Edu Backlinks
There are sites out there selling Edu backlinks. Edu backlinks are links to your site from sites that end in .edu - Education / University / College / School websites. I found one selling 5 Edu backlinks for $300 a month (to keep them). Will Edu backlinks help your page rank? Read on…
If you’ve been reading my other posts what we have learnt so far is that backlinks from high page ranking pages with good anchor text embedded into the content on the same topic is the ultimate backlink. It’s natural and google values these type of links.
High page rank occurs from a highly secret calculation but a couple of things we do know is that there a few factors that help greatly. One of these factors is age of the site. Edu websites have typically been around for a long time - the birth of the Internet stemmed from University websites. Another factor is quality content. Edu websites tend to have very informative pages like research papers and published notes. If content like this is valuable to others then it will naturally attract backlinks from other sites. These are the main reasons for edu sites being considered as a good source of backlinks.
Some people assume that these edu sites are more Trusted than other domains. This is probably true - but whether or not this is used as part of your backlink page rank calculation is not known.
If you manage to get a backlink from an edu site whose homepage and majority of pages have a high page rank but your backlink sits on a page with a very low page rank then it’s not going to help your page rank.
In Summary
It’s a myth that any edu backlink will help your page rank. All the other page rank criteria still comes into play. There are many edu site pages that have high page rank and if you can get the right backlink inserted correctly into one of these pages then it will be very valuable to increasing your page rank.
Some Tricks to Finding Edu Backlinks Opportunities
In order to get a Edu backlink you’ll need to find an Edu site that give you an ability to add to the page - in the form of a comment, Trackback (i.e a blog). This page must allow you to enter a website and ideally NOT be a nofollow external link.
Of course you want to find an Edu site that talks about the same content, so replace the word “keyword” below with your keyword and run this search in google :
site:.edu inurl:blog “comment” -”you must be logged in” -”posting closed” -”comment closed” “keyword”
This search looks for the domains that end in .edu, have blog somewhere in the url and have comment, but not those other terms which would mean you can’t comment.
You never know - you might be able to contribute a valuable comment to an edu site and obtain a very valuable backlink.
The important thing to remember is to check the pagerank of the page the comment will end up on. If it’s ranked lower than 4 then it might not be worth the effort.
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Backlink Builder - SEO online free tool to find sites
So you’ve got a keyword that you are targeting, and you know that quality links come from high Page Rank pages and you’ve got some techniques on determining Page Rank for this sites. What other text on these sites would indicate that there is the possibility of getting a backlink from them?
The SEO’s over at WebConfs.com have come up with a great online tool that searches for these terms on pages that are found in keyword search:
- Add link
- Add site
- Add URL
- Add Website
- Submit link
- Submit site
- Submit URL
- Submit Website
- Suggest link
- Suggest site
- Suggest URL
- favorite links
- favorite sites
- favorite websites
- recommended links
- recommended sites
- recommended websites
- Add article
- Submit article
- link exchange
- reciprocal
The Backlink Builder tool is a great way of finding sites to explore for potential backlinks. I would probably avoid the “link exchange” and “reciprocal” ones though.
This is an awesome Backlink Tactic. It’ll still take some time to weed out which sites might actually accept your backlink, but it’s a good technique to weed out the possibilities.
Unfortunately it doesn’t show the Page Rank of each site - so you’ll have to use another tool to get these. Stay tuned for a fantastic tool I’ve found to help in that area.
Using YouTube videos for Backlinks
As you know YouTube is hugely popular and attracts millions of people daily. Just recently YouTube released Wide Screen view and Live videos.
With any popular website someone is always trying to work out a way to get backlinks from it.
If you embed a YouTube video on your site you get a backlink added to the YouTube video. The backlink is a no-follow one so it won’t be indexed (stay tuned for a detailed post on no-follow links). If you’ve targeted the right video some video watchers might check out the backlinks and then visit your site.
A better technique is to create your own video that targets your keyword search goals and in the description of the video put your website address. Make sure you put your keywords everywhere on your video. Of course it is important that you video is interesting and gives value to it’s viewers so that they take interest and might click on your links to see your website.
Google made sure that these tactics won’t improve your Page Rank. Can you imagine the spam it would have created on YouTube if it could?
There are a few products out there that claim they can automated YouTube backlinks - but I’d imagine overall this is going to have a very negative affect on your Page Rankings eventually.
If you’ve had success with this type of linking please leave a comment.
Why you should avoid Linking buying and Link farms
I’m so amazed at the number of linking buying and links farms out there on the Internet. I suppose it still exists because the attraction of having lots of backlinks combined with the fact that so many people have already done it. Google cottoned onto to these techniques a long time ago and punish your page rank because of it.
Honestly - have you ever gone to one of these pages with lots of links and clicked on a few (wearing the hat of a normal web surfer of course)? I doubt it. Google are constantly changing their algorithms to try and weed out these sorts of tactics and also openly ban link buying and even reciprocal linking. The search engines can also detect the presence of reciprocal links, pages with too many links and common links that appear on every page on your site.
