What Is Link Building? A 2026 Guide for E-commerce

Link building is the work of earning links from other websites to yours. Search engines read those links as signals of what a page is about and whether other people trust it, so good links help your pages rank and help AI search tools discover and cite your brand.

This guide is for e-commerce and Shopify teams who want a clear, current picture: what counts as a good link in 2026, which tactics are worth the effort, what Google treats as link spam, how links connect to AI search visibility, and a step-by-step process you can start this month.

What is link building?

A link from another site to yours is called a backlink (or inbound link). Link building is any deliberate effort to increase the number and quality of those backlinks. That includes creating things people want to reference, telling the right people about them, and fixing missed opportunities such as brand mentions that never got a link.

Every link has a few parts that matter for SEO:

• The linking page: its topic, its own authority, and whether real people read it.
• The anchor text: the clickable words. Google describes good anchor text as descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to both pages.
• The rel attribute: values such as nofollow, sponsored or ugc tell Google how the link should be treated.
• The destination: the page on your site that receives the link, such as your homepage, a collection, a product or a guide.

Link building is part of off-page SEO, alongside brand mentions, reviews and PR. Internal links (links between pages on your own site) are a separate but related job: they decide how the authority you earn flows to the pages that make money. If you are new to the terminology, start with our guide to dofollow backlinks.

Why backlinks still matter for SEO in 2026

Google is unusually direct about this. Its guide to ranking systems says Google has link analysis systems that understand how pages link to each other to work out what pages are about, and that PageRank "continues to be part of our core ranking systems." Google's public How Search Works page also says one factor used to judge quality is whether other prominent websites link or refer to the content.

Links are not the only signal, and they will not rescue a thin page. But for competitive commercial queries, the pages that win usually have both strong content and real references from other sites. Ahrefs' large-scale data shows the pattern clearly.

In its December 2023 study of about 14 billion pages, Ahrefs found that 96.55% of pages get no traffic from Google. Of roughly 20 million pages with zero referring domains, only 2,997 got more than 1,000 monthly search visits, about 1 in 6,671. Ahrefs itself cautions that correlation is not causation, and pages without links that do get traffic tend to target low-competition topics. The practical lesson for a store: if you want to rank for contested category terms, plan to earn links, not just publish pages.

What links do beyond rankings

• Discovery: links are how crawlers find new pages, which matters for new collections and product launches.
• Referral traffic: a link in a gift guide or a trusted review site sends shoppers who are already interested.
• Brand credibility: being cited by respected publications makes your brand easier to trust for both people and machines.

Do links help you get cited in AI search?

Yes, but indirectly, and brand mentions appear to matter even more than raw link counts. Google says that to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet, and that there are no additional requirements or special optimizations needed (Google Search Central, AI features and your website). Those features use a "query fan-out" technique, running multiple related searches across subtopics, and they draw on Google's core ranking systems. Since links are part of those systems, the same authority that helps you rank helps you get picked as a source.

The best public data on brand-level AI visibility comes from Ahrefs' May 2025 analysis of 75,000 brands, which measured how strongly different factors correlate with how often a brand is mentioned in Google AI Overviews.

Branded web mentions (0.664) and branded anchors (0.527) correlated far more strongly than the raw number of backlinks (0.218). Referring domains (0.295) and Domain Rating (0.326) sat in the middle. The same article cites a separate Seer Interactive study of ChatGPT that found a similar pattern, with backlinks at 0.10. All of these are correlations from one snapshot, and Ahrefs describes them as moderate to very weak on the Spearman scale, so treat them as direction, not proof.

What this means for link building: a link that also mentions your brand by name, in context, on a site AI tools read, is worth more than a generic link with a keyword anchor. Digital PR, expert commentary, product reviews and unlinked brand mentions all build both at once. For a full program around AI visibility, see our AI search optimization service.

What makes a good backlink?

Ten relevant, editorial links usually do more than a hundred random ones. When you judge a link opportunity, check these in order:

1. Relevance. Is the site about your category, your customers or a closely related topic? A cookware store linked from a recipe publisher makes sense. The same store linked from a crypto blog does not.
2. Editorial choice. Did a real editor or writer choose to link because it helps their reader? This is the line between earning and manipulating.
3. Real audience. Does the site get search traffic and readers of its own? A site that exists only to sell links is a liability.
4. Placement and context. A link in the body of an article, surrounded by relevant text, beats one in a footer, sidebar or author bio.
5. Natural anchor text. Your brand name, the product name or a descriptive phrase. Exact-match commercial anchors repeated across many sites look engineered. Our anchor text guide covers the right mix, and you can review your own profile with the free anchor text analyzer.

Link attributes and when to use each

Google's documentation on qualifying outbound links defines three rel values. You can combine them, for example rel="ugc nofollow". Google says links marked this way will generally not be followed, though it may still find the destination through other routes such as sitemaps.

Nofollow and sponsored links are not worthless. They can send traffic, build brand mentions and lead to followed links later. They just should not be the backbone of an SEO plan. For more on the distinction, read dofollow vs nofollow backlinks.

