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You might not realize how important it can be to your website to have backlinks coming from Gov and Edu sites.  Well, the reason is that these sites are considered by Google as highly reputable sites, and that usually gives them a high Page Rank.   If you can get a link from these site to yours, it can help your blog get a higher PR, and this can be extremely valuable to you.  So when you win one of these backlinks, you will definitely have a reason to celebrate!

What Do We Mean by Edu and Gov Backlinks?

Edu sites customarily are owned by colleges, universities, laboratories or scientific centers.  As an example, Univ. of Hawaii site would be Hawaii.edu while the state of Hawaii official site would be Hawaii.gov (with links to Education, Business, Commerce and other state matters).

So What’s the Big Deal with Edu and Gov Backlinks?

SEO experts theorize that Google gives some sites a higher score (greater value) because of their credibility.  Therefore, Google considers Edu or Gov sites more credible and gives any backlinks from their sites a higher score.  After all, Google is pledged to give accurate and reliable information which is determined by user searches, so they list sites by the ‘references’ they get.

The references are the links, which are actually counted like ‘votes’.  The greater number of votes a site gets from other high quality sites like Edu and Gov on a specified topic, the higher ranking Google will award it in search results about that particular topic.  Government and Educational Institute sites are at the very top of the credibility scale.  A backlink to your site from an Edu or Gov site is considered a very high quality link and that is why you want as many as you can get.

A Word About Ethics and Link Farms

As we previously explained, Google’s aim is to provide reliable, accurate and up to date information to those who use it.  While there are some devious and suspect ways of getting backlinks to your site, Google now has ways of ‘seeing’ if the votes your site is getting are from credible sources.

“Unethical” sources are:

?  Link farms – you have probably seen ads which offer to get you hundreds (or thousands) of backlinks almost immediately for a fee of $10.00 or less.

?  Proposals from other sites for link exchange.

?  Emails from persons making an offer to put your website url in a link farm.

Anybody can get backlinks from these sources, but search engines consider these links as ‘false votes’ for your site and they may do more harm than good for your PR.  But not just anyone is able to get links from Gov or Edu sites.

How Difficult is it to Get Gov and Edu Backlinks?

Truthfully, it can be very difficult.  When you think about it, in the traditional business environment, government employees have to be extremely cautious about giving recommendations.  Being the bureaucracy they are, they have to stick to their own strict regulations, and therein lies the difficulty.

In the web world, government websites are careful to form links only to other sites which are considered reliable.  But, if you can get a link from any organization which is government owned, search engines will recognize it as very reliable as well.

So How Can I Get Links from Edu and Gov Sites?

Let’s start with universities because they are easier to obtain IF your site contains any education related information.  This could be public survey results, business or related data or statistics, commerce publications, etc.

Government sites are different and more difficult.  As a general rule, these Gov sites only link to other Gov sites, or to service providers who have been approved.  One example of this could be if the local government offers marketing courses in your area and you are approved to administer these courses, then you can ask for a link to your site by the appropriate local government department.

How About Indirect Links?

As previously stated, Gov sites do offer links to private sites of approved suppliers and service agents.  These may be often charitable organizations which offer health or business training as well as private business development and others.

These private organizations usually own sites with high PR (due to the links they get from government sites).  But their sites are often looking for fresh content and will likely welcome guest posts of high quality which are exclusive and relevant to the site.  And here is where you can capitalize with “do follow” links to your own site.

In summary, it can be difficult for a small blog owner to obtain links from Gov or Edu sites.  But if you become a contributor to government approved organizations, you can still get a lot of indirect links which are quite a valuable resource!

Related articles

• What Link Builders Are Not Telling You (famousbloggers.net)
• Search Engine Optimisation: One Website Link Is Better Than Ten … (topseoconsultancy.co.uk)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, February 10th, 2011 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Blogging Tips, Guests Posts, How To. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.