Search Engine Marketing Deep Dive – The Value of .Gov, .Edu, and .Org Top-Level Domain Inbound Links
Are links from .Gov, Edu. and .Org any more valuable than, say, a .com or .net? The answer is that it depends. Let’s take a specific example. Say you sell coffee table books. Now let’s say you have a choice of receiving an inbound link from either a small college home page with an .edu address that has a PR (PageRank) of 6, or an inbound link from Coffee Table Books International, an emerging expert in the field of coffee table books with a PR of 4.
While we all would like to have both, if I could choose only one I would choose the link from Coffee Table Books International. The conventional wisdom dictates that you should go after the big PR link and get all the power that link will bestow on your site. Why then go after the Coffee Table Books International link? The reason is two-fold. First, while the Google Juice from the college is no doubt a huge positive, it is not complementary to your line of business unless it is a page about coffee table books. Second, visitors to Coffee Table Books International are far more likely to become customers, advocates, or fans of your site than are visitors to the college.
See the below video from Seomoz.com that does a wonderful job of explaining the importance of links.
SEOmoz Linkscape Education – Link Attributes.
