.edu sites, good for SEO, is it true?

Is it better to have links from .EDU sites? i heard they weigh more in SEO from google?

 

I don't think that Google gives any particular TLD any additional weight per se, it's just that .EDU and .GOV sites tend to have more authority because of the links they have. So, you need to get an .EDU link from a page that has good links from the rest of that .EDU site or you really won't seen much ranking increase from it.

 

Agreed. It is less likely edu or gov sites are spam sites. But in the end, the link is evaluated based on the relevance of the linking sites and linked sites. If you get a link from a site that has nothing to do with your business, the link isn't worth much.

 

No, edu, gov etc. links dosenot give any extra SEO benefits, its just like a normal .com backlink

 

No SEO benefit other than an additional link.

 

.edu and .gov links may or may not give you an SEO benefit. It depends on the site who is linking to you.

.edu and .gov sites do NOT pass you any more PR than an equivalent .com or .net site.

However, if it's a a very old, very established .edu or .gov site like, say, stanford.edu then yes it can provide additional SEO benefits. Many of the original .edu and .gov sites on the web have a high "domain trust" rating. Getting links from "trusted" domains DOES improve your "domain trust". But the same would apply if you got links from a "trusted" .com. And "domain trust" helps ALL of the URLs on your site with rankings for all keyword phrases... It's a domain level ranking factor.

However, not ALL .edu sites are created equal. Not ALL .edu sites carry with them a high "domain trust" rating...

There is an SEOmoz.com Friday Whiteboard session on domain trust and domain authority that does a decent job explaining what these are, what the difference is, and how Google may be using them to improve your rankings.

 

Definitely true. People overlook this kind of issues and thinks that if they do link to these .edu and .gov sites, then they're all good. I believe it doesn't always work that way. Not all .edu and .gov sites would benefit your site.

 

Google might give some extra credit for those links, but I don't think its a biggy. Best practice is getting links from related sites.

 

for me .gov, .edu and .mil are more important to search engines compare with any other.

 

The reason they are probably more important is because they are more "established" websites, and have been around for a while, not to mention high PR.

This would be the equivalent of having a decent backlink on a higher PR .com, .net, .org or other site.

 

benefit you get is based on mostly the authority of the page in question which is linking to you, not the main site. while a EDU main site can be PR8 authority site, the backlink you will get will most likely be form a public forum or student blog which itself don't have much/any authority. if you can get a backlink form main EDU site, then yes it does offer a huge value as an authority site is using your site as reference but thats not gonna happen. links form public section of EDU sites dont offer any more benefit than regular COM or NET domains

 

The trust rank, or domain trust, or authority, whatever you call it, is usually very high for .edu and .gov sites. It is true that internal pages on a .edu site might not have much authority (for example, a student blog), but anyway, a backlink from a low authority .edu page is usually a lot better than a low authority .com page.

Trust rank is very important, and although silent, it plays a big part is your SERP. This is usually why a listing in the dmoz directory is so attractive. Dmoz provides you little traffic directly, but plays a good role into directing Google how to look upon your site. I have seen people looking to bribe dmoz moderators anything around $300-$500 just to make sure their site is accepted into the directory.

 

Who knows for sure?

Maybe Google does in fact make edu links part of their ranking recipe. If you reverse engineer the ranking of a lot of top sites you will see a whole lot of diverse TLD's linking back.

 

.edu and .gov sites *tend* to be trustworthy, hence a link from them may percieved to weigh heavier than others. In other words the reason the value of the link is greater has more to do with the trustworthiness of the site (as percieved by search engines like Google) than the fact it is a .edu

 

Matt Cutts has categorically stated that no, Google does not give more weight to .edu sites.

That said, .edu sites often carry a lot of weight because they are valuable resources and attract links.

When I was trying to optimise a site last year, one of our competitors site had a healthy PR of 5, inspite of having few inbound links. Upon investigation I discovered that they had some very well placed .edu and .gov links because of work they'd done in conjuction with councils and education boards.. These links seemed to boost their site massively and what I think keeps them on top.

I always try and get some from .edu and .gov sites.

 

Hi,
yes you are correct, .edu & .gov sites will be having more weightage when compared to other sites

 

Well, better to have some edu and gov links (better if the content is related to your site), but getting them are not going to be easy.

 

Google eng: Matt Cutts cleared that it is not the fact that .EDU links are good for SEO.
Just there PR matters

 

I have built quite a few EDU links and I am still be outranked by competitors without a single one. So, I'd say it's a link, but it's not special by any means.

 

no body can give a definitive answer. But I think the answer is yes and no.

yes if the .edu or .gov site is related to your theme. (You privide educational or government related info)

No if you just buy links to gte a .edu backlink.

I would trust Matt cutts of google and he said that google does not give importance to these kind of domains. So there you go