Most universities give out free web space to students, faculty and staff for publishing personal or class websites. Here at Northwestern, the system runs on DEPOT. It doesn’t allow parsing of PHP scripts or creation of databases, so it’s not possible to run a robust site while pinning bandwidth costs entirely on the university. What it does allow you to do, though, is get a free and easy .edu backlink with whatever anchor text you like.
Why do I want a link from a .edu domain?
Simple: Google places more trust in .edu sites. Thus, one .edu backlink can be very valuable.
How do I get more?
If you’re still in college, it’s easy. Once you put up your backlink on your own web space, convince all your friends to link to you on theirs. You can use the same anchor text on all the links to totally dominate one keyword, or multiple anchor texts to make more modest gains in multiple keywords. Branch out to friends at different schools and get a variety of high PR, trusted .edu links from a number of universities.
If you’re not in school, you don’t have to resort to spamming .edu blogs and getting blacklisted. Read on.
You go to school. Will you give me one?
Yea, sure. Seriously. I’m not going to run a .edu link farm; that won’t do any of us any good. But I will set up a page on my school account with a brief blurb about your site and a link with whatever anchor text you want. I’m going to run it just like John Chow’s Review My Blog promotion - simply write a bit about my blog on yours and I’ll link you back from the highly-respected, PR5 depot.northwestern.edu domain. The link will remain at least until I graduate in September and possibly long after that.
For now, I’m going after the keyword spangler because, let’s face it, I’m incredibly vain and want to rank highly for all variations of my own name…not to mention I have no idea what other anchor text I want to compete for yet. I have some monumental pages to overtake to reach #1 in the SERPs for spangler, including the candy company (currently #1 but appears to not have a PageRank) and an online science supply store (PR6) owned by the guy who did the Mentos+Diet Coke thing.
To participate, simply write a post like this:
Tim Spangler is giving away free .edu links to anyone who writes a review of his blog. Go give it a read!
Then leave a comment on this post and let me know where I can find your review. Make sure you include the title of your blog, a brief description of it and the anchor text you would like to be linked with. I’ll update the pages in batches of ten, much like John does.
Let’s spread the link love!
Like it? Love it? Hate it but want to read more anyway?
Subscribe to my RSS feed and keep up!
08 Jun 2007 at 9:58 am
You need a home link somewhere on your page. I want to go to your homepage and see what else you have to say, but can’t find a way aside from editing the URL!
-Ravi Udeshi
16 Jun 2007 at 9:39 am
Tim,
Here is the permalink to my blurb about your blog!
Please use the anchor text “Web Development”!
Thanks,
The Bespeckled SEO
16 Jun 2007 at 10:51 am
Will do! I’m graduating from j-school today but I’ll put up this batch tomorrow.
Thanks for dropping by!
17 Jun 2007 at 11:32 am
STOP PRESS!! - Breaking News…
Do you need some quality Backlinks to your blog or website. Well Tim Spangler is giving away free .edu links to anyone who writes a review of his blog.
Tim Spangler is a grad student who dabbled in journalism school before deciding that the newsroom wa…
18 Jun 2007 at 5:13 pm
Hi Tim,
Here’s the permalink to my review of your blog. Please use make money with a blog
As you can tell from the review, I really enjoyed your blog and look forward to hearing about your secret new website project. I also want to hear about your flash class!
Sara
19 Jun 2007 at 10:34 pm
I put your review / links here.
http://eric-gehler.biz/blog/2007/06/19/its-all-about-the-edu-backlink/
Would like a link to http://eric-gehler.biz/
with anchor text Richmond Va SEO
21 Jun 2007 at 9:10 pm
Hey Tim,
You can find my review at:
http://www.affiliatewatcher.com/why-is-tim-spangler-giving-away-free-edu-backlinks/
I’d like you to link to my front page like this: Affiliate Program
Thanks,
Don
04 Jul 2007 at 2:54 am
I’m in the works on your review! edu backlink here I come…
04 Jul 2007 at 7:08 am
Kostenlose .edu Backlinks…
Suchmaschinen bewerten .edu und .gov Links sehr gut, da sie in der Regel eine gute Authority sowie eine ganze Menge Backlinks haben. Um einen Backlink von einer .deu Domain zu bekommen, kann man in Google nach einer solchen suchen oder aber einen Revie…
04 Jul 2007 at 7:11 am
Hi Tim,
I did a blurb in german language at http://www.vi-su.de/kostenlose-edu-backlinks/2007/07/04/
I would like to have link to my blog http://www.vi-su.de with the anchor text SEO Consulting.
Thanks,
Torsten
07 Aug 2007 at 6:19 am
Project Black Mask Adsense…
Project Black Mask review, looking behind the curtains…
08 Mar 2008 at 6:58 pm
Super Idee und einen Versuch ist es wert. Das nächste Pagerank Update ist in ein paar Wochen. Mal sehen ob es wirkt.
Hier mein kleiner Artikel http://www.mensvita.de/2008/03/09/pagerank-verbessern/
08 Mar 2008 at 6:59 pm
[…] Google und andere Suchmaschinen geben wichten Top Level Doamisn wie .edu oder .gov besondere Gewichtung. Doch woher bekommt man einen solchen ? Ein kleiner Tip: Besucht folgenden Link . […]
15 May 2008 at 1:35 am
google
test
test
google
26 May 2008 at 11:27 am
I think I read somewhere on the blogsphere that this tricks works too. Will have to try it one of these days.
02 Jun 2008 at 8:47 am
thanx man