The theory is that Google assigns a lot of authority to websites of colleges and other educational institutions. I don’t think there is any question of whether a link from an authority site is better than a link from a non-authority site. If I had my choice of one link from authority site or  10 links from various non-authority sites I would take the one link any time.

Considering the above statements and speculations the question boils down to whether educational domain sites really carry more authority than other sites. Just like in other areas of life there are very few absolutes in search engine optimization. My opinion is that EDU links on average are actually superior to other links.

There will be some people who will disagree with me primarily because of a statement that one of the Google employees made in early 2008. John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, stated:

“In general, I would like to add that no, backlinks from .EDU domains generally do not get ‘additional credibility from Google.’”

I don’t really know if that statement as expressed by John is entirely accurate, but even if it is it still does not dissuade me from pursuing EDU links. Even if Google does not explicitly ascribe more value to EDU links that does not mean that on average EDU links are not more valuable than other links.

I base a lot of my SEO knowledge on my own experimentation and testing. Obviously, I read what the experts say, and take that into consideration. However, I very rarely take those statements as fact unless I have experienced them with my own sites.

I devised a simple test to compare the authority of EDU sites to other sites in general. While it is in no way a scientific test or proof that all EDU sites carry more authority than other sites, it does make it pretty clear that EDU domains are usually authority sites. Here is what I did and you can feel free to try this at home:

I made a list of 10 college sites, 10 corporate sites, and 10.net sites. I tried to balance each list with a mixture of large medium and small organizations. I then visited each site and checked the Google page rank. Obviously page rank is not the only indicator of a sites authority but it is a pretty good one regardless.

What I found was that the small colleges had page ranks of five or six, the midsized colleges six or seven, and the large colleges eight or nine. The.COM and NET sites had about two less page rank than the corresponding EDU sites.

I still wouldn’t stand on my head to get EDU links, but if I had a fairly easy way to get those links I would go for it. Well, it just so happens that I do know a fairly easy (and free) method of getting EDU links. On the other hand it is actually harder to get links from high page rank corporate and network sites.

If you register for my free newsletter you will get a report that explains in detail how to get free EDU links. This report usually sells for $27, but I have obtained the rights to provide it for free to my subscribers. Please note if you already subscribe to my newsletter you either already have this free report or receive it shortly there is no need to subscribe again.

The Authority Loophole software makes the bold promise that you will be able to get legitimate high PR links totally free. It does turn out that the software is totally free with no catches. Of course there is an up-sell product, but there is no obligation to buy the up-sell. You can use the Authority Loophole software as much as you want for free.

In order to do an honest Authority Loophole review I downloaded and installed the software. I read the short guide and the frequently asked questions and started using the program. I was impressed and disturbed at the same time.

Download the Authority Loophole software for free

There are two ways you can use the software. The more powerful mode, in my opinion, is unethical. However, I did find a way to ethically use the most powerful function of the tool. It is just a little more work, but I’m willing to do that for a clear conscience.

The software is a solid product. The more powerful mode allows you to uncover high PR blogs that use the “Top Commenter” plug-in and that do not use the no-follow tag. The other way to use the software is to search for high Page rank blogs that accept comments and potentially “do follow” links.

There is no ethical dilemma at all with the later, but I was a bit shocked at the way the product creators suggest to use the top commenter function.

The Top Commenter plug-in displays the names of the people with the most comments with a link to the site they entered in their last comment. This is displayed on every page of the blog including usually the home page. That home page link is where you get the high PR links.

What the product creators suggest is that you post a comment and use the exact same name that one of the top commenters used. That will replace the link with your selected link. I’m sorry Chris Rempel and Dave Kelly, but I don’t think that is fair to the person that put the work into being a top commenter.

Here is how you can still use the Authority Loophole with the top commenter trick and still retain your ethics.

I am finding quite a few of the blogs with the Top Commenter plug-in where it only takes one or two comments to be a legitimate top commenter yourself. Why not do that and you have a truly legitimate link and you can even make it keyword anchored if you want.

