Proof of the POWER of .edu links.

I wanted to take a minute to share with the group a great example of how powerful .edu links are. My largest client provides online career training curriculum to community colleges and universities. We decided to partner with a company that has a Pay Per Click Marketing online course. The URL for this course on our website did not exist until about 4 weeks ago. In the four weeks since we launched the course because of .edu links, we now have these SERPs at Google.

#1 for Pay Per Click Marketing Course

#4 for Pay Per Click Marketing (moving up...might be #1 in a few weeks as more schools add the course).

I know Egol and others are always talking about the strength of in-bound .edu links but this definitive proof of their value.

Please note...this post is not intended to promote the course. I get no compensation for that. I just wanted to share something you might find useful or interesting.

IMO, no need to prove it...

I started to cooperate with universities as well, one edu link is always an improvement.

My competitor makes no SEO, he's got about 20 links from edu sites and about hundred others and he's competing with me, where I am having 2000 backlinks but only 5 edu.

What is an ideal way to get .edu links if one of your client's is a private state accredited company basically competing with university programs offering the same (alternative teacher certification)?

Neil

I know this sounds obvious and probably not that helpful... But you need to create things universites want to link to. This is not that difficult or expensive and is also extremly difficult and expensive. Unis will give links to qulaity academic resources, other academic instituitions, organisations that provide services for students or staff.

If you can create or do any of the above edu links are easy to get. If not than edu links are very hard to get.

You must remember that it is not necessary to convince the universtiy itself to link... think of all the instructors and professors that run personal .edu domains through the university. You can always contact them through their sites... but, as always, give them a reason to link... then ask for the link. The worst they can do is say no.

This may seem as obvious as the others who thought theirs were obvious (did that make sense?) but I would assume that if your site helps education professionals, simply asking them to remember your site in their .edu posts would get a handful. Since your site helps them get to a point where they may have access to .edu sites, an occasional "How are you doing?" and "If you have found your training useful, please help us with links to our site in your posts, blogs, etc.".

Hi,

I am working to seo a german domain (.de). Here are no .edu domains, however we do have universities (as hopefully you might have thought anyway:-)

Is this whole .edu extravalue because of the domain extension (manually decided in the algo) or a natural result f the behaviour of .edu domain owners?

Hence, if I get a university in Germany (.de-domain) to link to me the value is the same as if we had a .edu, just because of the behaviour of university domain owners?

thx

You can get links from .edu site by joining .edu forums site.

Should be the same. ie if you type university into google the first three are .ac.uk domains

Its the trust rank that is associared with the instituion and link juice it has from other places that make it valuable IMO.

Also its unlikely all edu are of equal value anyway.

The trust calculation must be based on an initial seed set of domains for whom the trust factor is set manually. It is likely that .gov and .edu are well represented in that set. Other genuine .gov and .edu will do well by virtue of being close to that source of trust. .edu's are also heavily interlinked through academics cross-referencing each other's papers.

If you were to acquire a fresh .edu domain tomorrow it probably wouldn't have any built-in advantage over a .com and likewise links from that domain would have no special benefit.

Thx John, that sorts it out. So no manual stuff today with the extension. Behaviour and proximity counts. cool! (I just gut two links from government associated sites ye ye ye)


To Jannah:
Well just getting .edu links from their forums is of little use to me as they would be english, and my site is german. Too dangerous as it looks too much like spamming, if they are forum links in another language (maybe one or two wouldn't hurt, but nothing bigscale)

thx anyway

Havent tried .gov.. but i have just completed with a small test which took around 4 months to complete..

What i did was, searched for .edu blogs and not sites..Then studied mostly all of them..a few with articles that i cudnt even understand though had a basic idea..(Technical Aspects aside)

Made a list of sites and gave each and every archive of it a thorough read. Then prepared myself with a few topics, researched internet for information regarding the topics published on the blog. compared the one thats written over there and then prepared a response to the best and almost relevant theme .. (Mostly there are questions and conclusions in the blog, So a good logical answer to answer anyone helps)..

This is just for one blog.. Had to prepare 30 answers atleast on diff topics ..

Alright then out of a list of around 40 .edu blogs, checked out for nofollows first (selfish me) found 35 without them (whoaaaa) ..

Ok the real test began , It was to place a link on my name whil i was replyin to the blog post, and would the link stayed for long or not? ..So i posted them on the selected sites..Out of 35 sites 6 sites did not allow any more postings..

But the other 29 Did!!! Well the testing phase is still on and i am waiting for my links to be removed.. its been 1 month and 3 weeks since the links are on..3 of my posts are even archived for the month of feb..lets see if those stay.. however, i still have 26 .edu links without nofollow pointing.. and i still researching for more links and topics.. its working for me..

ohh and i forgot to mention there were 4 blogs which asked me my university registration number to make a post..so had to leave them.. (so that makes it 24)..


Dont take it for granted as I am still testing it that how much time links stay there..Though one month is complete.. As of Now, I have to say it has worked, dunno about the later stage..

PS: dont try it until you are confident enuff of your posts.. Even i wasnt confident, but since i had to experiment, i personally left an option in my post i.e, if this post of mine, hurts/harms or points to any personal or brings out wrong facts, i would my request to remove.. Another point, .edu blogs are mostly read by students, so think before spam..

Thought to share it with you all..

LKS

Nice idea when leaving your link did you try and put keywords in the anchor text or were you more subtle than that?

nooo.. no keywords.. just the link on my name..thats all..didnt even thought of adding a keyword there.. would make that look like spam..

And did you see any results in your serps?