I've been an .edu webmaster for about 13 years. I've seen lots of links given to .com domains. Four general characteristics are common through these links. The folks who receive them are: A) generous with their time, B) generous with their talent, C) generous with their money, or D) know a lot about an academic subject and are very good at writing about it. Here are some ideas...
1) If you have content knowledge.... Write an article about a Chapter or Topic in a popular college course, then notify professors about it. Such links deliver short bursts of traffic each semester that the course is taught - normally less than one visit for each student enrolled in the course - unless that profs page is ranking in the SERPs - then you will get lots of traffic. Don't do this unless you have fantastic knowledge and writing ability on the topic - or hire a second prof to write the article for you. Profs are extra picky about what they link to. Don't bug them for a link unless you have best on the web calibre content. Note that most of these links are now inside of course management systems such as BlackBoard and WebCT. These do not get spidered and pass no juice.
2) Edu links on the admissions page of the school site - such as "local lodging" or "local restaurants" can be golden. They can deliver a nice amount of traffic if they are optimized as they will frequently get top SERPs in local markets. These are very worth playing for if you have a site related to local lodging or restaurant themes.
3) If a profs page is not well optimized and you have a link on it, chat it up a bit with her or her webmaster because a few friendly pointers might bump that page up the SERPs and triple your traffic and they might enjoy seeing their page in a more promient position. Be careful though as this page might be in competition with you, now or in the future - and their page will probably whip yours.
4) Here's a fun way to get .edu links... Early each year, go to all of the cool beaches before the college students get there for spring break and take lots of pics, visit all of the beer joints and post reviews and details and photos for the whole tour. I think that you could then get .edu links from student webpages to your site. Register a memorable domain for it like springbreakbeaches.com
5) Offer to help.... find an .edu site with a department page or sports team page that looks like crap. Offer to redesign, adhering to University guidelines. Lots of prof hate to build websites but somebody has to do it for the department. You can ask for a designer link for your efforts. Offer to help with RSS feed, forms, whatever you know how to do. Lots of small schools need help. This is win-win.
6) Make a big donation in the name of your biz to their scholarship fund. Lots of schools list their big donors on a special page of their site. If you give a really big gift they might be willing to include your URL.
7) If you have a yoga biz offer to give a talk and free yoga session on the campus. The announcement of your event could include a link to your website. Schedule several sessions in advance and that will keep your page on their website and linked to. You not only get a link but you get free advertising for your yoga biz.
8) Become an adjunct faculty member or teach a non-credit in your area of specialty. Adjunct faculty usually can get a folder on the .edu domain. Don't dare post your viagra site links on it... but if you are teaching a course in nutrition you could put a few links on it to your nutrition info site. If you are teaching noncredit course in building websites then linking to a few examples of your own work is acceptable.
9) Universities often sponsor community events such as Special Olympics, summer kids programs, visiting orchestras, and more. Offer financial support to these in the name of your biz. They are often listed in the printed program and on the web announcement.
10) Maybe you don't have time to teach a full course on a subject but you are up to giving a few guest lectures. Offer your services to one of the professors and if you are scheduled the syllabus or lecture schedule might include a link to your site if it is relevant to the topic that you are lecturing on.
OK... there are your ten linkbuilding ideas... now it's your turn. Please share a tip on how you have earned an .edu link or what you think might work.
By: EGOL
Ten Ways to Earn an .edu Link
Link Building
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
I also find a much easier way to find .edu & .gov links such as below:
Search for .edu domains with a blog relating to your website keyword
Search for .gov domains with a blog relating to your website keywordsite:.gov inurl:blog “keyword relating to your website” Where the word keyword appears, just type in the relevant keyword for your website and you will see numerous blogs with those .edu extensions appear. Substitute .gov for the .edu and you will find the sites with .gov extensions.
Resonate Hi, many thanks for your contribution, which certainly helps with my left to expand much further. Many thanks and greetings kenny7
Great! Salin is extremely grateful for your tip.
Thanks Resonate, I was finding this tip from many days, i think most of link builders are in need of this search format.