The other thing you can do is check the links from the existing top commenters and if you find one that is broken go ahead and replace it with your link since it is not doing the original commenter any good anyway.

I did find one other way to use it that I didn’t feel bad about. I stumbled on one the links that Chris Rempel had pointed to his site. It’s pointing to one my sites now and I don’t feel bad about that one at all.

I really do like the program and my Authority Loophole review is positive overall and really positive if you use it ethically. At the price of totally free why not give it a try? Download Authority Loophole.

The first thing you need to do is learn a little about link building yourself before you go shopping. You don’t need to be a link building expert, but you need to understand how the process works to be an informed buyer. You can learn what you need to know right here on this site. You may want to read these posts if you are not already familiar with these topics:

• How to get Links to Your Website
  
• Seven Keys to SEO Link Building Success
  
• Why One Way Backlinks?

You should now have a pretty good understanding of the kinds of linking and the benefits of one way links to your site. Let’s start by listing some of the things you should avoid in link building services.

FFA Sites and Link Farms – These don’t work, at least not long term and participating in them can actually harm your website rankings. FFA is short for “free for all” and are sites with thousands and thousands of links with no real content. Link farms are similar and the search engines may penalize your rankings if you have a lot of links from these types of sites.

Comment Spam – Posting relevant comments on blogs is a valid link building tactic, but posting junk comments just to get links is useless. Unfortunately, there are  services out there that use comment spam as their primary strategy.

Reciprocal Links – There is noting wrong with recipricol links, but if you get nothing but recipricol (or two way links) you are not getting a lot of milage out of your links. Two way links help a little but you really need one way links to get good search engine rankings. Some link building services concentrate only in getting two way links and if those are used they should be only part of your
link strategy.

Buying Links – Google hates sites that sell links and sites that buy them. If you buy links, especially high page rank links you risk the wrath og Google.  Even beyond the risk of being punished by Google buying links is by nature a very short term tactic. When you buy links you are paying for them every month and as the bills add up as some point you are going to want to stop paying for them. When you stop paying you abruptly lose the links.

We have covered what to avoid when looking for link building services. In the next article we will take a looks at the positive aspects and what you really want to get out of this kind of service.

The World Wide Web came into existence  in 1990 and thus was created the quest to get website links. However, for about six years, there was only one motivation to get links to your website. That motivation was to get direct traffic to your site. In 1996 Google appeared on the scene and added a new reason to get links to your site. Google started using link popularity as a primary way to determine which sites were the best for any particular keyword.

Today Google accounts for almost 80% of all Web searches and Web search is the primary way people find websites. That fact makes getting a high ranking in Google the most important factor in having a successful website. That leads us to the point of this article. If you want to succeed on the Net you need to know how to get links to your website.

The old fashioned way to get links is to exchange links with other webmasters. Link exchanges can be manual or using automated systems. Unfortunately, two way links don’t have he power they once did for increasing your rankings. They may get you a little direct traffic, and they are worth doing if you can do it without spending a lot of time on it. However, one way links carry much more weight in getting your site ranked in the search engines, especially Google.

So how do you get these coveted one way links? You can buy them, but there are many drawbacks to buying links which I will go into in more depth in another article. For now, I’m just going to post a list of other ways to get one way links and I’ll give you more details on how to use the methods in future posts. Here is my “short list” of ways to get one way links:

• Blog Commenting
• Forum Posting
• Directory Submission
• RSS Feed Directories
• Social Bookmarking
• Article Marketing
• Classified Ads
• Press Releases
• Link Baiting
• Guest Blogging
• FFA Sites (not recommended)
• Posting on Advertising Blogs
• Creating Free Blogs (lots of these sites will be detailed later)
• Building Your Own Hosted Blog Network
• Your Circle of Online Friends
• Sneaky Backdoor Listings (mainly free service registrations that get your links on authority sites)
• Subscribing to One Way Link Services

The list is not in any particular order. I’m sure I will be adding to the above list, but that gives you a good start. As mentioned earlier, look for details on all these methods soon. If you have ways to get links to your website in mind that I missed that you would like covered please post a comment and let me know.