More on .Edu Links and Their Value

In our last post, we talked about the value of .edu links for SEO.  After considering comments by Google’s Matt Cutts and the nature of most .edu links, we concluded that there is some substantial SEO power in obtaining inbound links from .edu domains.

Some new information seems to support that conclusion.  A blog post at Divine Write provides notes from the recent SMX Sydney convention.  One of the speakers, noted SEO voice Rand Fishkin, discussed .edu links.  The blogger, Glenn Murray, summarizes:

Trustworthiness of a website – Good ‘degree of separation’ diagram: To Google, a site that’s one link away from a trusted seed (such as Amazon or an edu) is 0.4% likely to be spam, two links away is 1%, three links is 14%. This is why links from seed sites are so important.

Rand’s breakdown of SEO signals:

• Trust/authority of domain = 35%
• On page & keyword = 30%
• Page level link metrics = 25%
• Usage data = 10%

Now, think about what that means in terms of the potential SEO value of .edu’s.  Why does Google use links to determine SERPs?  In essence, it’s because they interpret inbound links as votes of confidence regarding a sites quality and relevance to users.  How does Google dtermine what kind of weight to give those inbound links?  Obviously, the trustworthiness of the source must be a significant consideration.

What do these SMX Sydney notes tell us?  They tell us that Google has a darn good reason to trust inbound links from .edu’s.  

Are .edu links the Holy Grail of SEO?  Of course not.  They are, however, a powerful component to increasing your performance in the SERPs.  Inbound links from .edu’s are just the kind of link Google should be trusting.  Isn’t that the kind of link you want?

Are .Edu Links REALLY that Important?

For a long time, people considered backlinks from .edu domains one of the most powerful SEO tools.  Google, they argued, trusted the .edu extension more than the .com, .net, etc.  That made links from an .edu domain more powerful in terms of improving a site’s SEO performance.   

After awhile, however, some folks started doubting that assessment.  It doesn’t seem as though their newfound suspicion had much to do with actual results, however.  Those who believed .edu links were working for them didn’t start experiencing drops in the SERPs or less traffic.  The perspective changed when Matt Cutts of Google weighed in on the topic.

Here’s what Cutts said:

But, certainly, all of the things that have good qualities of a link from a .edu or a .gov site, as well as the fact that we hard-code and say: .edu or .gov links are good - and when there are good links, .edu links tend to be a little better on average; they tend to have a little higher PageRank, and they do have this sort of characteristic that we would trust a little more. There is nothing in the algorithm itself, though, that says: oh, .edu - give that link more weight…  Well, you would be surprised how many are like: “Oh, I have to get .edu links because they are better.” You can have a useless .edu link just like you can have a great .com link.

Many interpret that as cutting against the power of .edu links.  A closer reading, however, doesn’t necessarily support that conclusion.  First, Cutts almost concedes that, generally speaking, a .edu link is probably at least a little better than an equivalent .com link.  He also concedes that the .edu extension brings with it a higher degree of trust.  

The algorithm may not say “value .edu links higher”, but we all know that it certainly values trusted links over questionable ones and we also know that .edu’s are perceived as being more trustworthy.

As another observer has noted, there are a few things we know about .edu’s that we should keep in mind when assessing their value.

1. EDUs are typically older domains, well established, respected sites.

2. Because not anyone can just start an EDU domain, they are hard to come by.

3. EDUs tend to have loads of inbound links and very high page rank of 7 or 8 or 9.

4. Content on .edu domains tends to be worthwhile and respected inherently.

When you read between Cutts’ lines and consider those other factors, it makes sense to actively pursue .edu links as part of your SEO strategy.

The Great Backlink that Isn’t…

It sounds like a great offer. You can get a nice PR5 link for well under market value.

Remember that whole “if it sounds too good to be true” thing? That might be the case here.

No, we’re not talking about people faking page rank. That’s a different story. In this case, we’re talking about dropped or repurposed domains.

