Worth promoting inbound edu's and gov's?

[eWhisper]

I have a very old hobby site which is a pr5 site that I've not worked on in years.

It ranks 2nd page for several competitive terms, and first page for some decent traffic, but less competitive terms.

I was messing around with some new tools and saw 50 gov backlinks and a little over 300 edu backlinks.

This entire post is based around a common assumptionthat edu and gov links carry more weight.

All of the links are pr 0-2 (I know how much pr is worth...) but they are all very themed.

Opinions on if it's worth while (even just as an experiment) to get some of those pages some IBLs in order to boost up my pages rankings?

[iamlost]

Ssssh!

I like everyone competing for .com, .net, and .org links and believing G-Bar PR and not thinking of .gov, .edu, and equivalent lower level domains (gc.ca, gov.bc.ca, etc.).

My link experience is that SEs seem to generically rate such sites as higher quality. Ensure on-topic linking and appropriate anchor text and the SERP value is extraordinary.

Try this (I have several times): take a site either new or old low in rank:

1. some pages leave as are;
   
2. some pages basic on-page SEO;
   
3. some pages typical multiple link SEO;
   
4. some pages one only incoming high PR (7+) .com, .net, .org link;
   
5. some pages one only incoming any PR (even 0) education/government site link;
   
6. some pages one high PR com/net/org link plus one any PR education/government link.
   

Repeat using multiple sites each only following one of the above strategies. Note: I mean that with #4 and #5 only one incoming link to the entire site. With #6 only two incoming links to the entire site.

My results consistently show #6 as by far the best, #4 and #5 vary somewhat with #4 usually better, then in order: #3, #2, and way way down #1.

The interesting thing is that #5 and #6 work best cross-SE. #4 is much more SE specific.

The best thing I learned is that #3 almost guarantees the G sandbox not just for those pages but the site. Using just #5 or #6 the sites have never been sandboxed.

I will take quality over quantity anytime and education/government are the quiet value of the SEO world. Multiple links from such sites (as your site demonstrates) are pure afterburner. Getting appropriate links from them is the real trick.

[moltar]

I am sure google has some kind of matrix for each TLD and ccTLD. Maybe like a rating from 1 to 10 or something of thar sort. I suspect the quality would be ordered as something like this.

This is purely a speculation. I don't have any data to back this up.

1. gov - authority. can be edited only by authority, thus hard to spam.
   
2. edu - semi-authority. sometimes edited by students that might not be as knowledgable as gov editors. Also contain lot's of student pages. Still good quality and quality control eforced by universities.
   
3. org - still mainly used for organizations, thus being a semi-authority. There is less spam on orgs.
   
4. net - higher than com simply because com is more mainstream and com attracts more crap sites.
   
5. com - see net
   

[eWhisper]

The question is (guess I misworded it) that these incoming edus and govs aren't that high of pr/authority.

Is it worthwhile getting links to these pages (i.e. linking building for the gov/edu site) so that their outgoing links to my site will carry even more weight?

It's difficult getting edus/govs, but easy to get coms and nets to link to a gov page.

[caveman]

Do the pages you're competing against also have those sorts of IBL's? If you're ahead of the pack already or even just close, then yes I'd go for it, assuming I had a good monetization plan.

There are of course also ways to make good use of the IBL's that are there already. As in so many things, smart marketing helps a lot. ;-)

[bakedjake]

Yes.

[Gargen]

it makes sense though i have a couple of edu's but gov's but they might be hard to get