Link Building for Shopify: Strategies That Actually Work
Backlinks—links from other websites to yours—remain one of Google's strongest ranking signals. For Shopify stores, link building is often the difference between page 3 and page 1. Here is a practical approach.
Which Pages to Build Links To
Prioritize Revenue Pages
Most merchants assume links should point to the homepage. In reality, you should build links to the pages you want to rank—usually product and collection pages. Run a competitive analysis: check how many referring domains your top competitors have for their ranking pages, then set that as your benchmark.
Link Gap Analysis
Use an SEO tool to compare referring domains across your top competitors for a given keyword. If the top 3 results have 50–100 referring domains to their ranking page and you have 5, that gap needs closing.
Link Quality Factors
DoFollow vs. NoFollow
DoFollow links pass ranking authority. NoFollow, sponsored, and UGC links pass less (or no) direct authority but still provide visibility and referral traffic. Prioritize dofollow, but do not ignore nofollow opportunities entirely.
Anchor Text
Descriptive anchor text ("leather office chairs") is more valuable than generic ("click here"). But over-optimizing anchor text—using the exact target keyword too often—looks manipulative. Mix exact match, partial match, brand name, and natural phrases.
Relevance
A link from a home décor blog to your furniture store is more valuable than a link from a random tech site. Relevance signals to Google that the link is contextually meaningful.
Domain Authority
Higher-authority domains pass more value, all else being equal. But a relevant DR 30 site in your niche often outperforms an irrelevant DR 70 site.
Practical Link Building Strategies
1. Business Directories
List your store on relevant business directories: Google Business Profile, Yelp, industry-specific directories, and local business listings. These are low-effort, baseline links that establish your business's online presence.
2. Outreach
Contact bloggers, journalists, and site owners in your niche. Offer value: expert quotes, product samples for review, guest content, or a genuinely useful resource. Personalize every email—templated mass outreach rarely works.
3. Content-Driven Link Building
Create content worth linking to:
- Original research or data. Survey your customers and publish the results.
- Interactive tools. Calculators, quizzes, or configurators attract links naturally.
- Comprehensive guides. Pillar content that becomes the go-to resource on a topic.
- Visual assets. Infographics, charts, and original photography that others want to embed.
4. Broken Link Building
Find broken links on relevant sites using SEO tools. If the broken link pointed to content similar to yours, reach out and suggest your page as a replacement. It is a win-win: they fix a broken link, you earn a backlink.
5. Unlinked Brand Mentions
Search for mentions of your brand that do not include a link. Use an SEO tool's content explorer to find these. A polite email asking for a link often converts at a high rate—they already think well enough of you to mention you.
How Many Backlinks Do You Need?
It depends entirely on competition. Check the top-ranking pages for your target keywords:
- How many referring domains do they have?
- What is the quality of those domains (DR, relevance)?
- How long did it take them to accumulate those links?
Set a realistic goal based on this analysis. Filter competitor backlinks for DR 30+ and dofollow to focus on quality, not volume.
Avoiding Spam Links
Red Flags
- Sites with no real content or traffic
- Blog comment, forum, and profile links at scale
- Irrelevant foreign-language sites linking to you
- Sites that were clearly rebuilt on expired domains
How to Check
Use Ahrefs or a similar tool to review your backlink profile periodically. If you find toxic links, use Google's Disavow tool as a last resort—most spammy links are ignored automatically by Google.
Building Links Is a Long Game
Expect link building to take months, not days. Consistent effort—outreach, content creation, and relationship building—compounds over time. Combine it with strong on-page and technical SEO for the best results.
Written by
Simbelle Team
The Simbelle team builds AI-powered tools that help Shopify merchants grow their organic visibility. With deep expertise in SEO, e-commerce, and AI search optimization, we share practical strategies that work in the real world — not just in theory.