Here’s what happens. Someone has a blog. They maintain it. It gets a gob of great backlinks. It’s PR soars. And then something occurs. The webmaster abandons the project. Why? There are variety of possibilities. It might have been a blog about a specific time-bound event that’s now passed. It might be because he or she couldn’t resist reaching into the black hat cookie jar and the displayed PR hasn’t caught up to reality yet. There could be any number of reasons.

Now, either the original owner or someone who bought the blog from him or her (or who picked it up after domain expiration) is offering you a link. The blog may still be in its original form or, as is often the case, the old content may have been stripped out and replaced with something else.

Obviously, that PR5 link isn’t worth a hoot if the links pointing to the site are now dead-ending because of page changes. You don’t want to invest anything in a site that’s found its way onto Google’s blacklist, either.

So, how can you check? Do a little homework. Run a backlink checker on the site and find out if its inbound links are still hooked up with actual content. Head over to the Wayback Machine and check things out. See if the site has been shedding pages or if anything else fishy has been going on. Ask to see some traffic numbers and look for recent declines. And use a little sense. If the domain name and the content seem like a very poor match you might be barking up a useless tree.

Sometimes a great backlink isn’t so great.

Go Regional for SEO - Regional and Local Directories Offer a Great Opportunity

While a consensus is developing that Google is giving a little less love than they once did to directory links, there’s still room to make SEO progress by listing your site in the right places.  That means not wasting as much energy on inner-page links on weak or new directories and instead focusing on regional and local directory options.

The search engines may not be that interested in the latest .info directory created by a webmaster looking for a few easy Adsense bucks, but they do still seem to have an affection for local and regional directories.

Why?

There are a few good reasons.  First, these more localized directories offer a unique opportunity to the search engines to serve up better geo-targeted search results, which is becoming increasingly important to the engines.

Second, these directories tend to be human-edited–and those particular humans tend to be a little more selective than those who run other directory sites.

Third, regional and local directories, for the most part, aren’t overran by site submissions.  

So, which directories should you submit your site to?  Obviously, if you can find country-, state-, region-, city-, or even neighborhood-specific directories that meet your site’s specs, you can feel pretty good submitting there.  Do the usual homework, though.  If the directory appears to have limited, if nonexistent SEO potential you can skip it.

Many webmasters will undoubtedly consider cheating.  If you find a great regional directory in terms of SEO value but you aren’t really located or targeting that region should you submit there?  This is primarily an ethical question individuals will have to face alone.  However, it worth mentioning that (a) if everyone behaved that way it would decrease the value of the directories and/or increase the workload for those maintaining them and (b) it’s likely that the overall value of the listing will mean less to you if you’re not really part of the area under consideration.

Three Rapid Indexing Techniques - Get the Googlebots to Your Site Fast!

If a tree falls int he forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?

We can leave that argument to the Zen masters.  There is a corollary, however, for those who do business on the Internet and who want to rely on search engine traffic.  

If a site doesn’t appear in Google, does it get any attention?

The answer to that one is a resounding “NO!”  

You need Google to index your site–and the sooner it’s been scoured by the Googlebots the sooner you can expect to see traffic.

Getting indexed, fortunately, isn’t that tough.  Here are three rapid ways to attract a little attention from those Mountain View spiders.

Digg It.  Submit your pages to Digg.  You’re not worried about getting on the first page and any traffic you secure is icing on the indexing cake.  The goal is to get that link to your site up and running at Digg.  The spiders will follow.

Get Social.  If you aren’t doing the social bookmarking thing, you’re missing out.  Create a little link love for your site by getting those live links up on a variety of social bookmarking sites.  This can produce fast results.

The Big Link.  If you have another web property that has a little bit of heft with Google, use it to your advantage.  Get links up to your new pages for the purpose of hitting the index.  You don’t need to make them a permanent feature, but they can be a good way to get the ball rolling.

You want Google to take notice of your site and you want them to do it quickly.  Every day wasted is another day without traffic, after all.  Any of these three techniques can get your new material into the index quickly.

Get Free Sitewide Links the Easy Way

Much of successful SEO is a matter of developing inbound links to your sites.  As such, you can imagine just how powerful a sitewide link from a reguarly-visited, high-PR site can be to your SEO efforts.

