Is it true about .edu back links?

Backlinking is not my speciality but I would say they are amongst the most desirable to get because only schools or universities can get them.

As such they are full of authority in Googles eyes and hence full of win.

One backlink from Harvard is worth 10,000,000 backlinks from random sources I would guess :p

Same would be a backlink from Googles front page or NASA or CNN or BBC or any of the major players.

If you had a backlink to your little technology site from MIT.edu or University of Cambridge (UK version of .edu) then it would far outweigh all the random backlinks from places such as lolcats.com

By the numbers it may only give you PR1 but its kung fu would be strong.

Not all sites are created equal, imagine 2 sites having pretty much the same material with the same pagerank and one has a link from MIT and the other has them from fartingbunnies.com

Can you guess which one will get the top spot?

Since websites ending in .EDU are considered trusted sites by Google, they are generally credible, and often webmasters think that a link from an .EDU page with PageRank is more valuable than a link from another page with the same PageRank.

.EDU Backlinks Carry Greater Search Engine Weight

Today, it is generally accepted that .edu and .gov backlinks carry a larger weight for search engine algorithms. Despite the fact that search engine giant Google has never admitted it, most SEO and online marketing analysts confirm that .edu and .gov links outperform other extensions in terms of search ranking and leverage... "

"Incoming back links are all links to a website, whether to the root or if they are deep links. However, although all back links are valuable to some degree (even minimally), some are more useful than others. Links from educational, military, or governmental websites, i.e., those ending with .edu, .mil, and .gov, are thought to be the most useful. This is because such websites are very selective in who they choose to link to. Search engines capitalize on this fact and weigh links accordingly."

.edu and .gov backlinks are the word of god when it comes to search engines.
If you can get them... GET THEM.

Very desirable things these links...

Every thing that everyone else said before me would be true for EDU and GOV links.
These are highly trusted sites.

A link from another site is like an average joe recommending your shop. and edu or gov link is like a big celeb endorsing your shop on TV
See the difference?

lol, I think you went a little overboard with that number mate :p
I dont think I can put a number on it but yes, they are a lot more valuable than all other kinds of links even from a high PR .com site I would say.

Hi,

Excellent. I might concentrate my back linking using .edu links instead.

Cheers
Recky

I dont think the video is talking about aged domains here...
He is talking about how many years have you registered your domain for while registering it. People think that you ought to register a domain for 3 years while buying for google to take your site seriously. This is not true as the video explains. I have sites that I put up just about a month ago and those domains have only been registered for this year. they are ranking very well.

Aged domains are when you already have a site up and running for an x number of years. a 5 year old domain which has good content and good number of links pointing to it is an aged domain. and they DO carry a LOT of weight in ranking. You will often find websites on the 1st page for very competitive terms with only a couple of hundred backlinks to the entire domain. The thing thats working in their favor is the HUGE authority that they have accumulated by being online for 10 years or so.

So age DOES matter a LOT

@82ana
looks like we're on the same page mate

As said above; it's not the .edu extension itself its the site hosted on it. All .gov and .edu sites have a high authority just because they are huge. Not because of the extension .

Some are; some aren't at all (as I've learned from testing, and now understand why).

As Caliban rightly mentions above, what "makes better" the ones that are "better" (and they can undeniably be a lot better) isn't the fact that they're .edu sites: it's the fact that they're authority sites.

Many .edu backlinks (especially the ones sold on lists, in packages, and by backlinking services) are no better than an article directory backlink, i.e. they're non-context-relevant to your site, and regardless of the PR of the site's home page, your backlink goes on a PR-0 page anyway.

If you're promoting (say) a herbal remedy for arthritis or an arthritis e-book and have anchor-text using an appropriate keyword, a backlink from Yale University medical school, rheumatology department, is an excellent one (and good luck getting it). A backlink from a student forum profile of Hicksville College is pretty worthless.

Just as with any other backlink, it's the quality, context and authority of the site that matters, not the domain-extension.

That said, it's true that some .edu domains are authority sites.

This shouldn't be difficult.

Let's ask - Why would Google care?

Possible answers:

1 - They don't

This doesn't seem to tie in with popular belief.

2 - Because these domains are aged

Not sure I'm buying that but I suppose it's possible but it wouldn't make much difference as has already been said - you don't need age to do well

3 - Because they have 'authority'

I guess that would then mean we need to define authority. This is usually (in seo terms) based on it having built up a massive base of related content. I'm not sure I believe that's why these help since many .edu sites do not have that much content that is viewable by Google.

4 - Because these domains are only given to verified educational establishments?

Well if I was Google and I wanted some way to be sure I could trust the content of a website I guess a good place to start would be websites that had to fulfill some sort of filtering/criteria before they could get a certain type of domain extension. This would also then apply to things like .gov which does seem to be my experience as far as 'good links' goes.

I guess we'll never really know the true level to which these things make a difference but based on my experience there does seem to be some sort of preference/weight given to certain types of links based on where they come from and .edu links do seem to help more than most general types.

What probably matters more is how and where you get them rather than hypothesising about why they help.

Andy

I think .edu or .gov sites will not spam and that's the only thing it sis getting good serp ranks.

Most .edu websites are trusted and "authority" sites in the eyes of Google, not because of their domain extensions but because they are associated with schools/universities and contain good quality information.

Hi Friends,

can anybody tell the way to get backlinks from .edu, .gov ? Just for commenting on those sites , If it is yes how the comment should be? Is any other ways are there to get backlinks from .edu and .gov websites?

Thanks,
Cuty.

Yes the edu links will boost your rankings.
The reason is edu links are considered high authority sites because they are possessed by educational institutes only and not spammers so getting a link from them is hard and if you get then you definitely are going to increase your ranking.