Do you perform link building strategies for your business?
If yes, I’m sure with so many methods to improve rankings for your website, you may not want to adopt SEO tactics that violate the search engines “terms of service.”
And, especially post Google Penguin era, you cannot create bulk articles and post them on the sites that have high domain authority that are irrelevant to your niche and still get rewarded by Google.
Are you still struggling to generate a high-powered link? Then .edu domains can be your great source!
.EDU Domains: What does it mean?
EDU is a sponsored top level domain (sTLD) that is allowing business owners to target a specific community or even the whole audience served by the domain.
The registrants of the .edu domains have to be United States affiliated institutions or higher education, post Penguin era.
Importance of .EDU Domain Backlinks for your business
Similar to your website, .edu domains earn its authority because of their quality and are not given additional considerations.
You may try to confuse Google to get high-domain authority links to your website, however, Google Penguin filter easily identifies black-hat SEO techniques and penalizes webpages involved.
Considering Google parameters, backlinks from high authority sites offer greater value on websites to which they link.
These domains are judged highly because it offers resources and research-related documents to existing students and upcoming students.
So, the big question is how do can you earn .edu domain backlinks?
Identify relevant EDU Sites First
With the many advantages of .EDU backlinks, you may not want to waste time by offering content and information at the wrong place.
Irrelevant to the quality of your work, targeting the wrong .EDU domain will lead to rejections and delay in attracting backlinks for your business.
What can you do?
Step1. Type ‘site:.edu’ in Google search
Step 2. You’ll get a list of EDU websites
You can also use modifier keywords to narrow down your .edu domains based on localization.
To give an example, you understand the demand for your business can be useful in Ohio, Texas then filter your EDU search further.
Step 3. Type site:.edu and Ohio, Texas
You can see SERPS works only on EDU domains in Texas area. This automatically opens up your EDU backlink opportunities to many other relevant audiences in that area.
Next, you can offer a helping hand to the community/students
You’ll need a strong approach to link the EDU domain name for your business. Offering new content to educate the community can increase the chances of EDU backlinks for your website, however, business owners who help students in building their careers are gaining a competitive advantage.
What Can You Do?
Contacting the University stakeholders and announcing community specific scholarship can be the easiest way to grab a handful of .edu backlinks for your website.
Here are some of the keywords you can apply to reach your target scholarship listing page:
– site.edu: “scholarship program”
– site.edu: “scholarship lists”
– site.edu: “list of scholarship + Ohio, Texas” (to target specifically)
– site.edu: “university scholarship”
– site.edu: “keyword + scholarship”
To give an example, we will type “site.edu: “university scholarship”” in Google
Analyze the list of scholarships that shows up in the search engines and reach relevant ones to approach them with your scholarship idea.
Mostly EDU domain maintains a separate landing page for their scholarship program that includes information about the eligibility, application request, selection criteria and scholarship renewals.
Add Value To Discussions
An ability to offer insights for a specific community of a University on a regular basis will improve the counts of .edu backlinks for your business.
With .edu discussions open on a regular basis about interface control documentation, implementation documentation or, cross-module design decision, contributing ideas to communities of relevant purpose will result in an effective blog comment link building strategy.
What Can You Do?
Many EDU domains allow the audience to sign-up for the purpose of commenting or other kinds of discussion.
To find sites that allow blog commenting you can search for:
– site:.edu inurl:blog “comment
– site:.edu inurl:blog
– site:.edu inurl:blog “responses”
To find sites that allow account creation access you can search for:
– site:.edu “log in / create account”
To give an example, we will type site:.edu inurl:blog in Google
You can add keywords too to make it more specific and reach relevant communities.
Last, You Won’t Like To Miss Out On Relevant Links
There are many instances when .edu sites may have inactive links/pages to their website, this is where you can take the best advantage of improving backlinks by linking to your working page.
What Can You Do?
Step 1. Identify the area of expertize you wish to offer, for instance “information technology”
Step 2. Type “information technology” inurl:.edu -.pdf
Step 3. Select the .edu website you find relevant to approach (for this I have selected the first one, Darmouth)
Step 4. Use “Line Checker- W3C Validator free tool to analyze the number of broken links
Step 5. Work on the link that you feel your website content can add a value to their community for improved engagement
So, here they are!
Wrapping Up
Backlinks from EDU’s can add on to your SEO strategy, however, considering the fact that these sites are organically high in quality, it won’t be easy to build links on them and neither you are going to earn them without trying.
There are a number of tactics to improve .edu backlinks for your website, but to make it easy, I have provided the most effective and free ways to connect.
Whilst you are improving .EDU domain backlinks, you’ll automatically increase trust, build a loyal audience, get new customers, increase brand value, increase email subscribers, sales, and further search engine ranking benefits.
To sum up, your target audience would like to connect with you on a personal level, if you offer information that allows them to do so.
Have you adopted any of the mentioned one above?
Please share your comments and feedback to help us understand and allow our readers explore some more high-quality link building strategies for their business.
All the Best!