You’re probably seeing your online competitors ‘everywhere’… their articles pop up during your midnight research sessions. Their founders chat away on podcasts. Their hot takes flood your LinkedIn feed.

The Hard Truth About Off-Site Content

I’ll skip the fluff – product pages and a nice blog on your site isn’t enough.

Most store owners have this tunnel vision about content. They’ll spend weeks perfecting product descriptions that barely move the needle, while completely sleeping on the gold mine of opportunities sitting on OTHER people’s websites.

Let me be clear: backlinks still rule the SEO kingdom. Google can talk about “great content” all day long, but show me a top-ranking e-commerce site without a solid backlink profile, and I’ll show you a unicorn riding a dinosaur.

I’ve seen so many brands flush thousands down the drain on garbage guest posts that editors accept with an eye roll. What a colossal waste of resources.

Time for a reality check on what actually works.

Guest Posting: Cut the Crap

The guest posting advice floating around is mostly garbage. Sorry not sorry.

Editors Are Drowning in Mediocrity

Publications don’t need your “10 Tips for Better Whatever” article. They’ve got 500 versions sitting in their submission queue already.

Want to know what makes an editor stop mid-scroll?

• Data nobody else has. Period.
• Takes so hot they need oven mitts to handle them.
• Solutions that don’t sound like they were written by ChatGPT.

Quick story: A home goods brand couldn’t get the time of day from design publications. Traditional outreach got them nowhere. Then they analyzed their sales data and spotted weird color pairing trends nobody was talking about. Suddenly, editors were actually responding to emails. Their feature drove around 300 direct sales – not just vanity metrics.

They ditched the “please let me write for you” approach. Instead: “I’ve got intel your readers can’t find anywhere else.”

Game. Changer.

Pitch with Data, Not Desperation

Your typical publisher’s inbox is a dumpster fire of terrible pitches. Most get deleted faster than spam.

Try these instead:

1. “We dug through 50,000 customer orders and found people are buying cutting boards in January, not during Black Friday madness like everyone assumes.”
2. “We’ve been stalking our competitors’ pricing for 6 months and noticed something weird that nobody’s talking about.”
3. “Here’s what bombed spectacularly in our store and why – the embarrassing stuff no one ever shares.”

There’s this specialty food brand that tracked seasonal buying patterns that basically flipped conventional wisdom on its head. Their article got referenced by 15 other industry sites. They didn’t chase those links – the links came to them because the content wasn’t the same recycled garbage.

Ask yourself: “What can I say that’ll make someone stop mid-chew during lunch and think ‘wait, what?'”

Merge Content and Commerce Already

God, I hate how businesses still treat “content” and “commerce” like they’re divorced parents who can’t be in the same room. The magic happens in the messy middle.

Product Roundups Are Saturated

Begging to be included in “Best Products of 202X” listicles is like trying to get into a club that peaked five years ago. Been there, tried that, got the rejection emails.

Instead, create content with natural commercial DNA:

• Break down problems people actually have, then casually mention solutions (including yours) without the hard sell
• Document processes where your products naturally fit without forcing them in
• Create decision frameworks that help people evaluate options (where yours logically appears)

Example: A pet supply company created this comprehensive guide on managing dog anxiety. Their products were mentioned like, twice, and only as part of bigger behavioral techniques. Veterinary blogs ate it up. Links rolled in, sales followed.

Play the Long Game with Publications

One-off guest posts are like one-night stands – might feel good momentarily but build nothing lasting.

A better approach:

1. Lead with your data-heavy banger that showcases your unique perspective
2. Stick around in comment sections, answering questions nobody else bothers with
3. Float the idea of a monthly column focused on your niche expertise
4. Eventually, journalists start coming to YOU when they need quotes

I’ve watched a beauty brand founder transform from desperate pitch-sender to turning down media requests. The difference? She stopped treating publications like link dispensers and started treating them like actual relationships.

Revolutionary concept, I know.

Tracking Results Beyond “We Got a Link!”

Cool, you got published on some industry site. Your mom’s impressed. But what did it actually DO for your business?

Last-Click Attribution Is Dead (If It Ever Lived)

Most e-commerce tracking is stuck in 2010. Try these instead:

• Set up attribution that acknowledges upper-funnel content touchpoints
• Build specific landing pages for each major content piece
• Use different UTM codes for each publication (and don’t be sloppy about it)
• Watch for branded search spikes after publications go live

A furniture retailer got featured in a design magazine. Direct clicks? Meh. But branded searches jumped 27% in the two weeks after. They almost missed this completely because their attribution was garbage.

