Add Links To Your Shop

I woke up to an email from a frustrated shop owner that wants to know how to get relative links to her shop without paying tons of money or being spammy. Here is a copy of the e-mail:

"I was told by someone on etsy that I need to have my links placed all over the internet for SEO purposes and they have to be relevant to the category I’m selling in (jewelry). Other than blogs and such they suggested directories and sites where you add your url in with thousands of others. I tried this today and about walked away in tears because each site (including the .org ones) wanted a boat load of money to list my url. My question for you is: can you give me any ideas n where to find free (and relevant, not spammy) places to add my url to? I am getting so frustrated with seo. I’m so thankful to have your help, but it just gets so overwhelming. It is no wonder people pay webmasters large quantities of money to manage websites for them."  -A Frustrated Shop Owner


Well, Frustrated Shop Owner, yes, incoming URLs to your shop help with pagerank and SEO. "Pagerank" is a term that means "the importance of your page." Pagerank is on a scale from 0 - 10, with 10 being the very highest. Google has a Pagerank of 10. Most peoples page has a rank of 0. The higher the number the more important the page is. Aim for a 3 or better, but don't expect much very fast.

Commenting on Blogs is a quick and easy way to get links to your shop but it only goes so far. You should try and find relevant blogs to comment on because those links carry more weight. Your own blog will carry more weight because you know your product best. Posting in relevant forums with a link to your shop in the signature provides relevant links. Asking relevant sites to place a link to your shop is also good.

As far as directories go, there is one that is above all others: The Open Directory Project or DMOZ.ORG is the largest human-edited directory on the Internet. That means that every submission is reviewed for relevancy before going live. It does take a few months to be listed so get on it. Squidoo is a site where you can create Wiki like articles about subjects you know. These links are relevant because you write the story. Speaking of you can even start a Wikipedia entry about your company, too!

There are a lot of places that you can create relevant links to your shop. I point a lot of links over to my main company website and link back over to my shop page. It is easier to get links to your website because you can reciprocate. Believe it or not but ArtFire is a great way to build links to your Etsy shop or website. Every item page has links to my Etsy shop and my website.

Tomorrow I will add some more free ways to get links to your shop. I hope this helps. Be sure to keep the questions coming, either as comments or through MarketMyShop@gmail.com