“Build .edu backlinks!” — It seems like every SEO is shouting the same thing at you. But what they don’t tell you is what results to expect and how much effort building .edu links will take.

We’ve helped clients land placements on .edu sites like Yale and NYU. So, take it from us: building .edu links is no easy feat.

Before embarking on an .edu link-building campaign, you want to be sure that  .edu links will help you reach your goals.

So, here’s our honest take on whether .edu backlinks are worth your investment and why. Let’s dive in.

Are .edu Backlinks Any Good?

In terms of link juice, .edu backlinks are good. That’s because most links from .edu domains are considered high-quality.

Simply put, search engines prefer .edu backlinks over links from less trustworthy domains. So, .edu links could contribute to your site’s SEO more than most other links.

That means .edu backlinks should boost your:

• rankings
• search visibility
• organic and referral traffic

…more so than sites with regular domains.

Of course, that doesn’t mean all sites with an .edu extension are high-quality by default. It’s just that the majority of them are. The next section will help you understand what makes them superior, plus how you can differentiate between lower- and higher-quality .edu sites.

5 Reasons Why Search Engines Prefer .edu Backlinks

Let’s work back a few steps. I’ll walk you through the five reasons why search engines give .edu links an advantage over average links.

1) .edu Sites Have High Domain Authority

In the past, many people tried to manipulate the search results in their favor with backlinks from low-quality, spammy websites. But it didn’t take long for Google and other search engines to discover the scheme.

So, today, low-quality backlinks have little to no effect on how sites rank. In fact, spammy links can even hurt the sites they’re pointing to.

That’s why backlinks from authoritative websites are worth more.

And most .edu sites have high domain authority. You can check this metric using a tool like Moz Link Explorer:

(Source: Moz Link Explorer)

I used NYU’s website (nyu.edu) as an example. You can see that it has a domain authority of 91, which is considered very high. For reference, domain authority between 40 and 50 is considered average.

Of course, that doesn’t mean all .edu sites have such high domain authority. After all, NYU is a very well-known university worldwide. So, it makes sense that its website has higher domain authority than those owned by less prestigious institutions.

But you can expect most .edu sites to have at least above-average authority. Take Bringham Young University as an example:

(Source: Moz Link Explorer)

Clearly, you can profit from .edu backlinks even if they’re coming from sites owned by lesser-known organizations.

2) .edu Sites Have A Strong Backlink Profile

The rule of thumb is that the more backlinks you have, the better you’ll rank. But that’s not 100% accurate. The thing is, the quantity of your links isn’t the only thing that matters. Quality matters, too, if not more.

But how do you know if a backlink is high-quality?

Well, high-quality backlinks fit two criteria:

• They’re coming from authoritative sites — Sites with high DA.
• They’re dofollow — Only dofollow links can pass authority on other websites. In contrast, nofollow links don’t affect other sites’ authority and don’t help them rank.

Fortunately, most .edu sites have links that fit both criteria. And they usually have many of them.

To demonstrate this, let’s check Yale’s (yale.edu) backlink profile using SEO SpyGlass:

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