Who has control over a .edu website?
The University’s faculty and staff.

Who makes changes to their website?
Nine times out of ten it’s the University’s staff however sometimes a student will be put in charge of making updates to a web page or series of web pages as part of the curriculum of a course. But even if that’s the case, those individuals are being monitored by the professor so even if you do get a link don’t count on it for long. And in a Google world where the age of a link is important that temporary benefit is just a drop in the bucket.

Where are the most valuable pages on a .edu website?
Sure the home page of the .edu might be the holy grail of link juice but consider this: the chances of the content of the home page being related to your subject is slim and the link placement is almost guaranteed to be in a sidebar or footer. Not ideal. No, the inner pages of a .edu site maybe 2 or 3 directories removed from the home page are the most likely to attract a link and that link is more likely to be both related to your content and going to be placed within the content section of the web page. This is where your maximum benefit will come from.

Where do .edu link acquisition firms place your link?
Do you think they’re making sizable donations to the University or paying the staff? Of course not, so what are the chances that you will get a quality link like in the scenario I just gave you? Nil. They pay poor college students for links on their personal pages which most often are disconnected from the University’s site. Rarely can you reach it via a link from the University website so zero link juice is being passed. Remember, just because it’s on the website does not mean it’s passing link juice from the domain. We could get into an argument about it passing TrustRank from the domain itself but that’s another argument for a much more in-depth analysis. Even still, recall that the student is poor. Getting $10/month from a link sounds great but getting $1000/month from 100 links sounds better. Divide the TrustRank among 100 links and the fact that the page is resembling a menagerie of unrelated websites how much trust do you think you will actually get?

Okay, whew. So we now know where we want to get our links, who controls those web pages, and who can’t get the link for you. So why is it that 3/4ths of the people I talk with still try to market their content for students? Don’t market for the student market for the staff!

The recipe is a simple one: create quality related content that the faculty will benefit from and will want to pass on as a resource. Then market it to the staff member in charge of that page.

Analyzing your current store of incoming links for both anchor text optimization as well as optimization of the page itself is key to maximizing your ROI. Too often a link looks like this:

Today I visited this fantastic wedding favors website. It was brilliant! They had everything from unity candles to bridal shoes. Even wedding favors just for fun! Check it out here.

Yes, you do have an incoming link that they are probably not going to no-follow and yes it is surrounded by relevant text, but there is so much more SEO to be mined. Wouldn’t this be brilliant:

Today I visited this fantastic wedding favors website. It was brilliant! They had everything from unity candles to bridal shoes. Even wedding favors just for fun!

Of course, that might be a bit of a stretch to request but it’s worth a shot. Think about it, it’s easier for the visitor of their site to see exactly what is being referred to. However, The following version, while not as perfect as the one just mentioned is still hands down a better option than the original:

Today I visited this fantastic wedding favors website. It was brilliant! They had everything from unity candles to bridal shoes. Even wedding favors just for fun! Check them out at My Wedding Favors.

You see the benefit in having keywords within the link, that’s a no-brainer. This however is where the finesse needs to comes in. You need to pay attention to a little thing called diversity. Keeping your anchor text varying is important.

Think diversity with your anchor text. Natural is the key.

For example what looks more natural? Having 400 out of 600 incoming links identical (My Wedding Favors) or 100 links that read ‘My Wedding Favors’, another 100 ‘ Wedding Favors Online’, another 50 ‘Unity Candles’, and so on and so forth? The answer is obvious, you must keep the phrase natural link building in mind all the time because 2/3rds of your incoming anchor text being identical is NOT natural.

Now that you know how to better make use of that link here comes the hard part: requesting the change of text. The best bet is to a.) catch the link early (as I’ve found people are more apt with making a change to recently posted content) and b.) practice your best manners. Remember there is no intrinsic benefit to the individual so keep that in mind.

Treat the request as a favor and maybe even trade. Use your knowledge of SEO to offer them some free advice. Give them a specific tip to help them, and remember as their website benefits your link value on that page increases: win-win.

And that segues perfectly into my next point: examine the on page optimization and off site promotion of the page that contains your incoming link. Now, some of you may be thinking why should I waste time doing optimization and promotion for a page I don’t own. The answer is simple: while you may not own the page you will benefit from the page. The more ‘link juice’ a page has the more it can pass on. Not many people consider that in their optimization strategy. Making the most out of a link doesn’t simply mean anchor text anchor text anchor text, you need to incorporate a little bit of promotion. And who knows, the owner may notice that page is doing well and offer you more links in exchange for more optimization or maybe you’ll earn a new SEO consultant contract out of it. And in all of this, your link gets more and more credability and passes more and more link juice. It’s win-win-win.