Finding good quality backlinks is difficult in this day and age.

It may be tempting just to load up a cheap backlinking tool and let it plug away at link building, but any link that is easy to get probably isn’t worth its weight in salt.

Similarly, if there was an algorithm update, chances are high that you may be affected from it negatively.

Here are a few methods for finding the kind of backlinks you need. The first few are aimed at finding high quality .edu comments and the rest are a few less common tips to getting onto high-quality sites!

1. Find Open Comments

This method is a bit more common than the other ones we are going to dive into, and for that reason may not always deliver the top quality links (although they will still be better than most non-edu links), and the advantage of this method is you can nearly always find something to suit your need with no cost involved too you.

For this method, you are going to use the Google search engine to search for blogs, and forums hosted on .gov/.edu domains that are open for registration or allow comments. Here are the search strings you need to use to find these lists:

Blogs:

• site:.gov “add comment” OR “post comment” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”
• site:.edu “add comment” OR “post comment” “ADD YOUR KEYWORD”

Forums:

• site:.gov “powered by vbulletin” OR “powered by Phpbb”
• site:.edu “powered by vbulletin” OR “Powered by phpbb”

It’s also important to note that the bulk of the sites you find will be moderated comments, take a second to glance over the article and try and make your comment somewhat related to the topic to drastically increase the chance of your link getting approved. The last thing you want to do is spend your time building links that never appear!

2 (i) Student Blogs: Hire a Student

This one falls into a bit of a grey area when it comes to internet marketing, it is against the rules to buy links for your website, however, it is not against Google’s terms of service to hire someone who has the ability to create a .edu blog for you.

Most students in the US have access to student pages, student classifieds, student blogs/forums where for a few dollars worth of beer money they’d be more than happy to post your link and even write some content around it.

Perhaps your thinking “Hey I don’t know any college students”, but I doubt you need to look much further than places like Reddit or Craiglist and be willing to drop a couple of dollars to find a student who would be happy to champion your cause.

2 (ii) Student Classifieds

In this case, you are not actually looking to hire a student, but many college campuses across the US have Help Wanted classified sections on their website.

Unlike the student blogs, these are not open access and are likely on the main domain (not a sub-domain) meaning that have even more value. If you have a project you wish to outsource, or a job posting to fill spend a few dollars posting it on a campus website.

Not only might you find the right candidate but you will get a powerful backlink at the same time!

3. Article Directories

Perhaps the strongest method for building out this particular type of backlink is various content directories (HubPages, Squidoo, RedGage, Suite101, etc).

Due to the size and well established authority of these sites you can expect a great deal of extra value being passed through to your website, also unlike web 2.0 properties content directories allow you control over the various data aspects that are required to make your backlink really pack a punch (i.e. control over file name and outgoing link destination). Other websites simply fail to give you the same in-depth control potential for your link.

Of course, the other crucial impact of an article directory is the traffic. Article directories are already flooded with real visitors, real engaged users each day who are actively seeking for your content. Nowhere else will you get such targeted readership while simply backlink building.

4. Postjoint

Another great way to get white-hat links is to guest post on Postjoint.com by writing your articles and posting them for submission various bloggers and webmasters can post them to their site, and you are allowed up to two backlinks per article.

Some of the bloggers do request a small fee for the blog posting but more often than not you’ll find it worth it, especially since you can sort bloggers by PR, Alexa ranking and Klout!

5. Contests

Last but not least a great way to get authoritative backlinks is to hold unique local contests.

Perhaps you’re a company that specializes in video production, why not host a contest that challenges young entrepreneurs in the region to make the worst possible commercial and the winner gets some of your services free.

Not only is it a great chance to promote your business but the story will be picked up by local news outlets as well as niche related blogs getting you authoritative backlinks from a diversity of local niche sites.

Conclusion:

2021 and SEO have become tougher, and the only way to rank well in Google is to find the best sources of links.

Getting high quality, manual links are the best way in order to achieve the positive rankings you desire, in search engines, like Google.

If you have already started by building poor links, you can check out the disavow tool and make a wise decision. I know several people who used this tool to remove away their bad links and their rankings had slowly climbed back up to its starting position.