EDU Link Building: How To Get High-Impact Backlinks From EDU Websites in 5 Steps

Defining Pages For The Campaign

EDU websites are not keen on advertising. So, you are more likely to get EDU links by pitching pages that offer value to students.

Educational institutions are not too invested in digital marketing and SEO; as a result, most of them are skeptical about or don’t see any interest in giving backlinks. The best way to convince them is to show them the link’s value for their students.

That’s why you should define which pages are EDU-friendly on your website. These are blog pages or company pages that contain resources or products that can help students. Here are some potential pages:

• Podcast with a notorious guest
• Success story page
• Scholarship page
• Careers page
• Portfolio page

Researching EDU Websites

There are hundreds of EDU sites. You should drill down on the niche-relevant ones or ones that inspire value and trust.

The second step in the process is to identify educational institutions to collaborate with.

As a rule of thumb, you should strive to acquire your backlinks from world-class educational institutions that everybody respects, trusts, and values, like Harvard University. Ideally, the universities you target should have the following traits.

It’s local

There is less value in getting featured on an EDU website outside your country or business reach. Think about it, what is the point of a student loan company from Nashville being featured on the website of the University of Alberta in Canada?

It’s niche-relevant

It’s always best to target universities related to your business area. For example, if you’re a SaaS company, it’ll be best to target Tech and Computer Science Colleges. Or, if you’re in the music or video production business, it’ll be best to target art schools.

It has a strong reputation

A backlink from a strong reputation and highly-perceived educational institution is the Holy Grail when it comes to EDU link building. The higher the educational institution is perceived, the more value is attached to your company being mentioned on their website.

Interested in knowing what EDU sites we can help you get backlinks from? Check our portfolio here.

Leveraging Unique EDU Link Building Tactics

People employ many EDU link building strategies; you should focus on whitehat tactics that ensure value and quality backlinks.

Granted, EDU link building is not a given. It is much easier to reach out to a company with a more thorough grasp of content marketing and SEO for link building. Due to the hassle of getting an EDU backlink, many people choose to leave links in the comments on EDU websites.

Getting backlinks from comment sections indicates that the company does not care about adding any real value to the EDU site or is simply doing it as part of some blackhat SEO strategy. Even worse, these strategies only get them nofollow backlinks.

Now, here are a few of the strategies you can use to get quality EDU backlinks from even the best universities.

Scholarship link building

Scholarship link building is one of the most effective to acquire a backlink from an EDUcational institution. It involves creating scholarships for students, getting the institution to list them on their site, and linking back to your site. Since the scholarships benefit students, the institution will gladly (almost all the time) list them on their website and refer to you as the donor, granting you an EDU link for very little time and money.

Here is a list of companies of scholarships on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln site.

Offering Deals To Students or Staff

This approach involves reaching out to the target EDU institution and letting them know that their staff or students are eligible for a discount, a deal, or a gift campaign.

As they display the deals on their website, they’ll have to link to your site as a way to reach out to you, and that’s the EDU backlink you get. It needs to be natural.

Here are a few examples from the University of South Florida.

Interview Staff or Faculty

This approach involves interviewing a faculty or staff member and hosting the interview content on your site.

Most likely, the university will be happy to promote their employee or student by talking about the interview on their website. And that’s where the backlinks will come from.

Here is an example.

Source

Also, relevance is key here. The people you choose for the interview need to be relevant to your business.

Getting Featured On The “Resource Page”

Most EDUcational institutions have a resource page they refer students to. Typically, the resource page consists of links to resources and their descriptions to give a clear indication of the help these resources provide.

Here is an example from the Northeast College Community.

Based on your area of expertise, you can create quality content that can be used as a resource on the university website. You contact the university and ask them to list your resource. Which they will always be happy to add, as long as the content adds value to their students.

Reaching Out To The EDU Webmasters

Create outreach campaigns that ensure opens, clicks, and responses.

By this step of the process, here are the things you should already have figured out:

• The EDU-friendly page/s you want to pitch
• The ideal EDU site to reach out to
• The best approach to get the backlink

So the next step is to contact the web admins of the EDU site to make the proposal.

Of course, the University President or the College Director is not the right person to contact for this. You should identify the person with authority to grant you the backlink. Then use software like Hunter to obtain and authenticate their email address. Simply head to Hunter.io and paste their name and their university and college’s URL.

To verify the email address, you can use Hunter’s Email Verifier.

Next, you can move on to writing your outreach email.

Here are some tactics we use to make sure we write quality emails that compel the prospect to open and read them.

Leveraging personalization

Personalization allows you to show prospects that you’ve taken the time to research them, consider their interests, and ensure that you’re making a valuable offer. It allows you to strike a chord with the prospect and get them to accept the offer.

Here’s something you shouldn’t do:

1. This email is not personalized
2. The email format is not attractive
3. And it’s not well-reseached.

Crafting a magnetic offer

The strategy here is to make the offer about the prospect. Think about it; the prospect doesn’t care if you get a backlink or not. All they care about is what you bring to the table.

All they care about is how your link helps their students. That’s the point we focus on. We strive to create email copy that speaks to the value you bring to their table and how it helps their faculties.

Sending follow-up emails

In our experience, most people don’t respond to the very first email regarding conversions. Preparing follow-up emails gives us extra chances to get a reply and potentially get the backlinks.

Getting Your Link Live And Ensuring Quality

Ensure you get a natural link placement.

It may occur that an EDU site gives you a backlink, but the anchor text is wrong. So, always check the pages of your target to make sure there are no omissions or errors. Then, every now and then, check that the links are still live and that they are not removed.

Get Help With EDU Link Building

We can get you high-quality backlinks from many websites naturally and efficiently, including top EDUs. We use our 12-Point Quality Check framework to ensure the links will have a high impact and last forever.

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