well, of course everyone would be happy if a .gov or a .edu website link to them. I've been searching to see if anyone has tips or knows what metirial these type of websites usually link to. I came across this blog: http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1308 from what they show there, it easy to get link by cheating the website using XSS. on the one hand, is doing somthing like this is considered cheating - so will google punish? but on the other hand, if google punish, then people will use it to hurt thire competitors. so which one is it? and, does google even give the time of day to such pages? or does it just ignore them? and how? would like to hear some opinions..... (and tips as mentioned at the begining of the post )
I find getting links from .gov and .edu sites quite easy. Then again, I write about stuff they are likely to want to link to anyway.
I tend to rely on organic search results. Say you are a government telecoms regulator researching 3G licenses in a specific country. I aim to do well for those searches, and when their white paper or report (or whatever is published), then my site will be listed in the references.
links from XSS don't really work anymore as the pages are seen as standalone and therefore not given any weight by google although they still seem to work in msn. If you want .edu links then you can always buy them from http://www.authoritydomains.com/edu-links.php
Don't worry about EDU or GOV links. Concentrate on getting 1 way inbound links from related sites! Try to use PressRelease or Article Submission tactics!
This isn't really classy but you could also use a backlink tool to check out what .edu's/.gov's your competitors are getting. One approach would be to see if those organizations are interested in linking to you since they have to others in the past. The other approach is to get them shut down since most of the time (100% thus far in my experience) the links originate in free student space/employer provided web space. Generally a university or governmental entity doesn't appreciate students/employees using free resources to make money selling out the integrity of their domain.
Stay away from xss but especially from .gov sites, by "injecting" your link on the webpage it wouldn't make it very hard for a prosecutor to convince a jury that you "hacked" into government servers to advertise your site and put the entire nation at risk. Besides google has been aware of xss links and they don't pay much attention to him, you would get more link juice from a pr 2 link than an xss .gov link.
I found it quite easy to get some backlinks from .edu domains for a pet related site I have. Surpisingly I just found some .edu sites with pet related link pages and asked nicely. I always thought it was realy hard before that.
Its easy - you can contact them and tell them about the relevant article you wrote, and that you think it will help their students. It always work Nir
I say if a link comes from a .gov or a .edu, then so be it, but you shouln't focus your energies in trying to get one.
if you look at some blogs and such from respected sources such as Aaron Walls and Google's own Matt Cutts you will see that .edu and .gov links are given no more weight than any other type of link. The only difference in link importance is 1. Is the page related to yours 2. One way links carry the most weight 3. Reciprocal links are good but not as good as one way links 4. The TLD of a page makes no difference .com .gov .org .net all the same 5. Number of total outgoing links on the page 6. Anchor text used in the link
The seo-toolbar in firefox is great. It uses google, yahoo and MSN links. Yahoo and MSN are better for this. http://www.katinkahesselink.net/internet/link-search-google.html
Related links from .Edu and .Gov domains are important wrt SERP and Traffic too . But its very hard to get them free . You will have to pay , no other way (As i know ) .
Keep in my mind Oatmeal was not suggesting using the method necessarily but talking about its pros and cons. Down further he shows some points which probably rule it out as a 'problem'. I would not suggest the method. it won't work in Google. edu/gov links are highly valuable and if you can get them without spamming or unethical techniques you should right away but don't focus all your efforts on them especially if they aren't easy to get. Some topics are extremly hard to get edu/gov links to.