It is widely accepted that .edu and .gov backlinks carry a larger weight for search engine algorithms. Despite the fact that Google has never admitted it (sometimes it even neglected) most SEO and online marketing experts would confirm that .edu and .gov links outperform other extensions in terms of search ranking juice. There are several ways to collect those links, below I will explain two of them, depending on whether your blog has relevant content to educational and governmental websites or not.
Blogs with relevant content
The first step to get some .edu and .gov backlinks pointing to your website is to locate sites related to your topic ending with those extensions. Using the Google operator site:.edu and site:.gov combined with the keywords of your blog should enable you to find an extensive list of such sites.
site:.edu "keyword 1"
site:.gov "keyword 1"
Once you have a list of sites explore them and select the ones you think would have a higher probability of sharing some external links with your blog. Finally contact the webmaster of those sites and point them to the content on your blog that could be relevant and valuable to those sites. It is always a good idea to link first to the sites before asking the backlink.
Blogs without relevant content
If your blog does not have content that could be relevant or valuable to educational and governmental websites your should look for types of sites that allow users to create a backlink without interacting with the webmaster, and the most common types of those sites are blogs and online forums.
Again you can use the Google operators to generate a list of such sites. Notice that the site:.edu argument limits the search results to sites with a .edu extension while the inurl:blog attribute ensures that results will have the word blog on the URL structure.
site:.edu inurl:blog "keyword 1"
site:.edu inurl:forum "keyword 1"
site:.gov inurl:blog "keyword 1"
site:.gov inurl:forum "keyword 1"
Finally track down the sites with discussions relevant to the topic of your blog and join the conversation, leaving a backlink to your site either through the comment section or on inside a forum thread. Bear in mind that you should not spam those sites for the sake of getting as many backlinks as possible. Make sure that you are adding useful information and not just polluting the online environment.
Update: Check out the “Enhanced” version of those search queries.
Thanks for the great tips. Although I’ve read your most recent article related to this one. Definitely this one is worth reading.
Thanks for your new link building strategy, though I read it after long long time, I ready in a forum about it and try to make .edu link, it’s a nice process but problem is that most of the edu sites not give us allow to put our comments.
Great tips to improve the quality of backlinks, thanks! I am certainly going to see if I can find blogs with related content. Google advanced search lets you search particular domains and blogs only if you like, so with your tips it’s quite easy to find these. I think you can also enter:
“keyword 1” site:.edu in Google search.
Yeah, I think relevance is the key as well. In my case, I am going to have a hard time with my American Idol blog, but like other posters said, any backlink is better than none.
Does this still work, and can’t anyone just set up their own .edu and .gov domains…even though they would be useless????
Agree completely, thx for tips
Excellent tips! Thanks a million!
Very good tips
Good tips but if .edu website don’t give dofollow link,back link is only for traffic,not for quality back link
and more SEO project!
Will be bad and spam .edu!
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Thank you for sharing this article
Regard
Chris
I know and we in a hollow acorns were called that the every
I have used some search queries to find .edu blogs, and found some decent blogs to comment on, although they use the nofollow tag like most other blogs…. it’s still a good place to place links regardless. I think you are right on with the providing good content and contacting the webmasters.
very simple and nice idea buddy, thx for your tutor
.edu and .gov links will do wonders for your search rankings if you have appropriate web content on your site.
Hi, very intresting information for me)))))). I completely, completely agree. I read the article with pleasure.
Thank you admin of this site for interesting and useful information.))))
Hi Daniel
Very interesting article.
There has been much debate as to the value of .edu and .gov and I don’t think anybody apart from Google knows the truth and they are not going to spill the beans!!
I do have such backlinks I am sure that it has helped my site to PR3 but I have a lot of other relevant links so I cannot say for sure.
I would not waste my time spending countless hours on it but I am sure that a few comments in an .edu blog would not do your site any harm providing it is a relevant blog site to your own.
Regards
Chris
Dear Daniel,
Thanks for your new link building strategy, though I read it after long long time, I ready in a forum about it and try to make .edu link, it’s a nice process but problem is that most of the edu sites not give us allow to put our comments.
Still it’s a great article.
Thanks
Deb
Great ideas, thanks for sharing- what’s out there.
Ryan
That comment 25 cracks me up… lol
Anyways, Google might not give preference to .edu sites but, overall, the focus and quality of their content might be taken more seriously by their visitors… and as someone else said, a backlink’s a backlink.
Sam
Great idea. I know gathering .edu and .gov links can help and this is a great idea to try to get some linking to your website
Thought Matt Cutts of Google stated that Google does not give any special preference to .edu or .gov links? I believe that a backlink from a .edu site can be valuable if the site is relevant to your own and has a high PageRank. Seems the fact that it is a .edu by itself will not help any more than any other TLD.
I really think that .edu and .gov backlinks helps your website rank better and that’s due to one major reason. .edu and .gov domains are really hard to get by anyone. only certain organizations are authrozied to own it and that’s why it has a better value than the .com, .org and so on.
Your site found in Google:
I have visited your site 492-times
dont think that relevance ist so much important. A link is a Link!
they edu backlinks ?
Some interesting comments. Google is clear that backlinks should be relevant. I therefore have some doubts about the value of getting just any .edu or .gov backlink.
I had been working on getting links from .edu & .gov sites for a while, but had not thought about .edu / .gov forums & blogs…cool idea…again it is unclear how much weightage forum links will have on google, but my guess is, it will be significantly higher than similar forums in .com etc…
.gov sites are the most difficult to crack in my opinion…most of them have the standard resposne that they link only to .org and .gov sites…hmmm
Thanks for the nice post, have included it at my page on inbound links – LinxJinx – The Inbound Links Encyclopedia @
I always wonder how can backlinks with .edu or .gov. But now i found the answer. Thank for your tips.
Good article, thanks!
good article thanx
I’ve never thought of just leaving relevant comments on .edu sites to get backlinks, can’t wait to try it out thanks.
thankyou
Interesting post. I’ve heard the same thing about .gov & .edu, but I’ve never tried it. Perhaps I’ll give it a run.
A very good tips!
I have heard these rumors for some time now, but I just don’t know how to isolate the search to just a certain domain. This will certainly help.
Thanks
Maki, I agree that searching for .edu and .gov sites that are already linking to blogs on similar topics is another good strategy.
I had also read the article on Link Building Blog, it is a good explanation.
Great article, thanks Daniel.
Edu blogs are the easiest to get a backlink but they can be notoriously picky about linking out unless you’ve got some great resources/content.
It will help a lot if your site is ad-free I think.
I also prefer to search via competitors instead of keywords because if someone is willing to link to your competitor, they will be willing to link to you.
Link Building blog had a write up on this topic today too:
See here
How to Build Trusted Links