To have your website rank well in search results you need to have good text with keywords. You also need to get good relevant backlinks. 

A backlink is when a search engine looks at your site and sees that there’s a link from another site to yours. When the search engine sees a backlink from a legitimate and relevant site – as opposed to a “link farm” or spam site – then it awards your site “link juice” that will boost your rankings in search results pages.

There are many ways to get backlinks. But one simple way for retailers to get links is simply to get them from their suppliers.

Recently, I was speaking with a furniture client. I told him that I noticed in his analytics that he was only getting website traffic from one supplier. We went to one of his supplier’s sites and looked in the store locator tool.

My client’s store was listed with his phone number, but his website wasn’t listed.

Several, but not all, of his competitors had their websites listed and linked.

Visitors looking for a store online are more likely to favor the stores with websites listed and linked. So the lack of a link represented lost sales for my client.

The lack of the link also meant a loss of valuable “link juice” that would help keep his search engine ranking results competitive.

Easy Web Tip #70: Check all of your suppliers’ website store locators to ensure your store’s website is listed and linked.