Finding unlinked mentions to category and product pages
Example 1: Sales announcements
Two main features in any ecommerce calendar are busy sales periods and discount periods. Roundups of sales performance are often released after these times on relevant industry and ecommerce press outlets, and can be a great pieces of content to search for unlinked category and product mentions.
One of our ecommerce clients announced they’d had a record-breaking Christmas and Black Friday, calling out the homewear and electrical categories as the top performers. Based on that, we searched articles about the sales growth within those particular product categories to find unlinked brand mentions, and secured links to those category pages.
You might be thinking “okay, that’s all very well and good, but how do I even start looking for those types of articles?” Here, Google’s advanced search parameters can help you to unearth sites that wouldn’t pop up on your basic search. By digging deeper and giving Google more specific requests, you filter through the noise, finding highly relevant content that mentions your brand’s products in which you can secure that all-important deeper site section link.
Example 2: Product-related news announcements
It’s also worth paying attention to news stories surrounding your brand and its specific product offering. If you secure links to your brand on high-value editorial sites within content that’s relevant to your product offering, Google will see you as a trusted site. Not only this, but you can improve brand visibility within different spaces and boost your brand’s reputation. The inclusion of a link helps potential customers and partners to find you and your products.
For example, we saw that one of our clients had previously partnered with charities to donate laptops to various schools and community centres. The laptops category page was a URL that we were targeting for link building, so we searched for coverage of this initiative and secured links in relevant, positive news stories.
Find supplier or partner pages that list your brand on their site
If you sell products that are made by other brands, they’ll usually have you listed as a supplier or an authorised stockist. These lists can be a goldmine for securing category and product page links. If a potential customer is searching for a gaming laptop made by Acer, for example, and you sell Acer products on your site, by having your brand listed as an authorised stockist, the person who is explicitly searching for that product will be hand-delivered your site from which to buy that specific product.
Here is where securing a link to a product page rather than your homepage is important. If the customer is directed to your homepage, they will then have to spend time finding their desired product. This increases the risk of that potential customer leaving your site to search for it elsewhere. If they are taken directly to the product page, you are giving them precisely what they are looking for, resulting in a higher chance of that page visit converting into a sale.
Realign your homepage links
We’ve discussed the importance of securing links to product or category pages over your homepage, and this is crucial to keep in mind when building fresh links or asking for links to be included in unlinked brand mentions. Sometimes, however, links to your homepage that would be more beneficial as product or category page links already exist as part of your site’s backlink profile.
Luckily, realigning these links is possible, you just need to find them first. Running a backlink audit of your homepage can throw up a wealth of opportunities to realign homepage links that would be more relevant and valuable if pointing to a product or category page. Going through the data can be a bit of a manual process, but, if you stick at it, you can find some high-authority opportunities for realignment to those deeper site sections.
These tactics are by no means an exhaustive list, but if you’ve experienced difficulty building links to deeper product category pages we’d recommend incorporating them into your strategy. Remember: opportunities are often out there already, you just need to find them!
Check out what else the Digital PR team at Builtvisible can do for you and get in touch if you need more specific help.
