building site about a college: do i dare?!

Hi, all. I have been thinking of keywords to break into the whole SEO thing for a few days but now I'm thinking of making a site about the area surrounding my Junior colleges (eating places, library, traffic reports etc.)

This would be my first site obviously but realistically, what are my chances of ranking high enough to get noticed. Its my understanding that Big G highly respects .edu sites and will rank them first almost always if they get high traffic.

Now my Jr College has 5 campuses, so you can imagine what kind of student base I will be attracting if I rank high. I will mostly monetize from adsense but will also throw up some affiliate links.

With that said, "Do I Dare?!" attempt to challenge a .edu site? My competition is low otherwise, I have looked and there's no one else that I can see.

PS: if this is in the wrong section, please move it. thanks.

Well since your whole site is going to be local it will be pretty easy to rank because you can put local keywords in the domain and use them a lot in all the content. Backlinks won't be a problem because I doubt there is a lot of competition with college 'fan-sites'. If you make the content funny, offer something creative and worthwhile to the visitors then yes you can do well with this. Also for advertising you can do so much locally. Hanging up posters, writing on walls and in bathroom stalls, etc etc. Hopefully you're a creative person.

I say go for it. If you get a cease and desist letter so be it. Just get a private registration. My first C&D was from the Academy Awards!

likeskoolaid said:

Well since your whole site is going to be local it will be pretty easy to rank because you can put local keywords in the domain and use them a lot in all the content. Backlinks won't be a problem because I doubt there is a lot of competition with college 'fan-sites'. If you make the content funny, offer something creative and worthwhile to the visitors then yes you can do well with this. Also for advertising you can do so much locally. Hanging up posters, writing on walls and in bathroom stalls, etc etc. Hopefully you're a creative person.

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Yes, that's why I would prefer doing something local. More forms of advertising and, like I said, there aren't any other sites like what I'm planning. It'll take a while but I would definitely add a lot of sub menus. Maybe if its successful enough, I'll have forums for homework help. But now I'm dreaming.

woodyb23 said:

I say go for it. If you get a cease and desist letter so be it. Just get a private registration. My first C&D was from the Academy Awards!

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Oh, I didn't think about the legal side. How do I void a C&D from a school? Will I get in trouble for having the school's initials in the domain? That would be my main keyword that I'm targeting(3 letters).

Need some more input.

Has anyone ranked fairly high against .edu sites? If anyone knows about ranking against school sites, please send me a message. Also, how legal would it be if I have the school's initials in the domain?