HOT TIP: .edu and .gov backlinks

[blogvibrations]

SHHH... its a secret!

Okay, maybe its not a secret, but it’s not well known… Until now.

On Earliers 30DC TV, i mentioned in the chat a hot little secret to getting .edu and .gov backlinks and i thought i would let the secret out for the rest of you who missed it.

I came across a way to find .gov and .edu blogs and forums yesterday that will help give you the link juice you need to rank all that much better. To make spotting whether or not they’re “nofollow” or not I would suggest you install the SEO addon for firefox/flock that was mentioned in a pre-season video (cant remember which one). Once this is done any links that are nofollow will be highlighted in red but can be changed to any colour of your choice in the addons settings.

Now, here’s the juicy part of this post. In order to find the .gov and .edu blog and forums simply do a search in Google, Yahoo, and MSN with these terms “inurl:.gov+inurl:blog”, inurl:.edu+inurl:forum”, inurl:.gov+inurl:blog, and “inurl:.edu+inurl:forum”.

Now take a few minutes to browse through your results and find the blogs and forums that offer links via comments and forum posts/replies that aren’t nofollow. It will take some time to sift through the results but will be worth it in the long run. IMPORTANT Hot tip: Only add 1 or 2 comments/posts/etc. per week. The search engines are smart and will recognize if all of the sudden there’s like 20 new .gov links pointing back to you and you’ll get penalized for it. Be patient and just add a link or two every week or so. In a couple months you’ll see you PR increase a healthy amount (it does take some time).

Just remember to NEVER spam anyone - leave thoughtful relevant comments/posts.

Good luck, and remember; patience is key…

[blogvibrations]

sorry i had to put the spam message HUGE so it gets knocked into peaples brains =]

[Sarahw13]

Wow, thanks for the "secret". It should come in handy .

[guymclaren]

Lets see if all those .gov blogs I have just spammed actually post my comments... bwahahahah. Thanks for that tip. I enjoyed it so much I have had an interesting discussion about air travel security and about a Battle in a war in 1917.

[Bibi]

To make spotting whether or not they’re “nofollow” or not I would suggest you install the SEO addon for firefox/flock

Once this is done any links that are nofollow will be highlighted in red but can be changed to any colour of your choice in the addons settings.

Thank you this great tip.
I am sorry - I am a new at this ...
Where exactly can you see if links are no follow?
In my search results (with SEO results) none of the blogs are colored red - non of the SEO results are colored red. Should I look elsewhere?

[obannon]

@Bibi, when you visit the actual blog or forum pages you can turn on the SEO addon and refresh the page to see if links are highlighted as nofollow or not, but as Ed has been saying over and over you really shouldn't worry too much about that right now.

Yahoo and MSN both completely ignore the nofollow tags anyway and will count the backlinks, and a lot of recent testing by SEO's and marketers is showing that Google also is giving some weight to links even with the nofollow tags.

So, I wouldn't worry about nofollow and just grab honest links anywhere you can get them.

[blogvibrations]

@obannon

- Google states that their engine takes "nofollow" literally and does not "follow" the link at all. However, experiments conducted by SEOs show conflicting results. These studies reveal that Google does follow the link, but does not index the linked-to page, unless it was in Google's index already for other reasons (such as other, non-nofollow links that point to the page). Links with "nofollow" are included in the backlinks reporting data at Google's Webmaster Central.

- Yahoo! "follows it", but excludes it from their ranking calculation.

- MSN Search respects "nofollow" as regards not counting the link in their ranking, but it is not proven whether or not MSN follows the link.

- Ask.com ignores the attribute altogether.

[obannon]

@blogvibrations, I was simply trying to make the same point Ed has made over and over for the challenge without going too deep into the mechanics and theories of indexing/ranking for folks with plenty to learn on their plates already.

That said, I know the stated positions by search engines however have done my own testing on this, including creating a deep directory page 3 months ago that I linked to from 22 pages on other sites I own, all with nofollow tags.

Those 22 nofollow links are the only links still that appear for the page and yet it is indexed by all 3 major SE's and has a G PR of 1 after the last update.

Based on what the SE's say the page should technically be hidden from indexing and ranking, and certainly shouldn't have any PR, but that's just not what I've found.

I've got several more test pages online right now too just to see if there was some strange blip in my original test or if the results can/will be duplicated. It's too early to make assessments on these pages yet though.

Still, the bottom line for me is that links bring bots and people to your site(s) and shouldn't be seen strictly for their SEO value, so I'll gladly take any honest link I can easily get whether it's nofollow or not...and especially from a Gov or Edu site.

[blogvibrations]

Before i go on with this reply for anyone wondering, i am not an expert in SEO however i have been involved with internet marketing for 3 years. Also please note that i understand that nofollow isnt bad for rankings and will NEVER make that claim.

Also, please keep in mind the guys will go into more details about edu & gov links on day 29 and their advice are more authoritative than my own and this is just what i have discovered.

But now that ive got that out of my system....

Originally Posted by obannon

Those 22 nofollow links are the only links still that appear for the page and yet it is indexed by all 3 major SE's and has a G PR of 1 after the last update.

Is that a PAGE or a SITE? sites and pages are two different things. Whats the page rank for the site? if you have a domain that has a good authority PR then i believe all the pages will increase in PR and where where the links on the sites based eg. sidebar or content?.

Originally Posted by obannon

Based on what the SE's say the page should technically be hidden from indexing and ranking, and certainly shouldn't have any PR, but that's just not what I've found.

Ranking doesnt really doesnt matter in SEs, basicaly when a SE finds out about you they index you even if you have no content (just look at the example on the market samurai lesson regarding the empty WP blog).

However ranking is what helps bring the traffic to the site. the better ranking the higher you become in the list.

hrmm, if what you say is correct i wonder how much PR spammers have???

Originally Posted by obannon

I've got several more test pages online right now too just to see if there was some strange blip in my original test or if the results can/will be duplicated. It's too early to make assessments on these pages yet though.

Thats good too see, You have actualy got my brain ticking, im going to buy a test domain tonight and try a similar test but with a whole new domain.

ill let everyone know how it goes at the 2009 30DC!
=]

[obannon]

@blogvibrations, I didn't mean to hijack your thread and hope my reply didn't seem to be a challenge by any means. I was really trying to keep it on-topic and off of the nofollow questions which always lead to conflicting debates.

Though, I am always happy to spark some thought and testing for others

One piece of advice if you do test on your own be sure to use a clean browser when setting up and visiting your test site/page.

I goofed this myself on my first testing (before the one I talked about) and had loaded it in FF with the SearchStatus addon active (Google/Alexa/Compete) several times. Needless to say I ended up with the page indexed by Alexa and it blew my controlled testing so I had to start over.

I ran my testing on a page, not a new domain, however when I created the page the main domain had a PR of 0 as it was an undeveloped domain at the time. Both the test page and the domain main page went to PR 1 with the most recent update, but the test page is a hanging orphan 2 levels deep of the top with no on-site linking to it at all.

You could be right about the main domain weight lifting the page some, but I have a hard time believing it would have gained the PR on that alone given the weakness of the main domain itself.

Anyway, again I apologize for taking the thread off-topic. The Gov & Edu tip is a great one and I hope my rambles don't distract anyone from taking advantage of it.