How important are .edu links. Does anyone know of any authority sites or articles on the issue? Thanks
Links from .edu domains are no better than links from any TLD. Gooogle pays no attention to domain extentions. Matt Cutts covered this in one of his grab bag videos.
.edu links are no more valuable than links from any other extensions, as Matt said before me. However an edu is generally a respectable authority site, which cannot normally be manipulated for links. Therefore when you do get a link from an edu, it is thought that your site is genuinely good, and that is where the strength factor comes into play.
well they are said to be "authority" sites and links from there are so much more expensive. Maybe the hype about authority sites will go down soon
"Authority sites" are no hype adamm... There are some sites out there which are able to rank for every keyword they write an article on, those are the "authorities" you're looking for, and links from them could be worth a fortune
.EDU's are generally more authoritative...their links don't matter more, but a .edu is generally more valuable so in turn the link is more valuable not because it is a .edu but because of the page strength.
What I meant is that if I were to acquire a new .edu domain today, the link benefit from it would be no different from a new.com today. Any respectable authority site, be it a .com or .edu isn't expected to be manipulated for links. Like afterhim.com said, the link is valuable, not because it comes from an.edu but because it comes from a page which has authority.
Matt Cutts said something like; Even though Google doesn't give edu domains any more weight, edu's tend to host quality content that gets a lot of links, and as a result of that they do become authoritative sites... Though at creation, all TLD's are equal.
From my experiance .edu backlinks USED to be WAY better than .com/.net and I could prove it becuase other sites had 3,000 .com links and a few edu links but were at #2 and #3. I had 50 .com/.net links and 40 .edu links and was #1 for MANY keywords. But since the last update .edu's seem to have lost thier "juice" and now I need the 3000 links to stay at #1, without them I would be stuck at #4 or #5.
I think .edu and PR share the same property: both are overhyped and not as good as advertised. Obviously, links are not built the same so the number of backlinks from edu vs com/net should not be the basis of comparison. It could be because of the content of the site and not because of its domain extension was the reason keywords were ranked well.
PR is overhyped. Links from quality sites in your industry or niche are all you should be looking for. PR is a rookie SEO binkie. Just makes you feel good, that's all.
Who cares what Matt Cutts said, he is not going to say "yes they are", so every spammer in the known universe would hack & try to get bl on authorative sites. Personally I believe a link is more valuable on a authorative website, due to all the other websites linking to it, usually consists of authority websites.
.com or .edu... the age old debate. Google Pr is ok measure. I always ask myself "I wonder how many sites with a pr 5 or 6 then how many with higher pr "especially in my niche". Seems to me the higher the pr the more "trusted" the site aka the less that have that similar pr." Edu. extension sites for the most part seem to be packed with unbiased quality content aka the search engine "trust". They don't have any motives (selling something or adsense). Just telling it like it is. Sort of an extension of a text book. Professors seems to be the ones with websites and the sites seem to reflect what they find the most relevant to their topic of interest "Most Trusted". So they fill the need for what everyone wants on the internet and that is looking for information. So I come full circle and say look at the sites to link the .edu site. That should give you an understanding of their "trust". Mimic that content and you should feel the same love that .edu sites get.....I give my thumbs up to helpful content no matter the tld
.Edu domain name is a trusted and authority site. There is a lot of authority site for article about education. You may try this http://education-portal.com/article_directory/index.html http://www.articler.com/