.gov and .edu free directories?

[Menard]

Anybody know of any .gov or .edu directories, or sites, which offer free listings?

[SensoVision]

Anybody know of any .gov or .edu directories

you mean directory of sites with .edu and .gov domain? as if so I didn't seen anything like this myself, but I really didn't hunt for them.

or sites, which offer free listings?

you mean just directories which accept free listing, as if so there are number of them, some worth to place listing and some don't.

[Menard]

I was just looking for directories or sites wit .edu or .gov domains which will link for free.

I was using a page strength analysis and two of the categories it turns out that they use in determining the potential of your site's ranking is whether or not you are linked to by any .gov or .edu domains.

Do you know anything about this?

[SensoVision]

some time ago I've read about artificially adjusted rank for .edu and .org(I think) domains but didn't remember anything about .gov
I'm not sure if .org domains are still affected by this rule anyway as they are widely used right now as for .edu it would be nice to know if it's truth or not, but I doubt that there are any clear evidence of this could be found.

I was using a page strength analysis and two of the categories it turns out that they use in determining the potential of your site's ranking is whether or not you are linked to by any .gov or .edu domains.

Do you refer to some program here?

Maybe someone else have more information on this question?

[Menard]

Here is the tool to which I was referring. Give it a try; it's free. Let me know what you think of the results.

[SensoVision]

very interesting tool, Bob, thanks for sharing it!
I've checked few sites and it seems that it use pretty interesting meta algo based on algorithms of other search engines, maybe they should build an search engine based on all this data?
Regarding .gov and .edu domains please note that they are looking for them on Yahoo and it's quite possible that Y! actually use such adjustment.

Anyway I still can't remember any sites with such domains offering free listing(I knew one with directory but it was listing university related sites only and I can't find it now )

[Manu]

mmmmmmmm....... Seomoz's page strength tool is becoming quite popular. Many of the seo's are considering it rather than pagerank to buy links. But, one should remember one thing that pagerank actually helps to decide your search rankings (some would disagree) while seomoz's page strength tool checks your google rankings to decide your page strength. But it is a good tool which can be used while buying links.

Returning to your question, I do not think there are any free directories with .gov or .edu links.

[Andy]

.gov are the best sites to get links from since they are the most difficult and trustworthy sites i.e. run by govenment departments to give information to the people of a country. .mil may be even better LOL Please tell me no one is selling a tool to get you listed on these sites 

I learn't about this ages ago after reading the Rich J erk's guide. See my big advertising banner for his great book on my site: http://internetincomeclub.com You are just starting to learn what this guy has practised for many years. Update: I got an update on his progress: http://www.therichjerk.com/site/proof

[Emily27]

How does one go about getting links from a .gov or an .edu site?

[Manu]

How does one go about getting links from a .gov or an .edu site?

There is simply no way to get .gov links IMO. You can only get them if you know the webmaster personally or your content/resource is as good that he/she decides to link back to you.

And .edu links - From the students.

[Menard]

mmmmmmmm....... Seomoz's page strength tool is becoming quite popular. Many of the seo's are considering it rather than pagerank to buy links. But, one should remember one thing that pagerank actually helps to decide your search rankings (some would disagree) while seomoz's page strength tool checks your google rankings to decide your page strength. But it is a good tool which can be used while buying links.

I am doubting some of the validity of the page strength checker.

It is using a social bookmarking site for one of its determinations. So, I went to that site, joined, and bookmarked some of my own sites. My page strength on one of those sites is now higher due to it picking up that link. That's just a little too easy to manipulate.

[Manu]

are you talking about http://del.icio.us/ Menard?

[Menard]

are you talking about http://del.icio.us/ Menard?

Yes.

[Manu]

I think they already admit that listing in del.icio.us is a factor. Also, it is based on reverse engineering. While a tool should determine the rank of a site in google, this tool eventually takes help from the site's google rankings to assign its page strength.

[Menard]

I think they already admit that listing in del.icio.us is a factor.

Uh, yeah, that was my point. They have an entry in the results page for the site, which is how I got the idea of joining and bookmarking with that site. It does not seem very valid to me that one bookmark on a site should increase your site's page strength. That seems like giving a single site too much weight in their determination factors. The one bookmark on a social bookmarking site might influence their ranking, but I doubt it is going to influence Google's opinion one way or another about one's site; or Yahoo; or MSN. So, what is the point of giving that much weight to a social bookmarking site? And does Technorati really have that much weight?

