If you are looking to boost your website’s authority, you should get backlinks from EDU sites. EDU sites bring in more traffic, improve your website’s ranking, and establish your website as an authority in its niche. The best part about EDU sites is that these are earned, and you get them for free. By using .edu backlinks, you will earn Google’s trust, which works in favor of your traffic and ranking.
What Exactly is EDU Link-Building?
Simply put, EDU link-building is a link-building technique that allows your website to get high quality backlinks from educational websites. EDU backlinks are institutional domains, such as backlinks from universities and colleges.
Educational institutes have a solid reputation for their strict content policy as they only link to very specific sites or brands. This aspect perfectly explains why Edu backlinks from trusted educational institutions can be incredibly beneficial for a website’s SEO.
EDU backlinks are harder to get than other links – these links are essentially earned – and once you earn these links, they can be a powerful punch for your website’s ranking and trustworthiness in the eyes of Google.
Get Backlinks from EDU Sites for SEO Value
As we stated earlier, it is not easy to get backlinks from EDU sites, which perfectly explains why many websites outsource their link building and rely on reputable link-building agencies to help them secure high-quality backlinks the right way.
Educational institutions, including colleges, schools, and universities, have their respective reputations to uphold, which is why they don’t give out their links freely. If you can earn these high-quality EDU backlinks, these backlinks can do wonders for your website in the following ways:
- Improve backlink profile
- Boost domain authority
- Increase website ranking
- Boost organic traffic
On that note, you should know that educational institutes’ websites have been around for quite some time – more than decades. The pages of these educational websites, especially blog pages, are linked to many trusted domains on the web. Many high-quality editorial backlinks link with EDU sites, which makes educational websites incredibly trustworthy and authoritative.
If you get educational backlinks from EDU sites, you can get them to pass some of the valuable link juice onto your website, which will get you incredible SEO value.
The Importance of EDU Link-Building
When it comes to the importance of EDU link-building, the first thing you should know is that EDU backlinks cannot be acquired through link schemes or black hat link-building tactics that are designed to trick Google into thinking that your website has legitimate links.
Often, link-builders know that they have nothing valuable to offer to big EDU sites and will resort to tricks, such as leaving links in the comment sections of the blog posts while hoping it works in their favor.
There are two things that EDU link-building relies on to establish the importance of EDU link-building. Firstly, it comes down to providing actual value. The next part that you should focus on to secure EDU backlinks is to create link-worthy content that the EDU sites would like to link to.
The Exclusivity of EDU Link-Building
Getting high-authority backlinks of any kind is already a struggle – but when it comes to the delimited numbers of EDU domains on the internet, you should know that these links are exclusive and you will be trying to build links and connection with high-quality and high-authority sites in a relatively smaller ecosystem.
There are far fewer “edu” domains than “.com” domains. On that note, acquiring backlinks from EDU sites requires trial, effort, experience, and patience.
EDU Link-Building and Trust Signals
Links from educational sites, such as universities and colleges, are powerful because educational institutions are considered expert sources of information and are highly reputable. Usually, .edu domains cover all of the “E-A-T” Google metrics that establish “Expertise,” “Authority,” and “trust.” Hence, EDU backlinks are highly favored by Google and its algorithm.
So, if you want to connect with high-authority sites to boost your website’s ranking and get more traffic, then focusing on high-authority EDU backlinks might be the best thing to do. Let us explore some of the effective ways and strategies that you can integrate into your link-building project to link to EDU sites.
How to Get Backlinks from EDU Sites?
Now that you know the importance of EDU backlinks, and you also know that it is quite challenging to land these high-quality EDU backlinks, you should know that it is not impossible to acquire these links. Before we explore the best strategies that you can implement to secure these high-quality EDU backlinks, you should keep in mind that the base or moving factor of EDU link-building is to establish strong and meaningful relationships with the institution staff and site managers.
Here is a list of effective strategies that will help you get edu backlinks from EDU sites.
Strategy #1: Get Yourself Listed on Resource Pages
This strategy revolves around writing guest posts for EDU domains. If you are new to link-building and don’t know what resource pages are, you should know that all EDU sites have “resource pages” that are quite similar to “blog pages” that you can find on your typical websites.
Now, the difference between a website’s blog page and an EDU site’s resource page is that the topics that the EDU site’s resource pages cover aren’t about niches or industries but about the things that the institute’s staff, students, and partners are interested in.
On that note, if you believe that you have something incredibly useful for those educational stakeholders – you can try to pitch your content to the educational website’s owners or editors. But first things first: you must learn how to find these resource pages on Google.
Go to Google Explorer and enter the following to find edu sites for backlinks:
site:.EDU+keyword+inulr:resource
Once you hit enter, you will get a list of high-quality sites that are essentially .EDU domains and include a resource page as well as content that is related to the keyword that you entered for your search. Subsequently, you can browse through the list of sites and their content to understand the type of content they are looking for.
Only pitch your content when you are absolutely sure that you have value to offer.
Strategy #2: Offer Student and Staff Discounts
Who doesn’t love discounts? We all do, including students and staff. Now, the question is, who can enter discounts for students and staff? If you sell products or services that staff and students use, then you are in an ideal position to offer discounts. A lot of educational websites have dedicated web pages for these kinds of offers.
Now, if you look at it, offering discounts is an amazing way to secure high-quality EDU links, as the educational websites will be linking back to you only because you have something useful to offer to them.
