Are EDU Backlinks Still Relevant Today

When it comes to backlinking, getting your link on the biggest and most well-known sites is the best possible scenario. There is a lot of competition for the right to place your link on those sites though, and most organizations will make you pay top dollar.

Sites that host an education domain though, may be even more ideal to get on because they will have a very big impact on your ranking. There are thousands of .edu sites out there and many are looking for business or even have places where you can post your link for free. You just have to know why you want your link there and what kind of websites and content they would be willing to link to.

Recognized Status

Educational institutions like community colleges, universities, and even high schools are immediately recognized as reputable organizations meant to provide educational content for the greater good. Google, and other search engines, like this. They know that the only people at that school allowed to post content are staff members doing it for educational purposes and that they must adhere to strict regulations concerning what they post. If you can somehow work your link into their content, your website will receive a little bit of that prestige in the way of a higher search engine ranking.

The Older the Better

Many universities have been around since long before the internet was invented. Their sites though, have been around since not long after because they have provided their staff and students such a useful tool. The age of these institutional websites is part of what gives them such a high status online. Google gives preference to sites that have been around for a while, because it shows the site has lasting power and won’t just fade out of existence as its creators ignore it and move on to a new hobby.

Instead, .edu sites are constantly updated, added to, and redesigned to keep up with the changing times and the constant flow of educational information pertinent to their curriculum. Even if your site isn’t very old, if you can get your link on the website of some of the older universities, you will get a lot more consideration when it comes to high search engine rankings.

High Traffic

When you consider how many people go on to higher education after high school these days, you should realize that it’s a big number. That also means that all those students are using the .edu sites. Because they have a constant flow of traffic coming to their school, educational institutions also have a constant flow of traffic coming to their site. The more traffic a site has, the better it does in the search engine rankings.

 

By putting your website on just one of those sites, you could get exposure to thousands upon thousands of students every day, not to mention all the non-student visitors who go to .edu sites for research. The exposure alone is great, but you’ll also get a backlink on a high traffic site, which means a higher ranking for your website.

Relate to the Curriculum

Knowing how much these .edu sites could improve your ranking doesn’t help much if you can’t get your link on one of them anyway. Universities and high schools don’t take kindly to spam links being posted on every free comment space either. Instead, you’ll need to try to take a more academic approach.

Try coming up with content that fits within your business services or products, but is somehow related to their curriculum. If you sell tires for instance, you might write an article about the chemical process of producing rubber and share it with the Chemistry department of a major university.

If you do landscaping on the other hand, you might write an article on the various species of native trees in your area. Then, you can post your link in a .edu biology forum or offer it as a source to professors of Biology who may then list it on assignment sheets or even in their favorite links list.

If you can’t come up with researched content like this, you could always try sponsoring the institution with a charity drive or even awarding a scholarship to one of their students each year. They will then gladly post your link and business name as one of their proud partners.

Because they are so prestigious and must meet such strict guidelines, .edu backlinks are not easy to get. Once you get just one though, the boost in your ranking will be worth much more than a new SEO or online marketing campaign. Once you are part of the backlink alumni on one of their competitor’s sites, it will probably make the next few universities much easier to convince too. This will make your link building strategies more effective in getting your site to the top of the SERPs.