Shopify backlinks are links from other websites to your Shopify store — your homepage, collections, products or blog posts. To get them, start with the relationships your store already has (brands you stock, suppliers, partners, local press), publish genuinely useful content on your Shopify blog, and promote it to relevant sites. Then use internal links to pass that value to the collections you want to rank.
Shopify itself doesn't create backlinks for you, and no app can safely do it in bulk. What the platform does give you is a clean structure to build on: a built-in blog, collection and product pages, editable pages and URL redirects. Used well, those make your store much easier to link to — and make every link you earn count for more.
This guide is specific to Shopify stores. For the broader retail playbook (supplier links, gifted reviews, gift guides and data assets), see our main guide to ecommerce link building.
How to get backlinks for a Shopify store: the short version
- 1
Prepare the store
Redirect deleted products, point links at clean canonical URLs, and check your main pages are indexable. - 2
Choose target pages
Pick five to ten priority collections plus your homepage. These are where you want authority to end up. - 3
Collect the easy links
Stockist pages from brands you carry, supplier and partner mentions, local press, associations and the agencies and apps you work with. - 4
Publish one linkable piece a month
Buying guides, size or care charts, comparisons or small data studies on your Shopify blog. - 5
Promote and internally link
Pitch each piece to relevant sites, then link from it to the matching collection with descriptive anchors.
Prepare your Shopify store before building links
A link is only as useful as the page it lands on. Ten minutes of housekeeping protects every link you earn afterward.
1. Redirect products and collections you remove
Stores delete products constantly. When a product URL with backlinks starts returning a 404, those links stop helping. Shopify lets you create URL redirects, so make it a habit: whenever you delete or rename a product or collection, redirect the old URL to the closest replacement or parent collection. If you're unsure which old URLs had links, check Google Search Console's Links report or our guide to link reclamation.
2. Give people the clean URL
Store themes often let a product be reached through more than one path — for example a collection-scoped URL and the plain product URL. Check your product pages' canonical tag (view source and search for rel="canonical") to see which URL your store declares as the main one, and use that URL whenever you ask for a link. The same goes for filtered or sorted collection URLs: share the clean collection URL, not one with filter parameters.
Share: https://yourstore.example/collections/burr-grinders
Share: https://yourstore.example/products/model-x-grinder
Avoid: https://yourstore.example/collections/burr-grinders?sort_by=price-ascending
Avoid: a URL with tracking parameters from your email or ad campaigns3. Check indexability
Password-protected stores, pages accidentally hidden from search, and pages with a noindex tag can't benefit from links in the usual way. Run your homepage, priority collections and best blog posts through an indexability check before you start outreach.
4. Give collections something worth citing
A collection page that is only a product grid gives nobody a reason to link. Add a short, useful introduction — how to choose, what the differences are, a sizing note, a short FAQ — that a writer could reasonably point their readers to.
Which Shopify URLs should get backlinks?
Shopify stores share a familiar structure: a homepage, collections, products, blog articles and standalone pages. Each attracts different links:
| Shopify page | Typical role in SEO | Who links to it naturally | Build links here? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Homepage | Brand searches; passes authority site-wide | Press, partners, stockists, directories, profiles | Yes — mostly branded anchors |
| Collections | Core commercial searches ("linen bedding") | Rarely anyone, unless the page is genuinely useful | Yes — your main ranking targets; mostly via internal links |
| Products | Product-name and long-tail searches | Reviewers, gift guides, brands you make | Only for long-lasting hero products |
| Blog articles | Informational searches; earning links | Bloggers, forums, resource pages, journalists | Yes — this is where most earned links land |
| Pages (about, guides, charts) | Brand trust; reference content | Educators, communities, writers | Yes, for reference content like size charts |
A simple routing rule
12 ways to get backlinks for a Shopify store
| Tactic | Best for | Effort | What to send or do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand stockist pages | Stores reselling other brands | Low | Ask each brand to list you on their where-to-buy page |
| Retailers of your own brand | Stores that make products | Low | Include a link and brand kit in wholesale onboarding |
| Supplier and partner case studies | Any store | Low–medium | Offer a short story about how you use their product |
| Unlinked mentions | Stores with some press or buzz | Low | Find mentions of your store name and ask for a link |
| Local press and community | Stores with a local base | Medium | Pitch a local story; sponsor a local club or event |
| Buying guides on your blog | Every store | Medium | Publish the most useful guide in your category |
| Reference charts and calculators | Apparel, home, food, hobby | Medium | Size charts, care guides, ratio or quantity calculators |
| Gift guide pitches | Giftable products | Medium | Pitch editors ahead of the season with images and prices |
| Product reviews | Physical products | Medium | Send products with no conditions; gifted links should be sponsored |
| Expert quotes | Founders with category expertise | Medium | Answer journalist requests about your product category |
| Broken link building | Niches with closed shops | Medium | Offer your page where others link to discontinued products or dead shops |
| Niche link community | Stores with a blog | Low | Get in-content links from relevant member sites |
Every tactic here is covered in more depth in our guide to how to get backlinks; for local tactics like sponsorships and community events, see local link building. If you need a starting point for outreach, our outreach email generator drafts the first email and follow-ups for you.