It’s all about authority links. Link farms have a negative authority - Avoid them at all costs as it can undo any good link building you’ve done.
Google also watches frequency of link building. If one day you go from 10 backlinks to 1000 backlinks it’s going to light up a few flags with the google engines and work against you.
Unnatural link profiles glow in the dark when it comes to the search engines. If you have been convinced that buying links are going to help your page rank make sure they are all targeted to your keyword topics are evenly spread across the Internet. Even the location of the links is important - they all need to be on different IP address’s or this will also raise flags.
Quality backlinks are very valuable but it’s easy to undo them with some ugly ones.
If you believe that the links are naturally clicked on and will still bring traffic to your site (and you’re not all that worried about page rank) then go for it but don’t expect to appear high in the list on the search results.
There is still a whole lot more to discuss on this topic and I will uncover the best tactics.
Missing link: results in a Google Search
Do you have a site that you’ve indexed using a sitemap with the Google WebMaster Tools and the Google bots have come and trawled you site but when you put link:yousite.com into Google search you never get back the same amount?
Well don’t fret - Google purposefully only shows about 10% of the link: pages in the search. On top of that they only show Backlinks with a Page Rank of 4 (PR4).
If your site has been trawled by Yahoo - go over there and you’ll see all the backlinks - they don’t hide them.
I’m sure the index that google has of all the backlinks is still used to ultimately create your Page Rank - so don’t feel too disheartened.
I hope this little piece of information takes some of the confusion and stress out of all your hard backlink creation tactics!
Backlinks from Twitter
Twitter has created quite some interest lately and is becoming hugely popular. In fact Facebook wants Twitter putting $500 Million on the table for it. Twitter is described as a mini-blogging site where you can put thoughts of up to 140 words or less in each post.
At one stage some Back Hat SEO types worked out a way to use the Twitter API and generated lots of back link juice. It wasn’t much later that Google put pressure on twitter and now there is no backlink viagra from twitter.
This doesn’t mean that Twitter cannot be a good source of links to your site. In fact there are a couple of sites that watch all Twitter posts and track which URLs are getting lots of attention. Two of those sites are :
TwittUrls.com and Twitt(url)y.
So how does this help with backlinks? Well Twitter uses TinyUrl to post all it’s links and all the links are posted with the nofollow tag (which tells Google not to treat it as a backlink) so you don’t really get a valid backlink from twitter - BUT you could get people clicking on your twitter url post link and bringing them to your site.
There are some automatic twitter tools to help sites with rss feeds automatically post the title and url to twitter as it is added to the feed - try out : Twitterfeed.
The thing to watch out for is popularity - if you are looked upon as just being a spammer adding links all the time, no one is going to click on your links or follow you. The trick to this is to use Twitter like any other twitter user - putting in your thoughts and day to day rants. Try the humour approach and post funny one liners, and then every 20 posts or so put your links in (or time it right if you have your rss feed linked up).
Another good tactic to get followers on Twitter is to go each each of the people you are following, see who follows them, and then follow each of them. There is a limit of 2000 people you can follow, but you’d be surprized how many people will automatically follow you back (I’ll describe this later on). I managed to get 400 followers in the space of an hour, and over 2 weeks I’m up to 1000 folllowers.
There is another great tool that automatically replies to people who follow you and also follows them back. Try out Twollow or the one I really like TweetLater because not only can you auto follow but you setup auto welcome messages and use GTalk to alert you when a tweet is done with a particular phrase. Combine that with the ability to also follow people from a GTalk chat - and it’s a really good free application.
Once you start getting alerted on tweets that are related to your site’s content I suggest you follow those people beacuse your rss feed might interest them and generate your site more interest.
There is one way to get a valid following backlink from Twitter - put your site into you Bio.
Other sites that use the Twitter API and replicate all the tweets - like Twemes don’t post links with the nofollow flag - so it looks like it could be a good technique anyway for back links if you get into the flow and really start enjoying Twitter for what it’s really for - dumping your thoughts with the occasional rss feed insert.
Some Terminology : Backlink Juice and Link Baiting
BackLink Juice
Backlink Juice or Link Juice is a term used to indicate that the site with the link has a high Google page rank and will improve your ranking. Sometimes it is mentioned that the Page Rank is passed from one site to another.
If you want to talk like an experience SEO (Search Engine Optimiser) then you better get with the Juice talk!
Link Baiting
Link baiting is another term used frequently in SEO. It means that the site attracts links naturally based on it’s useful content. A good example of this would be the articles with high Diggs on Digg. Another way to say this is : natural link building.
There at least 6 different types of Link Baiting :
- Informational Hooks
- News Hooks
- Evil Hooks
- Humour Hooks
- Tool Hooks
- Widget Hooks
- Ego Hooks
- Contrary Hooks
Informational Hooks
This one is pretty self explanatory - the page provides some unique and interesting information that viewers find very useful. Hopefully this page is of this type for you.
News Hooks
News articles attract heaps of attention on the web - especially if it’s a very topical subject. Catchy headlines and riveting info - just think like a journalist.
