Do Edu or Gov backlinks carry more weight?
I have always been a big believer of a link being just a link no matter where it came from. I have added lots of Edu and Gov backlinks to my site(s), and haven’t seen any difference compared to regular com/net/org backlinks.
I’m writing this post because a lot of people ask me how many Edu/Gov backlinks will it take for their site to rank on page 1 of Google. The answer is NONE, and the answer is also A LOT.
The reason why NONE is an answer is because I rank for a lot of sites that have NO Edu backlinks. Ex. Mortgage Rates (I rank for my state and other national keyterms)
The reason why A LOT is an answer is because Edu and Gov backlinks are worth a lot because they receive a lot of natural links. They MAY carry a lot of weight but not for the reasons we make think they do.
Edu and Gov sites NATURALLY have other sites pointing to them. A site that contains a lot of back links will have a higher chance of having a higher page rank, trust factor, and authority. I have seen Edu sites with the home page having a PR1 because it was a fairly new EDU site. I did a link analysis on the site, and saw it only had a couple of hundred backlinks. After a few PageRank updates, the site’s PR changed to a PR5. I did another link analysis on the site, and saw that the backlinks were now over 1,000. The Edu site was not even soliciting for backlinks. They now had local municipal sites with aged domains and high PR pointing a link to them.
Gov or Government sites are the same way.
Cars.gov was a fairly new Government site that was created for the Cash for Clunkers program. The site had a few instant backlinks from sites like USA.gov, and was ranking on page 1 on Google for Cars. Everyone in the US was talking about this new program, and writing press releases, articles and blog posts with a link pointing back to Cars.gov.
A lot of people speculated that they were on page 1 almost instantly because it was a .gov site. They overlooked the facts that are played into the SERPs everyday.
1. Google loves exact match domains. Search for Cars on Google or other keywords, and you will normally see an exact match domain on page1
2. Google loves a site that has strong backlinks pointing to it. I’m sure USA.gov (PR10) is not the only strong backlink Cars.gov has.
3. Google will rank the site with most AND quality backlinks, aged domain, aged backlinks, etc. Search for Cars on Google and you will see that Cars.gov is #6, and Cars.com is #1 with sitelinks! Cars.com is beating out a .gov site!
So what’s the lesson here?
Stop chasing Edu and Gov links and/or paying a lot of $$$ when other links maybe a lot cheaper, and worth a lot more in Google’s eyes.
If you need to find any Gov links you can start with Uncle Sam
Here’s Matt Cutts talking about how .Edu/.Gov backlinks carry the same weight as a .Com