Links from the Shopify ecosystem
Running on Shopify puts your store inside an ecosystem of agencies, developers, theme designers and app makers. Some of them publish customer stories, showcases or portfolios, and those can be relevant, followed links.
- Your agency or developer. If an agency built or redesigned your store, ask to be featured as a case study with a link to your homepage. Offer a quote about the results to make it easy.
- Apps you rely on. Some app developers publish customer stories or showcases. If an app made a measurable difference to your store, offer to share how — app makers often want real examples.
- Theme designers. Some theme developers feature live stores that use their themes. If your store is a strong example, it's worth asking.
- Design and ecommerce galleries. Curated showcases of well-designed online stores exist for many niches. A distinctive, polished store can earn a listing.
Relevance still matters
Using your Shopify blog to earn links
Many Shopify stores have a blog that's either empty or full of thin product announcements. That's a missed opportunity: the blog is the part of your store other sites are most willing to link to. A few formats that work well for stores:
| Format | Example (fictional linen store) | Collection it supports |
|---|---|---|
| Buying guide | How to choose linen bedding: weight, weave and care | Linen bedding |
| Reference chart | Duvet and pillow size chart for every country | Duvet covers |
| Care guide | How to wash linen without shrinking it | Linen bedding |
| Comparison | Linen vs cotton percale vs sateen, tested for a month | Sheets |
| Small data study | What our customers' return reasons reveal about sizing | Duvet covers |
| Seasonal gift guide | Housewarming gifts that people actually use | Gifts |
Make each post easy to link to
- Answer the question in full. The post should be the page a writer can cite instead of explaining the topic themselves.
- Use your own images and testing. Original photos and first-hand results set a store's content apart from supplier copy.
- Keep the sales pitch light. Link to products and collections where they help, but don't turn the guide into an ad — writers won't cite a sales page.
- Update instead of republishing. Keep the same URL when you refresh a guide so the links it earned keep pointing at it.
For a deeper process on building content people cite, see our guide to linkable assets.
Shopify backlink shortcuts to avoid
Store owners get a steady stream of offers: apps that "submit your store to 500 directories", gigs selling "100 high DA backlinks", forum signature packages and "guaranteed page one" link bundles. They're cheap because the links are worth little.
Worth your time
- Stockist and partner links from brands and suppliers you really work with
- Editorial links to useful blog content
- Gift guides and reviews, with gifted links correctly qualified
- A small number of relevant business and industry profiles
- Niche-matched, in-content placements you can verify
Skip these
- Bulk directory submission apps and services
- Packages promising a fixed number of "high DA" links for a small fee
- Blog comment, forum and profile link blasts
- Paid followed links on sites that sell links to anyone
- Footer or sitewide links on unrelated stores
Google's spam policies list buying links that pass ranking credit, automated link building and low-quality directory links as link spam. Most of these links are simply ignored, which means you paid for nothing; blatant patterns can lead to a manual action. If you've already bought a package like this, our guide to toxic backlinks explains when cleanup is actually worth it.
A monthly backlink routine for store owners
You don't need a full-time link builder. A store owner with three to five hours a month can make steady progress with this routine:
Monthly Shopify backlink routine
0/8For the "still live" check, paste the linking page and your store's domain into our free backlink checker: it reports whether the link is there, its rel value, the anchor and where on the page it sits.
How HrefClub works with Shopify stores
HrefClub is a members-only backlink community. You add your store's domain and its niches, spend monthly credits to request links, and a matching algorithm assigns at random which relevant member site places each one — so there are no direct A↔B swaps. You choose the target URL (a buying guide or a priority collection, for example) and the anchor, though keyword-heavy anchors are limited.
- Links in real content. Placements must sit inside page content, not footers or sidebars, with one member link per page.
- Verified and re-checked. Each link is verified on submission (live, followed, indexable, correct anchor) and re-checked automatically. After three failed checks it's marked lost and your credits are refunded.
- Costs tied to authority. A link from a site with any authority costs 1 credit, 20+ costs 2, 40+ costs 4 and 60+ costs 8 (60+ is for Gold-trust members). Plans start at $39/month — see pricing.
- Place links from your Shopify blog in a click. When it's your turn to host a link for another member, you can connect your Shopify store with "Place it for me": we suggest the best existing post, preview the exact change, insert the link when you approve it and verify it. Placing a link earns half its credit cost back.
No link source is risk-free, and HrefClub doesn't replace earned links from great content and real relationships. It's designed to add relevant, in-content links on a steady schedule while you stay in control of what appears on your own store.