I ran across this interesting discussion on a Google search from Webmaster World about .edu backlinks and their relationship to search engine ranking.
Here’s what happened and how the competitor got the free .edu link…
A (rather weak) competitor just got an .edu-backlink and pushed me to #2 and #3 for my most important keyword. He skyrocketed from down the ~10/~15 field to #1. As far as I can tell it is ONLY due to the.edu backlink, since nothing has changed on his pages - neither on-page or off-page.
How he got the backlink is the SEO-version of a freak accident:
There is an obscure industry association, which has a print catalogue once a year with a circulation of 300 pieces! In the 2003 issue of this catalogue my competitor had a paid advertising. Chairmanship for this association went from a German university to one of the big US universities, and as an outworldly consequence the associations website moved there as well. They also put all the past issues of the catalogue on the new website, including hyperlinks to all the paid advertisers. There you go! He invested 200 US$ two years ago and now has an.edu-backlink! Talk about long term revenue… He might not even KNOW that he’s #1 in SERPS, and even if he does, he probably wonders why.
Advertising prices have moved to 500 US$ in the meantime. I’m probably going to buy and ad in the 2005 issue, hoping to have my.edu-backlink hopefully still this year, or in 2006 at the latest.
To keep a long story short:.edu-backlinks still seem to be the holy grail of link building.
Someone needs to write “A Random Walk Through Google” … some of the bizarrest things boost rankings sometimes. If you read the thread, they have a good point… just pay a grad student to write articles about your business and put them on the school’s .edu server. That may be cheapest.
How have you gotten .edu backlinks to your sites?
Related Link: More on getting Free .edu backlinks to boost search engine rankings…
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