The Pipeline Nobody Talks About

Smart brands view external content as the first date, not the whole relationship:

1. Someone stumbles across your brilliant insights on another site
2. They get curious, visit your store (or Google you)
3. They grab your lead magnet related to that original topic
4. You nurture them with expanded thinking on the subject
5. They buy because you’ve established trust, not because you hammered them with discounts

There’s this cookware brand that wrote about common cooking disasters for a food site. Instead of linking to products, they linked to a free temperature guide download. Smart move – 15% of visitors grabbed it, and those subscribers bought at triple the rate of regular traffic.

Not rocket science, just basic relationship building most brands are too impatient to execute.

Sometimes Your Best Content Shouldn’t Live on Your Site

Here’s where most store owners freak out – sometimes your most valuable content should live elsewhere. You can literally see them having mini heart attacks when hearing this suggestion.

Beyond Boring Guest Posts

Try these formats that editors actually want:

• Team up with complementary brands on research neither could do alone
• Flip the script and become the interviewed expert instead of the content creator
• Partner on webinars where you’re the knowledge provider
• Build interactive tools hosted on media properties (that subtly lead back to you)
• Create downloadable resources distributed through industry groups

A sporting goods retailer built an interactive training tool for a fitness publication. Could they have hosted it themselves? Sure. Would it have gotten the same traction? Not a chance. The publication’s distribution machine crushed anything they could have achieved solo.

Content Momentum Is Real

External content is like a snowball that picks up speed:

1. Your first piece establishes you’re not just another dropshipper with opinions
2. Other creators start referencing your insights
3. Media start coming to you instead of you chasing them
4. Domain authority climbs, lifting all your rankings
5. The same outreach that got ignored six months ago suddenly gets responses

A sustainable products brand wrote this fire piece challenging industry norms. Not only did they score that initial backlink, but it triggered 7 additional mentions, 3 podcast invites, and a speaking gig – without sending a single additional pitch.

That’s the snowball effect in action.

Where Most Brands Crash and Burn

Let’s talk about the ways e-commerce brands sabotage their own external content efforts:

The Copy-Paste Content Disease

Nothing screams “ignore me” louder than pitching topics beaten to death by every blogger since 2015:

• “7 Ways to Improve Your Whatever” (just stop)
• Basic how-to content my grandmother could find on Google
• Generic industry predictions from someone with no special insight

I reviewed a brand’s failed outreach campaign recently. 80% rejection rate. Their pitches? All “how to choose the best X” garbage that offered zero unique perspective. Of course publications ignored them.

The Promotion Pendulum

Brands swing wildly between:

• Transparent sales pitches barely disguised as articles
• Content so removed from their business it attracts irrelevant traffic

Find the sweet spot – content that proves you know your stuff without reading like a product catalog.

A furniture brand nailed it with a piece on design principles that established credibility without mentioning their products once. The editor later admitted this balance was exactly why they chose it over dozens of competitors.

Build Your Damn Road Map Already

Enough theory. Let’s get practical:

1. Spy on your competitors’ backlinks. Which sites consistently link to businesses like yours? That’s your target list.
2. Talk to actual customers (shocking concept) about what questions they had before buying. That’s your content list.
3. What data do you have that nobody else does? Sales trends? Customer behaviors? Usage patterns? That’s your unique angle.
4. Who serves your audience but doesn’t compete with you? Those are your co-creation partners.
5. When do publications in your space plan seasonal content? Work backward from there.

Do this homework, then build a 90-day plan with specific targets. None of that vague “we should do guest posting” nonsense.

Where This Is All Headed

External content for e-commerce is evolving fast:

• Publishers want multimedia now – just text is increasingly seen as lazy
• Content that generates discussion trumps information dumps
• Brands are forming content cooperatives around complementary products
• Transparency about sourcing and sustainability isn’t optional anymore

The most effective e-commerce SEO strategies extend way beyond your website. Your job is to figure out what value you can deliver to audiences you don’t yet own.

The Ugly Truth About Patience

Final thought, and it’s one most store owners hate hearing: this approach requires patience.

We’ve been conditioned by paid ads to expect same-day results. External content rarely works that way.

A specialty food brand spent six months placing strategic content pieces before seeing significant traffic improvements. The breakthrough came when a major food publication referenced one of their guest articles, triggering a cascade of mentions.

The winners in this game aren’t the most creative or knowledgeable – they’re the most persistent. They grasp that promoting linkable assets is a long-term play.

Stop seeing external content as one-off link grabs. Start viewing it as building your authority ecosystem. Shift your thinking, and eventually, you stop chasing publications because they start chasing you.

While your competitors keep obsessing over product page tweaks, the real e-commerce battle is happening elsewhere. Your move.

You probably should’ve started this a year ago. But today works too.