getting .edu links

extensions doesn't matter at all .... the thing matters is the "TRUST" !!!

 

Outside of SitePoint I am more of a casual participant then anything else.

 

Yes, they would admit it. Knowing about it doesn't mean it can be easily abused and rendered worthless. Everyone knows anchor text and incoming links are important but it's still difficult to manipulate it on the scale necessary to rank for anything remotely competitive. Plus it is just one of many factors and not enough to make a big difference (just like everything else) so if it is manipulated it still only has a small value towards a page's ranking.

 

Matt Cutts has great credibility. If he says they aren't worth more they aren't worth more. You're too paranoid if you don't think he is credible. Heck, the videos he made were fantastic and the information he offers in his blog is stellar. To question his credibility is just nuts.

 

Here's a great post by Chris Beasley at SitePoint that sums up why .edu links are worth no more then other links:

(Emphasis mine) If you can't agree with that then you really need to rethink what you think you know about SEO.

 

Screw trust. Relevance is what matters. A link from a high trust site that is off topic is still worthless. Get links from relevant sites with keywords in the anchor text.

 

@stymiee

I never said relevance doesn't matter, It's only the extensions that doesn't make any difference.

 

No offense to Chris Beasley but what the heck does he know? Yeah he spends too much time posting on forums, but that doesn't make him an SEO expert. He has a nice site with lots of content, but he doesn't mean he knows what he is talking about. If you have ever gotten links from .edu domains, you know they really influence your ranking, much more than any .com.

So if I don't agree with some guy on sitepoint with an inflated post count, I need to rethink my stance? Come on now. Have you ever actually tested it out what .edu links can do for your site? I'm no expert, and you aren't either, but I know .edu's (lots of friends with .edu space ) have a greater effect on your ranking than other tlds.

EDIT:

Not worthless, but worth less than a relevant link

 

Prove it. There is no evidence of this because none exists. Your observations are flawed. A link helps you. Being from a .edu doesn't make a difference. If you got a link from a .edu page and your rankings went up its because you got the link! duh! The .edu part means nothing. If you go and get a bunch of .edu links at one time, of course your rankings will go up. Not because of the .edu links, but because you got links in general! You are making broad assumptions that are really poor. Saying .edu links are special because a educational facility owns it is ike saying all red cars are fast because most sports cars are red.

And I never mentioned post count. Read what he said. Especially the last paragraph.

I can't believe people still buy into this. It really is insane.

 

TangoUK, you said:

I would agree if we could discern the weight of those inbound edu links. It's really about their weight and not their numbers (quantity) or TLD.

It's my understanding the concept of TrustRank stems from a paper written on ways to combat web spam not on how to assess link values for the purpose of rank. (like PageRank does) TrustRank makes sense conceptually but do we know for a fact it's being used?

 

You'd be incorrect.

I'll take page A if the .com has content more similar content to mine then the .edu. That's actually worth something.

 

BTW, he makes 6 figures thanks to SEO.

 

Prove that it doesn't (and no, Cutts and your buddy on SP don't count).

It's almost impossible to prove anything about SEO (we can agree on that), it's all speculation. And I speculate that .edu backlinks are weighted more than other tlds (based on the evidence that when I gain a .edu backlink, my sites improve in the SERPs, more so than .com backlinks).

Go ahead and tell all your buddies that .edu aren't that great. I don't care, more links for me

 

Yeah. The worst a link can be is worthless (link farm). It only gets better from there.

 

LOL. This is ridiculous. I am going to have to get a edu webhosting space and start selling link to all the believers.
The only reason .gov and .edu might be more credible is that they are less likely to take a bribe from someone to put a link up. However this does NOT apply to:
someuniversity.edu/~gonzo/myedulinks.html
Gonzo is just as likely to accept a bribe and google knows that. So the only thing that has more trust is a edu top level link.
I have seen people sell gonzo links for a lot of money and I have always wondered what idiot bought them.
Now I want to be gonzo.

 

It was really interesting talking with you stymiee, I enjoy getting other people's view points, but I need to move on from this thread, we're never going to get any where.

For the record: I believe that .Edu backlinks carry more SEO juice than other tlds. The evidence gathered from my own sites show me that the .edu backlinks count for way more than any .com. It is up to you to decide for yourself. Get some college friends to link you up on their personal .edu webspace and on another site, get backlinks from their personal myspace (or other personal pages) pages, see what happens.

 

Not impossible. The 'miserable failure' googlebomb is one example. Another is this article at SitePoint.

Some are just difficult to test because setting up the control conditions can be difficult to do. But they can be done. This would be such a case.

Your observations are flawed. Did you consider the relevance of the content in Google's eyes when comparing links? Did you consider the anchor text? The weight Google gave the link page that your link is on? PR? Other factors? I bet not. You also can't even associated links with the effect they have on a page's ranking since you don't know when it has factored into the SERPs. You've made a very broad assumption based on poor information and criteria for judgment.

And your speculation goes against written fact by someone who is "in the know". I'll take written fact by the authority over speculation by someone who is not. Any smart businessman will.

You can have all of them except for the ones that are relevant to my content. That pretty much leaves out 99% of the content because we all know that students spend more time thinking about sex and beer then creating good content.

You talk about how SEO is mostly speculation and yet what's amazing about this is that this is one of the few pieces of SEO that we have solid information on. Yet people can't accept it. A google engineer has flat out said .edu pages are no different then non .edu pages and yet that that doesn't seem to be good enough. So they waste their time trying to get .edu links when they could be focusing their efforts on more productive means of promoting their website. It really is crazy.

 

.edu domains are bound to have a great amount of weight themselves because of the authority they carry. It's not a pre-set advantage for them, it's just the product of them being academic institutions. There are plenty of examples of both black and white hats using this authority to their advantage.

Look at this (from SEOMoz):

GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) - (Automated & Manual Penalties)

The domain strength of your backwards links is pretty important. Domain strength includes:

Registration history
Domain age
Strength of links pointing to the domain
Topical neighborhood of domain based on inlinks & outlinks
Historical use & links pattern to domain

It influences your own domain strength as well. Generally, a .edu domain will have excellent ratings on all of these factors.

Matt Cutts is right all of the time, but he never comes out and tells you to read between the lines, and there's almost always really good stuff between those lines. It's the difference between learning what's *technically* true about the engines and what's actually going on in the grand scheme of things.

Now I believe that you SHOULD be going for relevance, but that's in an ideal world. Different links give weight to different factors in your score, and it doesn't make sense in 2006 to ignore factors that are still being used.

 

Stymiee is right. Its not the .edu that gives the link cred, its the content and relevance. However, most .edu and .gov will carry high importance because of the high quality content that generally come from these sites. But if a .com had the exact same PR and content as the .edu there would be no difference in link value. Just like how there no difference of value in a .com and a .net extension.

 

Buying links from a page that is buried deep inside a .edu domain, but has PR, no longer helps, atleast in Google. I bought one a few months ago, didnot make any difference. My site is 4 year old and has good original content.