A backlink is a link from another website to yours. When a fashion blog links to your Shopify store’s product page in an article about “best sustainable sneakers,” that link is a backlink. Search engines treat backlinks as votes of confidence. The more high-quality sites that link to you, the more authoritative Google considers your store.
Backlinks are one of the top three ranking factors in Google’s algorithm, alongside content and technical SEO.
Why It Matters
Two stores selling identical products with equally optimized pages will rank differently based on their backlink profiles. The store with more backlinks from reputable, relevant websites will almost always rank higher.
Google’s reasoning is straightforward: if trusted websites choose to link to your store, your content is probably worth showing to searchers. Each quality backlink is essentially a recommendation from another site.
One backlink from a respected industry publication is worth more than a hundred links from random directories. Quality matters far more than quantity.
How Backlinks Affect Rankings
Domain authority. Your overall domain’s ranking power increases with quality backlinks. Higher domain authority means every page on your store has a better baseline chance of ranking, including new product pages and collection pages you add later.
Page authority. A specific page that receives backlinks gets a direct ranking boost for its target keywords. A blog post about “how to style leather boots” that earns 15 backlinks will likely outrank similar posts with fewer links.
Referral traffic. Beyond SEO, backlinks send actual visitors. A link in a popular blog post or gift guide can drive hundreds of targeted visitors directly to your store.
Types of Backlinks
| Type | Quality | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Editorial | High | A journalist mentions your product in an article |
| Guest post | Medium-High | You write a post for another blog with a link back |
| Resource page | Medium | A “best tools” page lists your store |
| Directory | Low-Medium | A business directory includes your URL |
| Comment/Forum | Low | A link in a blog comment or forum post |
Editorial backlinks are the most valuable because they are earned naturally. A writer chose to link to your store because your content or product was genuinely useful to their audience.
How to Earn Backlinks for Your Shopify Store
Create linkable content. Blog posts with original data, comprehensive guides, or useful tools earn links naturally. A “complete size guide for running shoes” with original measurements is more linkable than a generic product description.
Get featured in roundups. Journalists and bloggers regularly publish gift guides, “best of” lists, and product roundups. Reach out to writers covering your niche and pitch your product with a clear angle on why it fits their audience.
Offer your expertise. Respond to journalist queries through platforms like HARO (Help a Reporter Out), Connectively, or industry-specific forums. When quoted in an article, you typically get a backlink.
Build relationships with complementary brands. A coffee mug store and a coffee roaster are not competitors. Cross-promotion and co-created content between complementary brands generate natural, relevant backlinks.
Create shareable resources. Original research, infographics, calculators, and free tools get linked because they provide unique value that cannot be found elsewhere.
The best backlink strategy is making your store so useful and your content so good that other sites want to link to you without being asked.
Backlinks to Avoid
Paid links. Buying backlinks violates Google’s guidelines and can result in a manual penalty that tanks your rankings. Google has become very effective at detecting paid link schemes.
Link farms and PBNs. Private blog networks and link directories that exist solely to sell links are easily detected and penalized.
Irrelevant links. A link from an unrelated website (a plumbing blog linking to your fashion store) provides minimal SEO value and can look suspicious to Google.
Exact-match anchor text at scale. If hundreds of backlinks use the exact phrase “best running shoes” as anchor text, Google flags this as manipulative. Natural backlink profiles have diverse, varied anchor text.