Evil Hooks
Upsetting someone/or a group of people and creating a real backlash is this type of Link Baiting. Be careful though - it could work against you - make sure you have some good reasons for doing it.
Humour Hooks
Everyone loves to take a break and read something funny. Sarcasm, funny stories or jokes. Just make sure it’s clear that it is humour and not read as the truth.
Tool Hooks
Got something useful that people can download or follow instructions for? Well you’ll get visitors for sure!
Widget Hooks
This is all about creating something visual that has a link back to your site. It has to be something that someone would like though. For example - a cool counter, or a badge of merit.
Ego Hooks
This one is a big risky but can work to your advantage. Big mouth yourself and give yourself rave reviews. Some other bloggers might like it and link to you. Do it wrong though and expect to get some backlash.
Contrary Hooks
Where there is one person putting forward a point of view, there is always someone else putting forward the argument. For example - Someone might have content on why Solar Energy is the Way of the Future, and someone else might put up content on why Solar Energy is NOT the Way of the Future. It’s going to attact some attention for sure.
Conclusion
At this stage it looks like Link Baiting is the best and most effective way to get backlinks - so if you can think of ways to create content using one of these types of hooks - you might be onto some good backlinks - naturally!
Avoid Paid Links - Google Webmaster Site has a form to report them
I was checking on my Google Sitemap status and at the dashboard page notice a link titled : Report Paid Links
Going to that page I was presented with this form :
This certainly is a big deterrent to buying links - and provides another potential strategy :
You could always help Google and report your competition using Paid Links - therefore lowering their Page Rank as the BackLink would lose Page Rank too.
This is something I’ll explore more in the weeks to come.
Using Google Alerts to know exactly when a new BackLink appears
Here is a very handy hint to be told exactly when a new BackLink is added to Google via email - or even a feed.
- Go to Google Alerts
- Sign in or create a new Google account
- Enter the search term : linkto:http://backlinktactics.com (of course replacing the site with your site)
- Make the type Comprehensive
- Set the Deliver to to Email (or feed if you like)
- Set How Often to “as-it-happens”
All done! Every time a BackLink to your site is created you will receive an email notifying you.
This is a great way of getting instant recognition of your BackLink Tactic working! I received an email within 5 minutes of a friend adding link associated with a post link. Her Page Rank was 3 - so I think that might have helped.
I’m sure you could add multiple Alerts specifying individual pages as well if you are targeting backlinks to particular pages.
Please let me know how this works for you.
Page Ranks - What are they and what is my website ranked?
In my quest to find the best backlink tactics I’ve discovered it’s no secret that backlinks from a page that has a high Page Rank is very valuable.
There is 3 main Page Ranks to review:
- Google Page Rank
- Alexa Rank
- Compete Rank
Of course with Google having 70.5% of the search engine market share as of Octobeer 2008 it is going to be the most important to have.
A quick search will show there are many techniques to work out what you rankings your site and pages are. I’d like to share with you one that I find very useful.
Using the FireFox add-in - StatusSearch as you browse the Internet a footer toolbar on FireFox will show you the Rankings for the page you are on :
There are also some great options to view backlinks - for the current page or the whole domain :
After choosing this option, FireFox will open 3 browser windows showing the links: URL for google, yahoo and the Microsoft live search engines.
As you can see from the many other menu options there are many more handy features with this FireFox Plug-in.
Google Page Ranks
There is some detailed information on how Google calculates Page Rank but in summary - 10 is for the most popular pages and 0 for none indexed pages. Google keeps crawling the net and updating this rank and the pages with the highest rank appear highest in the search results.
Google frowns upon people selling backlinks on high Page Rank pages and will devalue sites they catch doing this.
Alexa Rank
The Alexa Rank or Alexa Traffic Rank comes from people with the Alexa toolbar browsing to your site. Alexa describe it as “The traffic rank is based on three months of aggregated historical traffic data from millions of Alexa Toolbar users and data obtained from other, diverse traffic data sources, and is a combined measure of page views and users (reach).”
In summary - the higher the number, then supposedly the higher the number of users have hit the site.
Some think the Alexa toolbar is spyware or trackware. I’ve seen sites that have a low Google Rank
Compete Rank
The Compete Rank is very similar to the Alexa Rank but they call it a Trust Scores. They say that they track the top 1 million sites in the US - based on US visitors/month. It makes counts based on Unique visitors based on over 2 millions Compete users (have installed the Compete toolbar). The use their statistics in the media to report on which websites are more popular on a month by month basis. The higher the number the better.
Round Up of the Three Ranks
Alexia and Compete tracks visitors by the use of a browser plug-in on a small percentage of Internet users, and Google calculates Page Rank based on a very complex calculation using backlinks and the backlink page ranks as key performance indicators.
After learning all this - I don’t think I’ll take any real notice of Compete or Alexia ranks, but focus on the Google Page Rank and see how if affects the Compete of Alexia ranks.
One thing is known is for sure - If you have a high Google Page Rank then you are very attractive to other sites to have backlinks inserted on your site.
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By N2H