[Manu]

Uh, yeah, that was my point. They have an entry in the results page for the site, which is how I got the idea of joining and bookmarking with that site. It does not seem very valid to me that one bookmark on a site should increase your site's page strength. That seems like giving a single site too much weight in their determination factors. The one bookmark on a social bookmarking site might influence their ranking, but I doubt it is going to influence Google's opinion one way or another about one's site; or Yahoo; or MSN. So, what is the point of giving that much weight to a social bookmarking site? And does Technorati really have that much weight?

I agree with you menard that they should not have given weight to bookmark from a single website. But, as I can see the the popularity of a site in del.icio.us also matters other than just getting listed there. I think they should have considered results from all/imp social bookmarking sites. http://del.icio.us/ was some time ago acquired by Yahoo and some believe that popularity of a website in del.icio.us reflects in its ranking on yahoo search results. I am however not sure on this. There is another breed of search algorithm coming up in future in which search engines will rank sites with the help of the user IMO and social bookmarking sites can play their part in it. Wikipedia has also announced its new human powered search engine wikiseek. Technorati and social bookmarking sites are an estimate of what is hot, what is not happenings on the Internet. I think technorati helps in determining the Importance/Visibility of a website rather than seo weight.

[Menard]

Technorati and social bookmarking sites are an estimate of what is hot, what is not happenings on the Internet. I think technorati helps in determining the Importance/Visibility of a website rather than seo weight.

With Technorati, and other such sites, their entire focus is on blogs. Giving such sites more weight than what directories get (and directories will list most types of sites), IMO, creates an imbalance in judging the importance of a site. Many webmasters have their own personal sites filled with their ideas, favorite things, collections, etc,; what makes someone's overly long and boring random thoughts any more important? Content is important on the web and blogs are filled with content, as well are other sites, but bots can't distinguish between good and poor quality content, IMO.

[Andy]

Social bookmarking sites have a bias towards bloggers and journalists I suspect since ordinary surfers just use search engines to find sites. There is definately a social circle of people that revolve around the social bookmarking scene to generate traffic and ranking for their sites. I have used technorati tags myself since it does get your site link on the Technorati site very easily and quickly.

People that use popular blogging methods to publish to the web may have an advantage over personal site publishers that code their own sites since the personal site publishers may not be structuring their code in the best way to please the search engines. For example, blogs tend to liberally link out to relevant content on other sites, the navigation is automatically generated so all the pages link together without any broken links, rss feeds are automatically generated and the posts are time-stamped. Also, comments from readers can automatically add fresh original and related content.

I still like to think that it is better to make your own original sites though since you can streamline your code more than a blog and make it more unique. The main difficulty is maintaining the navigation structure as the site grows so all the pages are easily navigateable and found by search engines. I know that site maps can help but they should not really be necessary IMHO.

What is needed is easy and affordable web publishing tools that allow people to publish and maintain web sites as easily as posting to blogs.

[Menard]

I had not considered this possibility, but some .gov and .edu sites are running blogs as well and may allow someone to post a comment on the blog with a link included in their username.

One such blog is here: http://www.hawaii.gov/lrb/libblog/

The links are 'no follow', but at least it's a link.

Anybody else have any blogs on .gov or .edu domains they would like to share?

[Manu]

I know a directory on .edu

However, they charge for the link.

Pm me to know the url of the directory.

[Andy]

You could work a reverse strategy i.e. instead of trying to place a link on their site you could aim to get them linking to you.

For example, find a .edu or .gov site and support it's content in a way that may want them to link to your site as a useful resource for their readers. For example a guide to specialist schools. Once you have the resource site in place you could email the webmaster to ask them what they think about your site for example and suggest they may want to list it in their resource links.

One of my web pages got linked to from a Wikipedia editor who was using one of my online tools. Natural links like this are what Google likes best.

[Menard]

I found some more resources for getting both .gov and .edu links to your site.

The Library of Congress has its own blog: http://www.loc.gov/blog/

Doing a Google search for gov blog will bring up various blogs for senators and representatives as well.


My .edu blog: http://blogs.adison.edu/menard/

Okay, not a lot going on there right now, but keep it for reference.

The site has several blogs to which you can post with a link to your site; you can find several blogs here: http://blogs.adison.edu/

[Andy]

There is no Google PR on the http://blogs.adison.edu/ url. Are you sure it is a source of good traffic?

[Menard]

It was recently re-invigorated as a site, as the domain had been sitting dormant for a while. There has been a trade-off with other webmasters for links on sites and in forum sigs (check mine), which is how I got my blog. This is more of a source for getting a .edu backlink than for traffic, at this point. I don't have any idea what kind of rank is in the works for the domain, but the rate at which backlinks are growing for it is very good.