Nice list, but some of these sound like an inordinate amount of work just to get an .edu link. I mean yes, .edu's are great but a lot of your suggestions are way way too much time/effort/money for any link, .edu or not. Setting up entire new sites with real content, becoming a faculty member, redesigning and taking over entire sites for free - just for some links?
Unless the motivation is heavily weighed towards altruistic reasons, a lot of these are a bit much.
1. It is all about student group sponsorship. Say you run a web design company. Start a program that supports computer clubs (at the high school or college level). Offer online competitions, discounts, to student groups...
2. Internships. Everyone one and their mother links to internships. Plus you get free employees.
3. Write any article about how college students are mistreated and have your business owner explain why treating college students right has helped his company in one way or another. Include link.
4. Wikis. God do I love wikis.
Great tips Russell! Thanks!
Thanks for the quick post, EGOL!
I have a sporting goods store that sells spirit wear with each school's logo on it. They're usually more than happy to link to their school's category page.
Wow, I can't think of a better biz to get .edu links. Nice!
Wait a minute - .edu links carry no 'magical ranking powers'.
Getting an inbound link from a .com site with x-number of inbound links would be the same as getting an inbound link from a .edu site with the same inbound links.
If anyone has any evidence to the contrary, I'm all ears.
I like the idea of simply starting up your own university, and thus register a .edu domain.
I am a health professional so I was working on some health related content. The problem is that I am not a native English speaker and I don't trust others to write my content. Obviously although my English are adequate an academic will pick up on my mistakes. So I decided to leave the content as a link magnet idea behind. What I did was simple, I obviously know my field and I know what kind of tools we use. There are plenty of tools available on the Internet but very few of them if any, are created by health professionals and those that are, are not really of much use to non health professionals. So I hired a programmer, gave all the specifications about how the tool should work and how to add a bit of Ajax goodness. After that I placed that tool on a page with enough but not too much content, sprinkled that page with lots of links to authority .gov and .edu pages about the theory behind the tool, no ads on the page and it seems to be working great.
Nice. I need to try this. Thanks for the idea!
Post a temp or freelance job for something like a journalism copywriter on their job board.
It's kind of funny... this post is almost a decade old, yet the ideas here can still work. It's less about what "SEO tactics" work today for sites, and more about finding creative ways to achieve the goal. There is no easy way to get links, it all requires work; figuring out how to build .edu links seems no different than it was 9 years ago... you need to build relationships and care about the other organization. :) I'm glad I found this
Hi EGOL
Thank you very much for an informative post. As been a pro in SEO, I would like to take a suggestion from from that my site: https://www.myprivatetutor.com is it eligible to gain .edu links or the point you mentioned on point no# 2.
Please let me know that my service can it be put mover there in the admissions page for a better exploration to the students?
Waiting for your advice.
Deb
Great resource. Thanks for the advice.
Great resource. I will get writing.
Paul Werner.
I feel that for my particular subject .edu sites are a difficult target to gain or request links from. Because of this sort of thinking I was going to leave .edu, or similar sites, and focus on other more easily acquired links.
However.
EGOL, you've mentioned something very profound, although not for the first time, that .edu, although not providing any additional advantage, they do transfer a level of 'trust and power'.
Thanks for the boost in confidence
Here is a tip. I get called often by students to purchase packaging materials and cheap chipboard. Chipboard is used to build models of buildings and homes, and many times for maps and projects. Its interesting how many department heads allow their students to purchase supplies for their dept. Also many students bring far more to school than they can haul home so shipping boxes are very popular each fall. We just fell into this nich because of our low pricing. Well just some advice I will be looking for more EDU links to let the kids know we are here and affordable. GBE Packaging Supplies www.gbepackaging.com
it does work for local business. Agree.
Great sharing EGOL ! I like your informative post.
Hi EGOL
Thank you for sharing so informative post and i gone through your post i really like it. As i been in SEO, Can you please tell me if i want to take a suggestions from you that my site: https://www.facetofacestudy.com is it entitled to gain .edu links and i didn't understand the no.5 point.
Awaiting your kind advice.on this,
Christian
Hi Christian! Given the age of this post, you're much more likely to find an answer to your question if you post to our Q&A forum. :)
Hello this is really a very good contribution, I am very pleased and will try it immediately thanks and many greetings kenny7
cool post.
