Want to make a difference in the community and boost SEO at the same time?

Look no further than scholarship link building. The basic idea is that you provide a pot of money to fund a student scholarship which gets you a high-quality link on a prized ‘.edu’ domain. The amount of money doesn’t have to be huge and the return on your investment in an increase in domain authority as well as referral traffic can be substantial.

Here’s an example of scholarship links from the University of Wisconsin website:

When done properly, scholarship link building is a great way to increase your search ranking. Let’s take a look at how it can enhance SEO and bring other benefits too.

1. Generate high-authority links

The Google search algorithm gives priority to sites that are referenced in links from well-respected and high-traffic websites. University and college websites definitely tick the right boxes to achieve this. That’s why links from the top ‘.edu’ site are so highly-prized. When an inbound link is directed to your site on a .edu page, a small amount of their domain authority will be passed on to you, meaning your page has the potential to appear higher in Google’s search results.

Having said that, you can’t just expect to create a small, meaningless scholarship, send out a link and expect results straight away. Authenticity cannot be underestimated, so make sure to sponsor majors that are relevant to your business – a law firm should be linked to a law school for instance. When you make a scholarship offer to a university or college don’t make it obvious that you are looking for a direct link from their website.

2. Creates user-generated content on your website

User-generated content, i.e. comments and posts from visitors, is another factor in Google’s algorithms. It shows engagement with readers and demonstrates that you have good content. Getting this kind of interaction is normally quite difficult, there are millions of blog posts out there with zero comments.

Scholarship pages are different, there will be plenty of interest and people are likely to have lots of questions which you can encourage them to ask in the comments section. Result? Instant SEO boost. As a side-effect you may well get more social-media visibility as students are more likely to share the opportunity via their social media.

3. Increases trust in your brand

People are naturally suspicious of websites and companies that market themselves over the internet, especially ones they haven’t used before. Trust is a big factor in turning prospects into customers. Scholarship links help in two ways. Firstly they boost SEO and companies that appear higher in Google’s search results are seen as more trustworthy. Secondly, companies that sponsor a scholarship are viewed as well-established, reliable and more socially responsible.

4. Boosts long-term organic and total traffic

Research shows that overall traffic increases, not just for the scholarship period, but over the longer-term too. Secondary links are likely to appear on other sites, creating even more referral traffic.

Also, there is often a snowball effect with SEO – as your site rises in the search results and becomes more visible, your ranking continues to improve exponentially.

Scholarship links – SEO and more

To summarize – running a scholarship link building campaign will almost certainly give you a search ranking boost when used alongside other advanced SEO techniques.

You will also get a number of other benefits including building a positive brand image and increased visibility