Well, it’s possible to get those sitewide links without spending a dime and the process is actually incredibly easy.  If you’re ready to make a handful of blog comments, you can create a powerhouse set of sitewide links quickly.

It all starts with a popular plug-in that many bloggers use.  It’s a “top commenters” blogger and it was designed to encourage people to participate via comments with a blog.  It creates a list on the blog’s sidebar that features the “names” of those who’ve commented on the blog with the greatest frequency.

So, you need to find blogs that use this plug-in and assess how much effort it will take to break into the list of top commenters.  Then, you simply write enough comments to get on the list.  Boom.  Your “name” (which in many cases can actually be your preferred anchor text) with a live link will appear on every single post and page on the entire blog! 

Here are a few hints to get you started…

Don’t try to move to the number one slot right away.  Build your comments over a period of days or weeks.  If you suddenly dump 20 comments on a blog, it’s going to raise some suspicions that you’re merely trying to game the system.

Do write good comments.  ”I love this post!” isn’t going to cut the mustard.  If Askimet doens’t capture that as spam, the webmaster probably will.

Do check regularly.  You don’t want to fall of the list, so keep an eye on the blog to make sure that you’re not in danger of losing your slot.

This is an easy way to get a sitewide link and it’s amazing how little work it actually takes in so many cases.  Improve your SEO efforts today.  Start by using a Google search (keyword +”TopCommenter”) to find blogs in your niche that you can comment upon for to your advantage.

Is Google Taking Another Look at Directory Links? Change is a Constant.

If there’s one thing you can count on in the world of search engine optimization, it’s change.  What works this year might be useless next year.  Sure, there are a few things you can do that should always work (great content, frequent updating, etc.), but everything else is subject to change.

Take linking, for example.  Links have long been the lifeblood of good off-site SEO and that’s unlikely to change any time soon.  The way search engines evaluate inbound links to your site, however, is subject to change.  The engines have long been trying to perfect the way they evaluate links to insure that they’re legitimate “votes of confidence” for your site and that has made several old-school strategies just as useless as excessive keyword stuffing.  Thing “FFA link pages” and you’ll understand just how different things are today from where they were a few years ago.

We might be witnessing another change right now.

If you looked at the Google webmaster guidelines a few months ago, you’d see that Google recommended submitting your site to pertinent directories.  Google has long relied on DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) and other directory links to help determine the way it ranks sites.

That’s led many webmasters to submit their sites to a wide variety of directories in pursuit of inbound links.  It’s a popular strategy and there are literally thousands of directories out there who are willing to offer a link to almost any submitted site.  

Google, however, has made a change.  That line about submitting your site to directories?  It’s gone.  They removed it from their webmaster guidelines.  As a result, many in the SEO biz are arguing that Google may be devaluing all of those directory links floating around out there.  Paid directories themselves are falling off in rank.  

Although those who claim Google has never valued many of the “lower quality” directories in the first place, it is possible that we’re witnessing another change in how the search engines will be treating the currency of SEO, inbound links.

Reciprocal Links and SEO

SEOs used to advocate reciprocal linking as a way to boost performance.  Search engine algorithms were rewarding links of all shapes and sizes and it made a lot of sense to trade links with other sites.  Entire networks were built around the idea of massive link-sharing.

And then the search engines wised up a little bit.  Today, link swaps don’t work exactly the same way they once did.  Links are still the currency of SEO, but the old “do reciprocals” model isn’t what it used to be.  Here’s why.

First, Google, et. al., have become increasingly concerned with efforts designed to intentionally manipulate rankings.  Their job is to deliver good search results, not to reward link traders.  They’ve tweaked their analysis to look for SEO-motivated trades and can spot a big ol’ reciprocal link exchange program (even a three-way system) a mile away.

Second, old school reciprocal swaps often involved dumping links on a “links” or “resources” page.  While those links still have some value, the search engines recognize them for the reciprocal landfills that they are.  If a page has two paragraphs of legit content and 500 outbound links, Google isn’t going to be particularly impressed with it.