Using this method, you will not only be getting high-quality backlinks but also boosting your sales and generating revenue. To find discount pages at educational websites, you can try out the following advanced searches in Google:
site:.EDU “staff discounts”
site:.EDU student discounts”
Make sure to go through the result pages and assess what kind of offers they have displayed on their sites. Subsequently, you can create your own offer and reach out to the relevant person.
Strategy #3: Offer Scholarships
Another great strategy that is exclusive to EDU websites is offering scholarships. This link-building method is also referred to as “scholarship link-building.” However, you need to be careful because Google recognizes the scholarship scams that many link-builders try to run to gain educational backlinks.
To offer scholarships, you must first create scholarships and have universities listed on the scholarship page. Universities are aware of the black-hat schemes that some link-builders do to get EDU backlinks and are essentially diligent when dealing with sites that offer “scholarship” opportunities.
Again, you can use Google to find scholarship opportunities by typing the following:
site:.EDU “scholarships”
site:.EDU “financial aid”
Go through the results and assess the various scholarships that are offered on the sites. Subsequently, create something that is more attractive to students. Reach out to the respective educational domains with your offer and pitch your scholarship opportunity.
It is important to mention here that you must actually set aside money for scholarship winners and also dedicate time and effort to evaluating students’ submissions and selecting the winners.
Strategy #4: Get Prominent Faculty Members On Board for Interviews
To earn high-quality EDU backlinks, you can secure interviews with prominent faculty members. You can find many researchers and professors on the resource pages of EDU websites, and these professors and researchers would love the opportunity to link to content that they have been featured in. If you look at it, you will find that interviewing prominent faculty members is actually a great way to build valuable connections.
Of course, getting prominent faculty members on board for an interview is easier said than done. First, you will have to invest time and effort in finding faculty members who would be interested in getting interviewed, as they will have to agree to your chosen topic.
You will also need a website and their agreement to use their image and publish their full-length interview. On that note, we recommend reaching out to various educational institutions so you can maximize your chances of getting powerful EDU backlinks.
Strategy #5: Mention EDU Bloggers in Your Content
A lot of educational institutes have bloggers who regularly write and publish articles. However, most of these bloggers are students or assistant professors who don’t get much recognition for their written content. They might be writing for the sake of practicing their writing skills or because they really love the subject and want others to read about it.
If you can identify these contributors to the resource pages, you can actually end up getting some great EDU backlinks for your website.
To start, you must first identify these bloggers and then find content that would shine in your own articles, too. Link those articles and then let the bloggers know about it.
Important Note: When it comes to mentioning EDU bloggers in your own content, you must make the mention appear natural. If you force a link into your article when it is not relevant at all, it will harm your website’s backlinks profile. After you have let the blogger know that you have referenced their work in your article, you can share a link to your article and encourage them to share your content on their social media platforms or blogs.
Strategy #6: Offer Job Opportunities or Internships to Students
You can establish a career page on your business website and earn high-quality backlinks in return. Typically, the best institutions out there want to equip their students with the best expertise and skillset to help them land good jobs after they graduate. Employed students are essentially happy students, which is why it is great for the institute’s reputation, too.
Besides the career opportunities, employed students can effectively pay off their student loans, which is why many education sites have dedicated career pages where they list career opportunities for their students. This is where you come in. If you believe that you can employ a currently graduating student, you can create job pages for your website and then let educational institutes know about it.
You can also offer internships if offering job opportunities is not the right thing to do right now. On your career page, you can display the variety of available job opportunities. You can also list the qualities and skills that you are looking for in the ideal candidate.
After establishing your career page on your website, you can then reach out to educational institutions and let them know about the position available. Believe us when we tell you that this method can help you gain a lot of edu backlinks.
Strategy #7: Broken Link-Building
You might be familiar with broken link-building, which is essentially about looking for opportunities to provide value to website owners while minimizing their effort and work to include a link to your website. The critical aspects of broken link-building include finding broken links, having valuable and informative content to offer, and your willingness to do all the legwork for the website’s owners.
Nonetheless, you can leverage tools, such as Ahrefs tools, to find broken link-building opportunities. All you need to do is plug the URL you are interested in into Ahrefs site explorer. Subsequently, select the dashboard “best by links” on the screen’s left side. Subsequently, the results are filtered by dead links, also known as “404” links.
The next step would be to create informative and high-quality content which is a great match for the topic. Once you have created content, you can then reach out to the webmasters and inform them about their dead links while offering them your valuable content as a replacement.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to how to get backlinks from EDU sites, you should know that it is not only colleges and educational instates that offer EDU links – but you can also secure high-quality backlinks from sports academies, art schools, community colleges, as well as religious seminars. Rest assured, EDU link-building is incredibly rewarding as well as high effort, so if you don’t have the time, you might want to avail of the link-building services of a reputable link-building agency to help you acquire these high-reward links.
FAQs
What Are EDU Links?
Edu backlinks are links that you get from educational websites that use the “.edu domain extension.” EDU backlinks are incredibly valuable for your website’s SEO because these are links that you get from reputable sources of authority and information.
How Reliable Are EDU Backlinks?
Since EDU backlinks are acquired from educational institutions’ EDU domains, these links are highly reliable, valuable, and authoritative in Google’s eyes. These domains are seen as authoritative as they have high-quality content, and their published information is essentially credible.
How to Get Backlinks from EDU Domains?
There are several ways to secure backlinks from EDU domains, including creating niche sources, interviewing prominent faculty members, offering scholarships, etc. The rule to remember is that you must offer something invaluable and authentic to secure EDU backlinks.