FP - EDU Backlinks really worth it?

[Luka]

Well for those who don't know what "EDU' is, it's simply a domain extension like .com, .net , but it's a special extension giving to authorized groups, universities, companies etc.

People say Google simply LOVES them, and 1 EDU backlink can be worth about 50 normal backlinks, what do you guys think about this? Is it worth building backlinks in EDU Forums, blogs(has to be manually posted and RELATED to the post to get approved)....

[Thomas]

I don't think they have as much value as a lot of EDU link sellers would like to have you believe, but in a mixed link-building campaign there is no doubt they will be beneficial. I rarely build links that can't bring me direct traffic, so if you're posting on relevant EDU forums then that can only be a good thing. I wouldn't bother posting on irrelevant EDU forums hoping that dropping a few links will give my sites a boost up the SERPs.

[J1218]

Not sure how much truth there is to what Matt Cutts puts out there, but I saw a video by him a while back where he basically said .edu and .gov links are no more powerful than any other link. I don't know if he's saying that to discourage people from getting these types of links in "unnatural" ways, or if it really is true.

[Bryan]

In my opinion (and it's just that - merely an opinion - as NO-ONE knows the truth, apart from some senior Google employees) there's certain truth to .edu and .gov backlinks being valuable.

Someone already mentioned above that it helps if they're in the mix. Basically, what google is looking for is links that look *NATURAL*. Now think about it - if a site has 100k incoming links then some of them are bound to be from .edu domains, right? Hence, we should actually question whether NOT having .edu backlinks hurts your rankings (and makes your links look less natural), rather than whether having them helps you.

One thing that's for sure is that it's most definitely not a "secret weapon" of any kind like the sellers of these links (as well as several "SEO Professionals") would want you to believe.

And obviously it might as easily just be a myth that someone released and is now giggling over the fact that the whole world seems to take it seriously. I've released similar BS myself and often see people on various forums and other places referring to it as if it was the purest truth that everybody seems to know but no-one knows exactly where it originated from.

[b005t3drsx]

I have used scrapebox to do use edu postings and then normal and I have never seen a difference between the two as far as how they affected my change in google ranking. But like bryan says no one outside google knows and google isn't talking.

[happyfrancis]

Now, analyzing the websites that has a .edu & .gov basically they are either for educational and government institutions however i believe most of this website are content rich and are top level domains. Since for the time being we are not certain of the myth behind search engines and the .edu and the .gov domains then i wouldn't mind having some links from those website.

[Phil]

EDU links got devalued a lot in the recent google algo update.

[elitemarketer]

I think the .EDU links got devalued in recent updates because there are a lot of easy to find, autoapprove .edu blogs out there.

[BassTrackerBoats]

Please take no offense... but I think that the best methodology is the K.I.R.S. process.

Keep it random, Stupid.

Mix in a variety of Backlinks... .edu, forum posts, blog comments, article and web 2.0 properties... bring the weather
from many different directions and many different elements.

SEO is like nature... you need that mixture to properly backlink a site.

Free ebook in my mind about this for some time if I have the time to pen it.

[scrumpy]

I can personally vouch for .EDU backlinks. I had a new site that was ranking #388 for it's main keyword around a fortnight into it's creation. After utilizing around 4-5 .EDU backlinks the ranking jumped to #246, #34 then #16 in 48 hours.

~Russ