores, grouped by type.
What to prioritise by store size. New stores get the most from sponsored articles and link insertions: fast and under your control. Growing stores add gift guides, reviews and link reclamation. Established brands can invest in data studies and tools, the most advanced ecommerce link building.
Prensarank is a marketplace of sponsored articles on news sites and niche blogs. You choose where to publish, and each article carries dofollow links to the pages you want to push: the home page, a category or a best-seller. It suits Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento stores, DTC brands and their agencies.
Many sites publish within a day; those with their own editorial calendar take 7 days at most.
An article optimised for SEO and GEO, written in the language of each site at no extra cost. Or bring your own.
You choose the category or product each link points to and the anchor text it uses.
No subscription or contracts: one payment per publication, free sign-up, and the link stays live indefinitely.
Digital PR for ecommerce means getting your store into the news: coverage that brings a brand mention, a link and often sales.
Retail digital PR works best when the story is useful to the journalist's readers, not just an announcement.
The best digital PR strategies for Shopify brands start from what small brands have and big retailers don't: a founder story, a niche product, a close bond with customers. Shopify digital PR is also about timing: publish seasonal press releases well ahead.
The weak point of pure PR is that coverage is never guaranteed: a journalist may ignore the story or run it without a link. That is why digital PR for stores works best as a combination: publish a press release for your strongest stories and lock in key links with sponsored articles, which give you unique coverage on the site you choose.
Link building works the same on every platform; what changes is which URL you link. Always the canonical one, never a filtered or duplicate version.
| Platform | Category and product URLs | What to link | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | /collections/ and /products/ | The collection URL and the clean /products/ URL | Products are also reachable inside collections; link the /products/ version |
| WooCommerce / WordPress | /product-category/ and /product/ by default | The category and product permalinks | Changing permalinks later breaks links unless you redirect |
| Magento (Adobe Commerce) | URL rewrites, often ending in .html | The category URL and the product URL without the category path | Product URLs with the category path create duplicates |
| BigCommerce | Configurable structure | The URL set in each product or category | Redirect old URLs if you change the structure |
| Shopware | SEO URLs generated from templates | The SEO URL, not the technical one | Variants and filters can create several URLs per product |
Backlinks are earned or published on other sites, so inside Shopify you prepare the pages that will receive them: a collection with its own text, a clean handle and internal links from your blog. Then, to build backlinks for Shopify stores, use the same strategies as any store. Shopify link building has one quirk: link /products/ URLs, not the version nested inside a collection.
On Magento, check whether product URLs include the category path and whether canonical tags are enabled. With both under control, your Magento backlinks point to a single URL per page. Adobe Commerce link building works the same way, as it shares Magento's URL system.
The same principles apply to WooCommerce and Shopware, and our guide to BigCommerce link building covers that platform. With headless commerce, link building targets the public storefront URLs, never the backend.
You don't need a big budget to start. For a small store, consistency matters more than volume: one well-chosen publication a month beats five rushed ones.
A simple plan for the first three months:
That is how to get backlinks for ecommerce websites on a small budget: few links, well placed, every month.
In the market, a sponsored article costs between €150 and €200 on average, and more than half of all orders cost under €100. The price depends mainly on the size of the site.
Up to around 20,000 visits a month. Ideal for niche relevance on a small budget.
Around 75,000 visits a month. The average range for a sponsored article.
Around 200,000 visits a month. The biggest news sites reach €600-700.
In the market, a typical repeat buyer invests about €2,000 a year, and most invest less. One link per article is the most common choice, with an average of 1.5 to 2. And unlike the monthly retainer of a typical link building agency for ecommerce, you only pay for what gets published: no subscription, no contracts, and better prices than buying site by site. Your links stay live indefinitely.
Your backlink profile should look like that of a store people talk about naturally. Across the market, about half of anchors are exact-match keywords, one in four are branded and the rest are generic or bare URLs. On average, an anchor is about three words long. For a store, the mix works best when it follows the page:
Pace matters too: add links steadily and publish a few weeks before Black Friday or Christmas, so they are crawled before demand peaks.
You can hire an agency, do the outreach yourself or buy publications in a marketplace. The differences that matter:
| Criterion | Typical agency | In-house outreach | Prensarank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Publication time | Almost a week on average in the market | Days or weeks of emails and follow-ups | Many sites in a day |
| Control of URL and anchor | Agreed with the agency | Negotiated with each editor | You choose both |
| Price | Usually quoted on request | Negotiated site by site | Price of every site in view |
| Commitment | Often monthly retainers | Your team's time | No subscription or lock-in |
| Writing | Depends on the package | Written by your team | Included at no extra cost |
| Payments and invoices | Through the agency | One payment per publisher | One payment; we pay each site |
And you're never on your own: our SEO and GEO team, real people, helps you choose the right sites for your store, without the retainer.
An ecommerce digital PR agency pitches your stories to journalists. Coverage depends on whether they pick the story up, and fees are usually paid either way. With sponsored articles you know the site, the price and the link before you pay.
Yes, when it is done well. Search engines tend to ignore low-quality links rather than penalise your store, so the real risk of a poor strategy is wasted budget. Choose relevant sites, vary your anchors, keep a steady pace and publish unique content. Prensarank makes that easy: verified publishers, no resellers, and your choice of site, anchor and pace.
Prensarank is a link building platform for ecommerce brands and their agencies, and buying backlinks for ecommerce here is simple: you choose the sites, and we write, publish and pay each one. Every site shows its price, our order volume keeps it lower than negotiating alone, and there is no subscription or lock-in.
Only real publishers, with no middlemen or resellers between your store and the site.
DR, DA, OBL, links and organic traffic for every site before you buy.
Dofollow by default, and you buy the link rather than rent it: publication is indefinite.
Depending on the site, an article takes 1 to 4 links, so one publication can support a category and a product.
Optimised for SEO and GEO in the language of each site. You can review our draft first, or bring your own text.
News sites and blogs on fashion, home, tech, sports, pets and more, in a catalogue that grows every week.
Before you launch an off-page ecommerce campaign, run through these ten points:
