Ecommerce Link Building in 2026: What to Keep and What to Cut

Ecommerce link building has a credibility problem. Store owners have been sold directory submissions, paid guest posts and “100 backlinks for $50” packages for a decade. Meanwhile the tactics that actually work are slower, duller and harder to sell.

So this is not a list of link sources. It is a decision about where your limited hours go, judged against what the current data says about how pages get found and cited.

One number reframes the whole question. Therefore it is worth starting there.

The number that changes ecommerce link building

Ahrefs studied which pages AI Overviews actually cite. The result overturns the assumption most link building strategies are built on.

Read that carefully, because it cuts both ways. Page one is no longer the gate it was, so a store that cannot crack the top 10 can still be cited. However, it also means ranking alone no longer guarantees you the citation you used to get for free.

So the job changed. You are no longer only buying your way onto page one. Instead you are making your store a source worth quoting, and links are one of the ways that source gets discovered in the first place.

What to keep

These tactics survive the shift because they do not depend on the page-one monopoly. Each one works by making a real page findable and worth referencing.

1. Digital PR built on something you actually know

You hold data nobody else has. Specifically, you know what sells, what gets returned, what customers ask before buying, and how that changed this year. That is original data, and original data is the most reliably linkable thing a store can publish.

A niche retailer publishing “what our customers returned most in 2026, and why” has something a journalist can cite. Conversely, a generic “top 10 gift ideas” post has nothing anyone needs to credit.

2. Being the supplier everyone already lists

If you stock recognised brands, those brands often maintain stockist or dealer pages. Similarly, trade bodies, local business directories with real editorial standards, and manufacturer “where to buy” lists all link out as a matter of course.

These are unglamorous and genuinely earned. Moreover, they are the easiest links most stores never bother to claim.

3. Broken link building, pointed at your own catalogue

Pages that used to exist still get linked to. When a competitor discontinues a product or a supplier reorganises their site, the links pointing there break, and the people who placed them generally want them working.

Finding a relevant broken page, then offering your equivalent product or guide as the replacement, remains one of the few outreach approaches with a genuinely useful premise. It also starts at home: fix the broken links inside your own store first, because the authority you already have should not be leaking into 404s.

4. Content that answers the comparison question

Buyers compare before they buy, and comparison content attracts links because other people need something to point at when the question comes up. So a genuinely even-handed comparison in your category earns references that a sales page never will.

This is also the content most likely to be quoted by an AI assistant, since it is structured as an answer rather than a pitch.

What to cut

These are the line items to stop funding. Each one either stopped working, or never worked and was merely measurable.

• Bulk directory submissions. Generic directories exist to sell listings, not to help buyers. Consequently the links carry no editorial judgement and no weight.
• Paid link packages. Buying links breaches Google’s spam policies, and spam updates are exactly the mechanism that finds them. The September 2026 spam update took two weeks to finish, which is a long time to discover you bought a problem.
• Mass unsolicited guest posting. Writing filler for sites that accept anything produces links from pages nobody reads. In short, the cost is real and the benefit is not.
• Reciprocal link swaps. “You link to me, I link to you” schemes are transparent to Google and add nothing for the reader.
• Chasing Domain Rating for its own sake. A high-authority link from an irrelevant site is worth less than a modest link from a site your buyers actually read.

The common thread is worth naming. Every cut tactic treats a link as a unit to be acquired. Meanwhile every kept tactic treats a link as a consequence of being worth citing.

How much link building does a Shopify store actually need?

Less than the industry implies, and later than you think. Links help a page that already deserves to rank. They do not rescue a product page with a supplier description and no unique title.

So the honest sequence is this. First make the pages worth linking to, because that is also the work that earns citations. Then earn links to the handful of pages that genuinely deserve them.

What not to conclude from the Ahrefs data

The 37.1% figure is not permission to ignore rankings. Ranking in the top 10 still correlates with citation more strongly than any other single factor, and it still sends traffic directly.

Equally, it is not proof that links stopped mattering. Links remain one of the main ways a page gets discovered and assessed in the first place. The finding is narrower than either headline: page one is no longer the only door. That is genuinely useful, and it is also all it says.

Where to go next

Before you chase external links, it is worth knowing what your store already looks like. Our guide to running a Shopify SEO audit covers how to find the broken links and weak pages first. For the on-page work that makes a page worth linking to, Shopify SEO best practices ranks the fixes by impact, and internal linking and topic clusters covers the links you fully control.