How To Maximize Your SEO
Make no mistake, .edu links, with everything else being equal, are some of the most powerful links you can get to your website as far as SEO is concerned. No joke. How come? Well, first of all, they’re usually harder to get unless you know what you’re doing.
This is due to the fact that .edu links have a long association with quality, trustworthy content.
After all, only educational organizations can get an .edu domain. Anybody applying for an .edu domain has to jump through many hoops regarding their qualification as a bonafide educational institution. Also, .edu sites tend to be older. They tend to be around longer, so their content has had more a chance to build authority over the years.
It’s a great idea to get as many .edu links to your website as possible. Follow the steps below.
Step #1 – Create resource-worthy articles in your niche
The first step is to create high-quality content in your niche. This content basically must blow away 99% of your competitors. The good news is, you only need to create a handful of these.
Step #2 – Find .edu resource pages that link to resources like yours
Look for college, university or other educational institution-related websites that already link to resources that you have put up on your site. You can use this search string site:.edu+(your keyword) inurl:resources. Enter than search phrase into Google, look for the contact information of the resulting resource pages and pitch them to link to your resource pages.
Step #3 – Find professors who have written about the topics you talk about in your resource and interview them
Reach out to professors and get them to link to you by interviewing them for your resource page. You don’t need to tell them that you’re not going to linking out to them. They don’t need to know that. Just tell them that you are basically going to mention them because you are going to be featuring their interview in your resource page.
Once you have gotten the interview, paste it into your existing resource, and then notify them via email that you’ve mentioned them on your website. Usually, professors love seeing their names mentioned in authoritative sites. In fact, they like this so much that they would link to you from their .edu blogs.
Go to Google search for “(your keywords).edu,” this should show quite a number of academic papers, as well as researchers who have a profile page with certain resources that site their work.
Don’t bother targeting professors that don’t have these profile pages posted on .edu domains.
Step #4 – Create a scholarship page with a working form and a deadline.
Step #5 – Look for scholarship sites listing schools’ scholarship resource pages.
Find these resource pages and make sure your scholarship conforms to the format and award amounts of these schools’ scholarship listings. Contact the schools to get your scholarship listed. It’s very important to make sure that your scholarship is not some sort of scam. It has to be a real scholarship.
You also have to be clear about your awards criteria, how exactly you are going to pick the winner of the scholarship.
Step #6 – Reach out to students who have .edu blogs and ask them to write about your resource. You can pay them or you can basically appeal to their willingness to support your resource website.
Step #7 – (use this only if you have a niche brand monetized with a dropshipping website) Offer schools specific discounts on your merchandise
You need to find colleges that offer student discounts. Reach out to these colleges and ask them to list your discount page on their resource pages. It’s important that you honor the discounts that you’re giving to students from that school.