The inbound link is the holy grail of web traffic. Getting inbound links from government and university sites is a testament to the quality of your site.
You accumulate inbound links not only to increase traffic, but also to establish your site for providing high value to visitors. However, getting inbound links by link exchange or buying text links is not going to get you anywhere. You need to abandon those archaic ideas and jump forward with an inbound link strategy that provides high value authoritative links.
To obtain high value authoritative links, your site must provide high values to its visitors. Original authoritative articles and tools to solve everyday problems are a few ways to provide a lasting value to web surfers. Before you embark on your link-building mission, create something valuable.
Links from the government sites have very high value. If your site enables citizenry to interact directly with the government, it is an excellent candidate for a link back from the government site.
Sites that provide community level services, for example location of Social Security Offices in the USA with interactive maps, will also have high potential for outbound links from government sites.
Other types of sites that do well are sites that provide information about service performance, for example, a nursing home comparison site; sites that cross inter-governmental boundaries; and sites that allow transactions with the government, for example, filing taxes.
If your site is a good fit for outbound links from government sites, start with usa.gov site. It is a central information hub for everything government. On the bottom of the page, you will see About Us and Contact Us links. Read their linking policy by clicking on the About Us before you contact them.
You don’t have to confine yourself to the US government sites only. Explore the possibilities of getting links from foreign government sites also. But keep in mind that your site should provide some values to citizenry of those countries and people wanting to do with them.
For example, most government embassy sites don’t display their embassy addresses in interactive maps. If your site pulls their addresses displayed in simple texts in a web page and place those addresses on Google maps for interactivity, you can contact them to put a link back to your site. Explain to them that your site adds additional value to their visitors by providing richer user experience.
College and university sites provide a good opportunity to develop some authoritative inbound links. The key here is to provide services geared towards students. You may also be able to get links if a faculty member is interested in your contents.
Don’t start spamming university forums, guest books, etc. People may attack your site and bring it down, report to your web host company or domain registrar. You will lose your credibility and reputation. Try to establish relationship by helping others. Let them know that you know your topics and are willing to share with them.
If your site provides some valuable services to students, approach the appropriate university authority for linking. For example, if you have a tool that compares student loans from different sources and suggests the good ones depending on a student’s financial situation, university loan office will be willing to link to your site as a resource.
If you have a blog with original and regularly updated contents that talk about impact of the technology on the society, you may approach a faculty in sociology to link to your site from his or her home page located in the university server.
Government and university sites provide good opportunities for developing inbound links if your website has a match with their requirements. The key to that is quality contents and useful web tools. Once you meet their requirements, it is worth pursuing these entities for spreading your website links to them.
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Frequently Asked Questions
ALEXA Toolbar and purchased traffic
By: JJ | 09-07-2008
Does buying Alexa toolbar traffic work?Just bought 30,000 views for a web site, anyone with insight?
Since you have Internet, you write less or more?
By: qzmaster591 | 09-07-2008
Since you got internet, the number of postcards and letters increased, decreased or stayed the same?
Child Pornography on Craiglist
By: Marcie | 02-07-2008
Child pornography is arguably one of the worst things that enjoy the internet and the web 2.0 rage. If Craiglist insist on having a pornography section, are they in part at least responsible for perpetrating the porn trade? Are they doing enough to redeem themselves?
Firefox
By: Kibbutz | 20-06-2008
What are the advantages of the new Firefox browser (please don't get technical)?
I work as software engineer. Can I build my own web site without being fired?
By: Ranimi23 | 16-06-2008
I am going to open my own web site and also write there a column, but I'm afraid my boss won't like this hobby. It will be a big application and I will need to work on it on my spare time. I like my work and I like also to program outside my work. Can I do that or it will be talking a big risk?I don't want to hide this web site, because I do believe it will be a great success, I just don't know if this collide with my work. I do progarm web sites at my work, but not like what I am planning to do. This web site may be some day a real company, I don't know what will happen but I love the idea of doing it. Please advise how to behave. I do know big companies started from people who had worked while they started their own thing.
Filtering non-adults
By: Eyals | 16-06-2008
What ways are there to filter non-adults? (besides just asking or requesting credit card numbers)
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