Transcript
Hi, guys, Welcome to another edition of Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is why are .edu and .gov domains and links so highly sought out for. They're a pretty big deal in the SEO industry. A lot of people talk about the Holy Grail of these differing domains, and I kind of wanted to spend some time to discuss why they're so valuable. But before we begin, I do you want to introduce the tea we have today. This is Zupo's SEO Talk & Tea, so we always have a tea pairing with our conversation. Today's tea is a Jasmine green tea by the company, Black and Bold. I think that's what they're called. My housemate is the one that actually bought this, and 5% of the proceeds when you're buying this tea go to youth. I'm not sure what... Disadvantaged domestic youth. I want to get that right, so disadvantaged domestic youth.
So very community-based, charity based, but some good tea. So today we have a Jasmine green tea. It is a very floral tea, and if you ever went to a boba shop, you have probably smelled a Jasmine green tea, if not tasted one. It is usually the base for any of the green teas or the green milk teas, but let's get brewing and talking.
So why are .edu and .gov sites so highly sought out for? Well, the reason why is because, inherently, Google has said they don't treat any domains with any privilege. So what I mean by that is .com, .co, .ai, .gov, and .edu, at their beginning, when they're first made, there is no inherent value difference, but the reason why .edu and .gov sites are so highly sought out for is because to obtain those domains are difficult. For you to get a .edu domain, you need to prove that you're an educational institution or something of that sort, so there's actually like some barriers that prevent other people from attaining that domain.
.gov is obvious. You have to be a government institution to have a .gov domain. So why this becomes important is because when you are link-building or referring domains, the authority and quality of where you're building links from or referring domains from is very important. The higher quality of the link, the higher quality of the value that gets passed to your website. So the reason why .gov and .edu domains are so highly sought out for is because when you are building a link from a .edu, .gov, generally .edu and .gov are coming from institutions that are high authority. They're universities, or they might be government institutions where Google heavily trusts them because they are seen as a high authority, high trust.
.edu websites generally have very strong SEO profiles because they're institutions, they get a lot of links, a lot of people talk about them in articles and everything. So they organically just get a lot of press, a lot of links, and a lot of referring domains. Therefore, their value is very high. Oh, and by the way, they're also .edu, so that means there's a high authority and trust for that website.
Same thing for .gov. .gov is pretty obvious. .gov, usually they're government institutions. They create the laws and the rules, so a lot people will cite them in articles, publications, and so on and so forth. So therefore, they get a lot of links organically as well, but even more so than .edu, they get a lot of authority and trust because they are a government institution, and their websites, therefore, are more trusted because they're from the government.
So why these are so highly sought out for is because if you can get a link from these institutions, they're hard to get. And then if you get them, they're very high value in the sense that going to a .com, it is fairly easy to get a link or referring domain, but getting from .edu, .gov, it brings a lot of... Generally, generally, it brings a lot of value in the link and the referring domain, and second, a lot of trust. Therefore, it can be a big needle mover.
The way I interpret it is a lot of people associate getting a .edu and .gov site as like getting published on Forbes, Entrepreneur magazine, or any of these big publications like BuzzFeed, Mashable. They equivalate almost the same, if not higher, to get these referring domains and back links. Now, I want to mention though, like I said in the beginning, inherently, .gov and .edu sites, when they're made, don't have more value. It's just a correlation in the sense that .edu and .gov sites tend to have more opportunity to get links because they're institutions and so on and so forth. It's not that they themselves are powerful. It's like generally there's correlation. So there is still some level of wanting to do some back link and referring domain research to ensure that where you're building the link from is valuable.
Now, if you can go and obtain one, that would be great, but I just want to clarify that discussion, and there are conversations online where people and SEOs do remind to the public it's not inherent that they're more valuable. You still have to do the dirty work and research to see if those .edu and .gov sites are of any value, and how you can check them is their spam score, the back links, and the referring domains coming in. But generally more often than not, they are more powerful, and so if you can obtain them, you should.
Now I'm going to leave it at that. I think if you can go get .edu and .gov site, go right ahead, but what I've often found is your obsession about getting them can prevent you from getting 10 to 20 referring domains somewhere else that you could easily acquire, but you were too busy trying to figure out that home run. I've done it myself. I advise against it, but I'm going to leave it at that. If you guys found this video valuable and everything, please like and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and pour my Jasmine green tea out, and I hope to see you guys again soon. All right. Thanks, everybody.