Link building tactics compared

There is no single best tactic. The right mix depends on your budget, how much original material you have and how much risk you can tolerate. Here is how the common options compare for an online store.

Digital PR and original data

Publish something only you can: a survey of your customers, pricing or sales trend data from your category, a product test, a cost calculator. Then pitch it to journalists and niche editors with a clear headline. This tactic earns the links and the branded mentions that correlate with AI visibility.

Product reviews, seeding and gift guides

Reviewers and gift-guide editors already link to products. Sending products is fine, but Google's spam policies specifically list "sending someone a product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link" as link spam when the link passes ranking credit. Ask partners to mark those links rel="sponsored", and value them for traffic and mentions.

Partner, supplier and stockist links

Manufacturers, wholesalers, brands you stock and retailers that stock you often have "where to buy" or partner pages. These links are relevant by definition and usually just need a polite email.

Link building for Shopify and e-commerce stores

Stores have a specific problem: the pages that make money (product and collection pages) are the hardest pages to earn links to. Few writers link to a product page unless they are reviewing it. So successful e-commerce link building usually works in two stages.

1. Earn links to linkable assets. Guides, buying advice, size and fit tools, original data, brand story pages and your homepage attract natural links.
2. Pass that authority to commercial pages with internal links. Link from those assets to the relevant collections and products with descriptive anchors. Check that every important collection is linked from at least one other page, as Google recommends, using the free internal link checker.

Shopify-specific checks

• Use canonical URLs in outreach. Shopify can expose the same product at /products/ and /collections/.../products/ paths. Ask for links to the canonical /products/ URL.
• Keep links alive through changes. When you delete products or rename handles, add a redirect so earned links still land somewhere useful.
• Use crawlable links. Google generally follows only <a> elements with an href. Theme menus or buttons built with JavaScript click handlers may not pass links reliably.
• Watch app-generated footer links. Some apps and themes add links back to their own sites. Google lists widely distributed footer and template links among its link spam examples, so check what your store is outputting to others too.

How to build links, step by step

This is the process we recommend for a store starting a link building program from scratch. It assumes a small team and a few hours a week.

1. Audit what you have. Export your backlinks and referring domains from Google Search Console (Links report) and a backlink tool. Note your top linked pages, broken targets and your current anchor mix.
2. Benchmark two or three competitors. Look at who links to the stores that outrank you for your main category terms. Sort by relevance, not by authority score alone.
3. Pick your linkable assets. Choose one or two pages worth citing: a buying guide, a data piece, a tool, or a strong founder story. Improve them before you promote them.
4. Claim the quick wins. Fix broken backlink targets, ask suppliers and stockists for links, and convert unlinked brand mentions.
5. Build a prospect list. Find writers, editors and site owners who already cover your topic. Note the specific article or section where your page would help.
6. Pitch personally and briefly. Explain what you have, why it helps their reader, and where it fits. Never offer payment for a followed link.
7. Connect the dots internally. As links land, add internal links from those pages to the collections and products you want to rank.
8. Track and repeat monthly. Log every link, its target page and its attribute. Review rankings and referral traffic for the target pages after 60 to 90 days.

Outreach is a numbers game, but small numbers. The chart below is a worked example, not a benchmark, showing why a modest prospect list produces a handful of good links.

If your own reply rate is far below this, the problem is usually targeting or the asset itself, not the email template. Tighten relevance before you send more.

What Google counts as link spam

Google's spam policies define link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate search rankings. Its listed examples include:

• Buying or selling links for ranking purposes, including exchanging money, goods or services for links, or sending a product in exchange for a post with a link
• Excessive link exchanges, or partner pages made only for cross-linking
• Using automated programs or services to create links
• Requiring a link in terms of service or contracts without letting the other site qualify it
• Text ads or advertorials that pass ranking credit
• Links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites
• Low-quality directory or bookmark links, widget links, and widely distributed footer or template links
• Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature

Paying for advertising is fine. Google says it is not a violation to have paid or sponsored links as long as they are qualified with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".

Google's ranking systems guide notes that its Penguin system for link spam became part of the core ranking systems in 2016, and that it uses a range of spam detection systems, including SpamBrain. In practice, manipulative links often just get ignored, which means the money spent on them is wasted even when there is no visible penalty.

How to measure link building results

Link counts are an input, not an outcome. Track a small set of measures that connect links to revenue.

Be patient but not passive. If six months of links produce no movement for the pages they support, check that the links are relevant, that internal links pass authority to commercial pages, and that the target pages actually deserve to rank.

Where to start this month

If you only do three things: fix broken backlink targets with redirects, ask your suppliers, stockists and partners for links, and turn your best existing brand mentions into links. Then pick one asset worth citing and promote it properly. That sequence costs little, carries almost no risk and builds both rankings and the brand mentions AI search tools appear to reward.

QCK has driven more than $250M in organic revenue for e-commerce clients, and link building is one part of that work alongside technical SEO and content. If you want help building a program that fits your store, see our SEO services or get in touch.