What are some effective ways to earn backlinks from .edu and .gov domains?

Let's add a twist: Alumni Network Dive: Explore university alumni networks, engage with fellow alumni, and offer your services. It's not just about links; it's about connecting with a community. Research Collaboration: Collaborate on university research projects. Contribute your expertise, and they might credit your site, creating a valuable link. Free Workshops for Impact: Host free workshops. Educational institutions love contributors to the learning experience, and they might show their appreciation with a link. Interactive Course Content: Create engaging content for courses like quizzes or tools. Professors are always on the lookout for valuable resources, potentially earning you a link.

No. Don't look for directory-list pages on .edu or .gov sites (and their equivalents in other ccTLDs). Google places little value on anything resembling a directory. This tactic might fool a client, but you are not adding to their Expertise score. You are better off checking the outbound links of relevant universities and seeing if they are on high-value pages (not lists of URLs). Student-managed pages are temporary and likely to vanish when the student leaves.

You are more likely to get a link if you collaborate with a professor or government official to make the suggested assets, which are likely to be hosted on those .gov or .edu pages, so you need to ensure that they will give you a clean link.

No, please don't create a scholarship unless it's terribly relevant to the client site. If the client is a maker of dentist consumables, then a link from a dental college to a dental scholarship might work out. If the client is a vape shop, don't try to engineer a scholarship to a medical school. Whether Google places much value on such links is to be seen, but it is seen as an outdated and pointless exercise.

Links from blog comments and forum discussions are usually nofollowed, so this practice should be stopped for good. It might work for some minor search engine, but does not for the big ones.

There are many do-follow Forums and Blogs , We should understand which links would work for our website which might not. Relevancy is key while building these links. Avoid content which is not matching your niche.

Build relationships by all means, but most .edu and .gov websites have existing policies on linking. Check them explicitly before wasting time. At best, think of them as citations.

Please don't target these TLDs for backlinks. This has been done many times and over a long time and it isn't a way to earn notable backlinks that will gain for your client or website. This outdated tactic doesn't help your organic search presence. I hate the fact so many in this field result to simple TLDs when considering the larger linking structure. Don't do this. There are better means like simply doing digital PR. Which is routinely acceptable and great for the risk adverse!