Holzr
Elite Member
- Sep 4, 2016
- 2,236
- 2,666
Hi all,
Today I'm going to be talking about a very simple but neat twist to scholarship link building. It's actually a very simple but very clever twist.
Note:If anyone is not sure what scholarship link building is be sure to read the resources linked in my posts about 20 different link building methods you can use to build White Hat links to your website. You can find the guides near the bottom under donation/scholarship heading.
So the basic idea of getting those juicy .edu backlinks is you create a scholarship page, reach out to colleges/uni's letting them know you have a scholarship. Get links. Easy!
Easy? Yes, but in my opinion has become rather spammed. You'll see scholarship pages on college sites with very high OBL and just by looking at the websites you can see the obvious nature of the site trying to get a backlink. You might see a garage door company, plumber or thin affiliate site up there. In my opinion I believe Google lowers the value of these links. In addition these links are not contextual like a guest post linking to a website might be (contextual links are the best types of links you can have).
That's not to say .edu backlinks don't work. I still believe they do (if you build them correctly). Some of my competitors have scholarship links and are ranking well and bringing in decent traffic.
What would make a good backlink from a .edu website? A blog posts with perhaps 3 or 4 contextual and relevant links in them.
The Method
This is exactly what The Hoth have done with their scholarship program. Instead of setting up a scholarship and getting a link on a scholarship page (likely with high OBL) they have a slightly different entry requirement.
Not only now do they get .edu backlinks to their scholarship page but they also then receive a nice mixture of referring domains, anchor texts and most importantly links to their homepage.
As of today (08/10/2018) the page has 103 backlinks and 35 RD according to Ahrefs. Hard to say the impact to homepage links.
A simple twist on a classic link building tactic.
They have also managed to get backlinks from other marketers linking to the page as a case study on scholarship links (just like I have done here in this posts). Clever.
Do you still build scholarship links? Answer in the poll above.
Today I'm going to be talking about a very simple but neat twist to scholarship link building. It's actually a very simple but very clever twist.
Note:If anyone is not sure what scholarship link building is be sure to read the resources linked in my posts about 20 different link building methods you can use to build White Hat links to your website. You can find the guides near the bottom under donation/scholarship heading.
So the basic idea of getting those juicy .edu backlinks is you create a scholarship page, reach out to colleges/uni's letting them know you have a scholarship. Get links. Easy!
Easy? Yes, but in my opinion has become rather spammed. You'll see scholarship pages on college sites with very high OBL and just by looking at the websites you can see the obvious nature of the site trying to get a backlink. You might see a garage door company, plumber or thin affiliate site up there. In my opinion I believe Google lowers the value of these links. In addition these links are not contextual like a guest post linking to a website might be (contextual links are the best types of links you can have).
That's not to say .edu backlinks don't work. I still believe they do (if you build them correctly). Some of my competitors have scholarship links and are ranking well and bringing in decent traffic.
What would make a good backlink from a .edu website? A blog posts with perhaps 3 or 4 contextual and relevant links in them.
The Method
This is exactly what The Hoth have done with their scholarship program. Instead of setting up a scholarship and getting a link on a scholarship page (likely with high OBL) they have a slightly different entry requirement.
How to Apply
- Write an essay of 1000+ words on the topic of “How Companies Can Take Advantage of Digital Marketing”
- You must publish the post online publicly. This can be a student blog on your university website, your own website, or a blog platform like medium.com, blogger.com, or the like.
- Include at least 3 links citing authoritative sources on digital marketing, including 1 link to www.TheHOTH.com.
- Fill out the form below to complete your application.
Not only now do they get .edu backlinks to their scholarship page but they also then receive a nice mixture of referring domains, anchor texts and most importantly links to their homepage.
As of today (08/10/2018) the page has 103 backlinks and 35 RD according to Ahrefs. Hard to say the impact to homepage links.
A simple twist on a classic link building tactic.
They have also managed to get backlinks from other marketers linking to the page as a case study on scholarship links (just like I have done here in this posts). Clever.
Do you still build scholarship links? Answer in the poll above.