Third, smart SEOs know that they can secure non-reciprocal inbound links just as easily as they can go after reciprocals.  And they don’t have to risk leaving an ugly footprint or bleeding a site’s PageRank with gobs of outbound links to do it.  It’s just not the most efficient method of getting those links.

You don’t want fistful after fistful of reciprocal links to boost your site.  What you do want are high-quality, thematically related links.

As reciprocal linking has fallen out of favor, some people have grown to believe that the practice can actually damage SEO efforts.  If you’re wondering if reciprocals are now the enemy, you can relax.  Reciprocal links often come about naturally–it’s only logical that two sites in the same sector may link to one another, after all.  The problem with reciprocal linking isn’t the fact that the links are reciprocal.  The problem is in the way people hopped on the reciprocal bandwagon, using tools and methods that were obviously efforts to court search engine favor.

Links are links, reciprocal or not.  They’re judged on their merits not on whether or not their reciprocated.  It just so happens that it’s more efficient to stay away from intentional link exchanges and to focus on building non-reciprocal inbound links today.  That also allows you to completely avoid the “excessive” reciprocation that has had a negative SEO impact on many of the sites who used to wade neck deep in the reciprocal link exchange game.

Why Looks Might Matter for SEO

We usually think of design and SEO as two very different aspects of the site management process. Design is usually discussed in terms of usability and aesthetics while SEO conversations center on backlink acquisition.

There is a place, however, where the two concepts overlap. That’s right, good design can be a good way to improve your SEO by encouraging others to backlink to you. Good looks might not be the most important aspect of making a site into a link magnet, but it can help.

Let’s outline a few of the ways that a good-looking site can improve your SEO.

First, if you can come up with a really attractive design you’re more likely to capture a visitor’s attention. In turn, that makes it more likely that they’ll discover the value in your content than if they encounter a plain or ugly site. That improves site performance on the visitor level, obviously, but it also increases the likelihood that the visitor may link back to you. In other words, getting attention is a good way of getting backlinks. We all know that viral content is a great way to get traffic and backlinks. It stands to reason that viral design—a design that really stands out and creates interest—could serve the very same function.

Second, there are some sites that are more likely to link to sites that demonstrate certain design components. Standards compliance is a great example. If your site is fully standard compliant, government sites and some directories will be more likely to link to you. Another great example of this involves communities that are interested in particular design techniques. If you build your site with a great CSS layout, for instance, you might get some link love from those involved in the CSS scene.

SEO isn’t a beauty contest, but good looks certainly can’t hurt as you try to climb the SERPs.

Commenting Your Way to Better SEO

The volume and quality of links pointing toward your site has a massive impact on its search engine performance. Backlinks are THE most critical aspect of off-page SEO and webmasters are always on the lookout for good ways to increase their backlink totals.

One of the easiest ways to secure backlinks is by commenting on blogs. No, we’re not talking about the old (and no longer powerful) practice of “comment spamming”. Instead, our focus is on finding blogs that are thematically related to your site and placing legitimate, constructive comments on them.

These backlinks won’t produce significant direct traffic, but they can help considerably with respect to SEO. In order to make the most of this link-building opportunity, however, there are few things you need to keep in mind. Let’s run down two of them:

The DoFollow Factor. Due to past abuses by comment spammers, many bloggers and blogging platforms implemented “NoFollow” tags that render comment links far less valuable. The NoFollow tag instructs the search engine not to follow the link. Although some minor engines may ignore the directive, Google follows the instruction. Commenting for backlinks only makes sense when you’re targeting DoFollow blogs.

The Relevance Factor. Google isn’t interested purely in how many backlinks you have. Quantity matters, but relevance and quality matter just as much. You’ll get much better results if you comment on blogs that have some direct thematic relationship to your site. If you’re selling cars, there are better ways to spend your time than commenting on video game blogs, for instance.

You don’t want to rely exclusively on blog comment links (Google prefers a well-rounded backlink profile), but they can be a great way to boost your SEO efforts. Take a look at one of the many lists of DoFollow blogs and find a few places to add to the conversation!