There has been increased speculation regarding the value of attaining quality .edu or .gov links. Many SEO’s and webmasters, largely swayed by the dreaded ‘visible PR monster’, swear that acquiring one way links from domains with .edu or .gov will provide greater PR and eventually higher SERPS than a .com web site. Is it true? Do US government and education web sites hold greater push and pull simply because of their domain name, all other factors being equal?
The purpose of this article is to shed some evidence and practical insights regarding the notion of .edu and .gov links. But first some history.
One should ask right off the bat: why the craze for .edu and .gov links when there are plenty of other quality web sites on the net holding the exact same page rank? The answer lies in the inflation of the importance of the very same thing — page rank. Many newbie SEO’s and webmasters have gone gaga over the importance of PR and their supposed impact on SERPs. Now don’t get me wrong, I still look at visible PR when judging web sites (that’s for another post), and Google still relies on an internal PR that is constantly updating. Nonetheless, the fact of the matter remains, PR is not the holy grail of SEO, in fact, it’s not even king. The KING of SEO still is still content, did we forget about that?
Now back to the .edu and .gov scenario. If you don’t believe me when I say these links are treated with partiality–that is without bias or ‘specialty’–then take a listen to Google Engineer and SEO Godfather Matt Cutts in a recent video post discussing this exact topic.
https://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1756437348670651505
If you’re too lazy to view it here is the quote,
…in fact we [Google] don’t really have much in the way to say “Oh this is a link from the ODP, or .gov, or .edu, so give that some sort of special boost.” Its just those sites tend to have higher PageRank because more people link to them and reputable people link to them.
This point was the same in 2006 and it’s the same in 2008.
You can’t get any more concrete then this, however, many still have ‘gut feelings’ that .edu and .gov have more than meets the eye. My response has been the same since the get go and is quite simple; it goes hand in hand with what Matt Cutts discussed: proper SEO is not PR based but content based.
.edu and .gov have high PR because it is an expectation that the content will be quality and trusted. Furthermore, it’s usually interesting and excellent sources of linkbait since much of the info is unique and cutting edge. What occurs when you have a huge web site with quality and high demand articles? Numerous other web sites linking in and PR of the target web site going up. This is the case with the majority of .edu and .gov web sites.
Having said this it is very important to remember, at this point in time, any .com web site may attain the exact same result as a .gov or .edu web site in a Pareto state (all things being equal).
Still don’t believe? Well think of these scenarios. If bias were provided to .edu then what about all the spammy link directories, student web sites, and the like present on .edu? Albeit, student web links are not considered negative spam, it still means not everything at the .edu house is quality.
Another aspect to consider is other countries. In Canada, all Universities do not follow the .edu but simply hold a .ca. Nonetheless, their content is usually rich and full of quality research initiatives, etc., well worth linking. Should the work of all post-secondary institutions be marginalised on the web simply because they do not carry an American .edu address? One would be hard pressed to back such a notion; it doesn’t make sense to Google either to feature only US based research/universities.
With these things in mind remember: extensions and addresses mean nothing; unique and quality content remain on the throne.