How much clout does a .gov or .edu link carry anyway? Ive heard a lot about them and how they are the best links to get, but are they seriously any better than a good PR, relevant link?
Thank you for this post - the information was very helpful.
Really great posts, i personally like what resonate suggested, even though i don't know it it works at all, and also one of the things that nobody has mentioned is how to get edu.links via your network of collge students frineds, i think they are usually ok to do that, as ong as you give them reasonable excuse for that.
Great post EGOL. My thought is that a good place to start is with your own college because you have connections there already.
Grea one
@EGOL: thanks for confirmation that of course it is not the .edu extension that does give any advantage. It's the TRUST from all those 10s and 100s k of backlinks ... only .edu sites have 10k+ backlink from other .edu pages...
what I was missing is the point about the AGE of the domain... that's one of the most important factors in Google
@ross hill:
google does not care about the extension - it's the trust earned from the backlinks and AGE of the domain... just some weeks ago somebody sold links off a new 2005 .edu domain - without pagerank, without links... LOL
@dave: you mean the college job board... wow.. nice idea... but won't these posts get archived and removed after some time?
@markus941: yes, I agree -it's a TON of work... I can tell, as I'm doing a lot of that - and this TON of work is probably the reason why various client start flocking to me and my services (was that too much of a shameless self-plug ?)
cheers, presell page man
PS: hi all - this is actually my first post here IMHO
Welcome to the blog, Page Man!
Nice article. It gave me a few ideas i didn't think of before.
What is your old high schools webpage like, and do they look like they use any good seo habits? Mine was quite 1990's - even has frames.
Sounds like you fixed it up for them and got them better exposure. Nice work!
Typically, only higher education sites have the coveted .edu TLD, though. I haven't seen any high school sites with the extension.
Right... the K-12 schools are usually on .us domains. But I think that they are good links also. In fact, the example that Eric Ward uses in his "Mother of All Links" blog post is a k12.sd.us - this is a state gov domain.
Well in Australia you get edu links such as schoolname.vic.edu.au for a school in the state of victoria, or maybe schoolname.wa.edu.au for a western australian school.
Does anyone know if google would treat these the same as a .edu or not?
According to Matt Cutts the .edu extension does not give any advantage. However, what does count is the level of trust and power of the inbound links into that domain. So, .edu links in the USA and .edu.au links in Austrailia should have the same characteristics - lots of highly trusted and powerful sites linking to them.
The easiest and fastest way I found to get .edu links is at www.edulinker.com. These are schools expanding their A-Z lists. So far in two months I have about 14 for my website. As you can imagine this has drastically helped in every aspect of my SEO efforts.
fantastic. Smart simple ways to bump up Search engine ranks.
Also i want to know, if a link is placed on edu site, and the site has no follow tag enable, will the link still count?
Excellent post, I will be using some of these techniques for my website, we use green cleaning methods so should be plenty of educational institutions blogging about that subject.
Thanks
Cleaning Hero
You can also do a job post.Say you have a free games website,you can create a job post on the schools website and let students know you will pay them for any games they submit to your website.
Also,posting comments on school blogs help too.To make the link more relevant to your site,use the keyword you are trying to rank for as you name e.g.
Name:PC Tutorials
email:you@yourdomain
url:yoururl.com
comment:.................
This is great article, infact i would like to earn lil bit .edu links, can u reffer some suggestions for earning .gov links?
Awaiting your kind reply on this,
Chaitanya Patel
type into Google site:.edu inurl"your keyword" this will bring up a list of .gov and .edu related blogs to your keyword
I recently came across your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I don’t know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
>edu and .gov links are what anyone involved in seo think of as gold dust. A link from a .gov or .edu pr5 site seems to weight more heavily in the eyes ogf google than a pr5 link from a non .go or .edu site. I am obseesed with getting them for my Resveratrol site
thanks for sharing the tips and idea! great post!
this is what i am looking for
Hi, thanks for the great post, I have a couple of sites: https://www.learn-new-skills-from-home.com https://www.freegeardesign.co.uk Can you please tell me if adding to low ranking directories affect a sites page ranking? Paul