If an e-retailer is not faring well on search engine results rankings, the problem could be links: not enough outside links pointing to the site, or perhaps not enough of the right kind of links. As a result, listings from competitors that may be equally well optimized on-page but that have more and better links from outside are moving to the top of search results.
How those links from other sites can improve a retail web site’s rankings in search listings is one of the least understood aspects of natural search optimization.
“Link-building has always been a part of search engine optimization, but retailers have been more focused on the on-page aspects of SEO because it’s easier for them to get their heads around,” says Stephan Spencer, president of Netconcepts LLC, which helps retailers optimize search engine rankings. “But the link-building factor is just as powerful, if not more so. One link or a handful of links can make the difference between meeting your budget or not.”
A link, or hyperlink, is a connection by click to a specific area of content on another web page, either within the same web site or to another site. It’s the latter path that figures into how high a retailer’s listing ranks in natural search results under a given keyword. As search engines strive to deliver relevant results, their algorithms take links to a web page from outside the site—from consumers, directories, blogs and other entities—as evidence that the page is relevant to the searched term.
In fact, outside links are such a valuable commodity in boosting a site’s listings in search engine results that online retailers, their advisors and other parties simply looking to profit have come up with a wide variety of tactics for making those links happen.
But here’s a warning to e-retailers out to build links: Search engines resist being gamed. Because their own reputations suffer when they return results searchers don’t find relevant, search engines are ever more adept at protecting themselves by sniffing out when links are contrived without relevancy solely to boost a listing.
Most recently, market leader Google has been working to identify and discount links added to a site exclusively for this purpose. “Since the initiation of search there always have been ways to trick the engines, but the engines always wind up winning in the end,” says Khrysti Nazzaro, director of optimized services at search engine marketing company MoreVisibility.com.
This means retailers should look to emerging best practices in link building and sidestep tactics that could backfire under search engines’ increasing scrutiny of link quality. Here’s an example of such a tactic: The PageRank system, part of the Google algorithm, measures the popularity of a web site to determine how high in natural search results a site will appear. It’s possible for a heavily visited site to elevate the PageRank of a less-visited site just by linking to it, a practice called “passing PageRank.”
Any number of popular media sites sell links for this purpose, according to Spencer. These links are different from paid search ads that link to products. But when Google finds them, it discounts links that a retailer buys merely to “pass PageRank.” “Google doesn’t want you to buy links and pass PageRank,” Spencer says, “if the links are advertisements.”
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