How to get a backlink from an .EDU site

Does your university have an alumni directory? A backlink from your alma mater can be a great SEO asset. If you are a business owner and went to a college or university with an alumni directory, contact your alma mater’s alumni relations to ask how you can get your business listed in the university’s directory.

The Transcript

0:00 You can break SEO down into three main factors, well, three, three plus one really. You have your technical, your technical SEO, you have your on page, which is, ah, what you say about yourself on your website and how you say it, right, so the keywords and the formats you use, webpage copying, pdfs,

0:21 whatever it is, videos. And then you have the on page. Off page, which are basically boils down to links, links on other websites that link to your site.

0:30 Now, if you’re a business owner and you went to a school, a university, college, there’s a good chance that the alumni association at your college has a directory of graduates and they provide descriptions and links to your, to your website.

0:48 So, uhm, I took a little bit of time out today to see what was going on with the backlinks, the backlink profile of OpticsIn.

0:56 And, uhm, I was reminded of this link and I just wanted to share So, I’m in Search Console right now.

1:03 I’m looking at NYUAlumniandBusinesses.com, which clearly is not, uhm, the NYU website. Uh, but I was curious where it went because I don’t, I didn’t remember that URL.

1:14 If you click on this URL, it redirects you to AOB directory alumni NYU.edu, right? So it is, it is managed by NYU. It used to be at that, it used to be at this, there we go, at this domain.

1:29 And now it’s over here. Um, and then I was wondering, well, where’s my page? And I found my page through some redirects from, uh, SEMrush.

1:48 And it’s here, right? It’s over here. And I wanted to be sure that that page was crawlable and indexable given that it redirected.

1:59 And if it, if it was crawlable, it would, I appreciate the link from NYU and folks could find it if they navigated the website, but Google may not be able to find it.

2:08 So I wanted to see what was true. So I put in site colon in front of that URL. And what I got was, bummer, right?

2:15 Not, not there. Didn’t, didn’t match. Um, but given that it’s a newish website and it looks like everything is redirecting over, I’m still curious.

2:24 Well, will that page be indexed? And is this website that I pulled up earlier, the AOB directory, alumninyu.edu, is that website crawlable and indexable?

2:36 And, uh, I used the same site colon, uhm, to see what are all the URLs that Google has available, uhm, from this website.

2:48 And then I started to see other businesses, right, so 100’s Point, Wash It Candles, and if you click on UBT, for example, let’s just be sure, yeah, right, it’s, it’s a basic page, UBT, here’s the description, here’s the logo, and then here’s the link down at the bottom, right.

3:09 So while this page. Which has my link at the bottom, it’s currently not crawlable, I mean, it’s currently not indexed, therefore, Google’s not picking up that link.

3:21 Seems like it’s just a matter of time, right, because all these other, right, there’s UBT, and all these other pages, Lilac Chocolates, right, and there’s 12, so 10 listings on a page, 120 listings, roughly, in the directory, that are picked up, there’s probably more, I’m not going to click through all

3:39 this, but you get the point, so, given that there’s been, uhm, a redirect of the domain, and now Google’s crawling the new domain with all these links, uhm, the link to OpticsIn will get picked up, but the point here is, if you went to school and you spent a lot of money, I think NYU for grad school

3:57 was $30,000, it must have been a while, but I’ll, I’ll take that, I’ll take that link, I mean, I paid $30,000 for that link, so I’ll take it, uhm, I also reached out to Monmouth University, where I went for undergrad, and Brookdale Community College, where I started, uhm, my college career, and those

4:14 two schools do not have directories like NYU, so maybe yours does, maybe it doesn’t, but if you paid, you know, school’s expensive, get that link, Thank you.

4:25 Call up that, the Alumni Association, and ask if they have a directory. Typically .edu websites, which is what we’re looking at here, have very valuable, uhm, they carry a lot of weight with Google, not because they’re .edu, but because everyone links to those websites, uhm, and, and that’s really the

4:44 real reason there’s a rumor that .edu, in and of itself, Thank you. is a strong domain. Not in my experience, it’s, it’s because of the value of those websites, and those, and the value of those websites are their content, it’s the, the links pointing to them, it’s their good technical, it’s all the

5:04 things that make a good website, and it happens to be on .edu, and then if they link to your site, you get some of that mojo going to your website.

5:11 I hope this has been helpful.