Link value personal pages on .edu

[ChristopherGlaeser]

Many .edu colleges and universities provide students and alum a free hosting service.  Here's an example:

http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson/homepage.shtml

According to SEOmoz bar, the PA=53 and DA=94.  What is the banklink value from a page like this?  Surely this is not the same as a backlink from www.wisc.edu, is it?

Best,
Christopher

[Francisco_Meza]

Normally I would only look at the PR of the page, not so much at the domain. The reason is some pages are much stronger than others. A PA 53 sounds like a good page to get a link from. I haven't followed up too much on link building strategies lately, but I think the PA is divided by the number of external links. In this case the link juice would be diminishing as more links are on the page.

[RyanKent]

There are many factors involved when evaluating a link from a page. The fact the site is an .edu itself has no bearing at all on the value of the link. The dwilson student page has a total of 3 earned links which appear to be legitimate so it's PA of 53 seems authentic. Clearly the wisc.edu home page with a PA of 95 is much stronger and more desirable in comparison.

Other factors involved include the location of the link (in content, in the footer, etc.) and the relevancy of the linking page to your site.

A question I always ask when acquiring a link: if search engines did not exist, would you pursue this link? If the answer is yes, then go for it. If the answer is no, I would not recommend expending any effort on the link.