How to Register a .EDU Domain and Why EDU Backlinks are Important for SEO?

Ever wondered how the .edu domains are registered online? And what is a .EDU Domain, and how does it help build online authority? In this article, I will explain how you can register a .edu domain and why, as a blogger & marketer, you should seek more .edu backlinks than any others.

.Edu Domain

.edu domain is one of the seven highly professional top-level domains (TLDs) made in the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS). ".EDU" is the short form of "education."

It was specifically for the United States educational and academic institutions such as colleges, universities, or other research institutions in the educational field.

The .edu domain was first used in early 1985, and at that time, only 6 universities were initially registered with that domain name. In this article, we will talk about how to register a .edu domain name and the requirements for getting a .edu domain. We will also discuss the Importance of EDU Backlinks for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

.EDU Domain Registration

The .edu domain ending has been restricted since 2001 to "post-secondary institutions in the United States that are institutionally accredited". It includes the institutes that are fully authorized and licensed by the United States Department of Education, like national and international schools nationally acknowledged.

Note that .EDU domain is not restricted to U.S. educational institutes only, and one needs to be approved as a Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agency to get a .edu domain name.

If you are not a United States resident or an institute that belongs to the states but are institutionally accredited by any one of the U.S. Nationally Recognized Accrediting Agencies. Then, you are eligible to apply for the .edu domain as you meet the U.S. institution qualifications. Then, you can contact edu@educause.edu and possibly get a .edu domain for yourself.

This .edu domain is not readily available to most institutes. Even popular and legit educational platforms like Coursera or ByJUS do not have access to .edu. So, while top educational institutes like Princeton or Harvard do have a .edu domain, It is pretty hard to easily get it and use it.

Also, there are no good alternatives to .edu, but some institutes may use .org, but the problem is that it is too vague. Moreover, .org is used by various organizations, be it NGOs, educational institutes, or companies. Thus, it is not suitable to be used for an academic institution. It mainly was the case back in the days, but from 2015, many great alternatives to .edu have popped up. One of the newest and best keyword domain examples is .degree. It costs ~65 Euros for complete one-year registration.

You can also use .university for universities as the Technological University of America is already using it. They have rebranded themselves as the university. Many other similar institutions redirect their .university domain to their official website, which costs around 75 euros for a full one-year registration.

Apart from .university, another popular domain name for educational websites is .academy. Few known websites using the domain are marketingdigital.academy, juniorprimegolf.academy and the school of hotel management sims.academy. The registration price for these is relatively low, and you only need to pay 50 euros for 1 year of registration.

Educational websites can also use .education. Educational websites mostly prefer it, be it a large-scale institute or not. .education is even cheaper, with only 35 euros for a full one-year registration.

But these are not all, .college, .school, .courses,.mba and more like these have already come out and people are using them. With all the varieties and options to choose from, you do not specifically need to depend upon the .edu domain. You may get even better domain names that suit your needs far better and describe your educational program far better.

What is a Backlink?

For those of you who are not aware of what backlinks are - these are known as "inbound." Or "incoming" or "one-way links" links. Backlinks link one website to another website. It means that if website A provides a backlink for website B, then you can only go from A to B, but B does not do the same for A.

So, why do we need backlinks or why are they so important?

Backlinks are of high importance, and anyone who understands how SEO works knows the importance of backlinks. Backlinks tell any search engine that another resource or website finds the content of any website useful or valuable, so much that they have referred to their website. The higher the number of backlinks pointed to a particular website, the greater is their value to a search engine. Thus, backlinks help to optimize the search engine value of any website.

But, over time, many websites may backlink to your website - be it big or small. So, do all of these backlinks matter equally? If not, which ones are most needed for your website? To put it simply, yes, all backlinks are desirable but all or not equally effective. Some backlinks have more value than others.

It mainly depends on the popularity and the type of platforms that provide the backlinks. If an already popular website and known brand provide you with backlinks, that means a massive advantage for your website.

So, it is clear that backlinks are highly effective and essential for SEO (search engine optimization) and SERP (search engine results page) ranking. Search engines use complex algorithms to figure out the page ranks. Search engines then look through your website content to gather more information and check for backlinks. Only then, it decide on the page rank. So, in short - "The more the backlinks, the better the SEO and SERP rank."

We have already talked about popular sites' backlinks having better value regarding which backlinks are better than others. But another thing that tells search engines the value of a backlink is the website's domain name that backlinked your website. And such an important domain name is .edu (.education).

Importance of EDU Backlinks for SEO

.edu backlinks are highly crucial for SEO (search engine optimization). Search engines highly prefer a .edu backlink. Getting a backlink from a .edu webpage increases your website page authority by leaps and bounds and gives you a higher ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). It is also noteworthy that getting a single backlink from a website with a .edu domain is far better than getting numerous backlinks from multiple sites with .com or .net backlinks.

As noted by nominus.com, it is this way since .edu websites are already hard to attain, in addition to the fact that the page belongs to a nationally recognized and approved educational institute. Search engines in general and especially Google will automatically conclude that your site content is of high importance when it finds your site's backlink listed on a .edu website. Google thinks of these websites as official websites that already link a few websites and never link to any useless and unimportant webpage. Thus, your page rank will skyrocket after getting a backlink from a .edu website.

Conclusion

Over time, many more alternatives have been introduced that can be used instead of .edu. So the question "How to Register a . EDU Domain ?" is not that necessary today. Furthermore, one does not necessarily need to get approved for a .edu as more specific alternatives are available. But, the importance of a .edu website remains supreme today. Those websites are essential to search engines, and .edu backlinks are worth far more than .academy, .education, or .courses backlinks.