May 19th, 2010 by Nick

In the world of search engine optimization, the debate has been around for years as to whether educational or government related websites are favoured more by search engines than other types of website. What started off as an innocent benefit to the world of search engine optimisation has maybe started to turn a bit underhand, with companies offering to sell links to government or education websites on the promise that they would automatically get a better ranking. What is the truth behind such sites?

Firstly, just to define what qualifies as an edu site, it is basically and educational or government website, so domains that end in ‘gov’ or ‘ac’ could fall into this category. There are a set amount of these websites around and you cannot create one when you please. In order for a website to be authorised to use an edu domain, they need to meet specific criteria and even if they are awarded this domain these types of sites are monitored and controlled closely. For this reason, many people believe them to be more honest and in turn are picked up by search engines as being more trustworthy or reliable.

Sites such as these get no gain from commercial exposure as they are government funded the majority of the time. It does make sense that these sites are more genuine, we would all hope that sites offering educational, health or government services would be totally honest and be hiding nothing, and they probably are. That does not necessarily mean however, that you should be creating all your backlinks to these sites.

Search engines such as Google use specific data or criteria to determine the ranking of a site and the theory is that sites with an edu domain will instantly be more trusted. Whilst this may be true, most search engines do not actually have this as specific criteria. The reason that sites such as these may rank higher is that their keywords and links are honest and relevant, their websites are easy to navigate around and they offer a factual yet natural approach to search engine optimization.

So the answer to this surely is yes, that edu links are more reliable and it is a good idea to create backlinks to them. Well, before anybody gets carried away, it is worth recognising the relevance of the actual edu site you are looking to link to. If the nature of the site bears some resemblance to the product or service which you offer, or can be used as a significant resource, then by all means look to include links to these sites.

If however, there is no connection or valid reason for you linking to an edu site other than the fact you may get a higher search ranking, then it may not be a wise move. These sites might be government generated, but even edu sites will have to have search marketing strategies in place and put time and effort into increasing their rank, and maintaining it.

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