Inbound links are one of the most important factors in the search engine ranking success of your web site. That doesn’t mean simply paying link farms to link back to your site from hundreds of other sites isn’t going to do the trick, however. Search engine engineers are too smart for that. Instead, their spiders look at the quality of the sites, too. For this reason, web sites with the .edu extension are highly prized.

Why are these extensions so important? For one, they are one of the few top-level domain extensions that are considered a closed system. That means not just everyone can purchase one of these domain names. Under the newest rules, this extension can only be used by accredited organizations, such as universities.

That means a web site with a domain name ending is of high quality and that means it has a lot of value to Google. But the problem is getting a backlink from one of these sites isn’t very easy. If you were a professor, you might be able to link back to your own page if it was directly related to your work at the school but that’s about it. Of course, there are ways to get around these obstacles.

As you know, many educational organizations don’t always have everything they need, particularly now when budgets are getting cut all over the country. Your job is to find a local educational institution that has a need, such as an elementary school looking for a sponsor for their sports team or a high school needing donations for a school trip. You provide for that need – consider it part of your marketing budget.

Ask the school to place a link on your site in exchange for your contribution. Most will be more than happy to do this and that will give you a backlink from one of these coveted sites. Now if you don’t want to spend the money you can always just donate your time.