Feb 10

Written by: profitimo
Sunday, February 10, 2008

Everyone seems to want a one-way link from an .edu domain.  And why not?  We’ve been told repeatedly about the value of an edu link in helping boost the reputation of a website.  There seems to be a few reasons for this.

First and foremost, .edu sites are perceived as reliable, reputable sites and excellent at providing accurate, current information. These sites also tend to be quite large, with larger schools and universities often having thousands of pages of information available.  Search engines reward size, and that positive influence tends to trickle down to the sites that are linked to them. Finally, a great number of .edu sites are time-honored presences on the web; they’ve been around since the early days of the Internet and have aggressively used their Internet presence.

With so many positives to have an incoming link to your site from an edu site, keep in mind that even these have varying degrees of worth. An incoming link from a professor’s personal page, for instance, would be more valuable than a link coming from a student’s page. You can always buy links, but there are more creative ways to get links that are also more effective – purchased links don’t usually provide as much weight as you’d like them to, and if you can get top quality links at no cost, you’re ahead of the game.

A few good ideas for getting inbound links to your site from edu sites might include:

• A “top 100” list that relates in some way to both your product (say, text books or calculators) and edu sites. A “Top 100 Best Engineering Schools” would be a good example – no school can resist letting people know they’re the best at something.

• Post college sports scores and information on upcoming collegiate events. 

• Do a write-up on a particular college or university that touts the advantages of the school or something unique it offers – again, schools like good press, just like everyone else.

• Interview professors for content articles on your site. Most professors will be glad to link from their own site to yours, particularly if they have recently been published and are seeking good “word of mouth.”

• Review books or research done by professors at a college or university. If you sell vitamins and the bio-sciences department of a university is studying the positive effects of vitamins on certain diseases, it’s a great match.

• Populate your site with content that is valuable to students that edu sites might not provide. Calculators are always nice – for instance, a student loan calculator that helps students estimate how long it will take to repay loans. Information on everything from how to do laundry properly to learning to live on a budget can be valuable and may get you links from student resource pages.

Have you created some fascinating link bait that attracts edu linking to your site?  Or do you provide content that colleges and universities seem to jump all over?  If not, get your colleagues together and do some barnstorming!

Get Free SEO Tools  

Get SEO Report 

Related Links:

101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website - By Andy Hagans and Aaron Wall

How to build successful Link Development? - Thumbshots Articles

How to Get Inbound Links to Your Website? - Trent Brownrigg

Why Your Website Needs Inbound Links? - Rick Hendershot

20 Best ways to get Links to your website! - Thumbshots Articles

How Linking Practices Will Hurt Your Search Engine Rankings? - Thumbshots Articles

Linking Up - Search Engine Rankings Still Come Down To Links - Profitimo Articles

Do Outbound Links Matter for SEO than Inbound Links?

Recommended Books:

SEO Answer Book: Website Optimization - by Michael Small


Author: Arnie Kuenn

Email: arniek (at) verticalmeasures (dot) com

Arnie Kuenn is the president of Vertical Measures.  Vertical Measures is an Internet marketing company focused on search engine optimization and link building. We are business people who know how to talk to the senior executive as well as the web developer. This is what we do best.  Over two decades of business management and online marketing experience has taught us how to achieve the best results for your business.

Tags: