EDU Links to my Site Never Show in Webmaster Tools

[gundogs]

I have legit links from about a dozen .EDU sites. We do training for Universities. The links never show up in webmaster tools "Links to Your Site' and considering how many we have its amazing our rankings aren't better. It's almost as if google is ignoring them. Any thoughts?

[KristinaKledzik]

Hmm, a main menu link is usually great. Have you double checked to make sure those links are in HTML, so Google can read them?

[KristinaKledzik]

Hi there,

There are a lot of components to your question, so I'm going to answer each as thoroughly as I can. Apologies if I say something that you already know (which will probably be a lot of this, since I'm trying to be thorough).

Why aren't my links showing up in GWT/Search Console?

There are some things to note about GWT/Search Console:

• Links only show up for the exact domain that you're looking at in GWT: that means that you should have 4 profiles for one site: http://www.site.com, http://site.com, https://www.site.com, https://site.com
• Links take awhile to show up, so if these are new links, you might just have to wait (although it doesn't seem like this is the case for you)
• I and many other SEOs are fairly certain that GWT is much, much dumber than actual Google. I have links from pages displaying ads show up in GWT as if they're actual links, and I'm sure Google's ranking algorithm does not see this. If links don't show up in GWT, check in other ways to make sure they're being counted in Google's ranking algorithm.

Which links are counting for Google's ranking algorithm?

If you read through Matt's post, he shows you how you can use tools to find which links should be passing value to your site. If you only have one or two links that you want to check, I like to follow these steps, to really see what Google sees:

1. Search for the page that should be linking to your site. If it's not indexed, end of story, it doesn't count, or it's hurting you.
2. Open the cached version of the page. You can do this by clicking on the upside down triangle to the right of the green URL in search results, and clicking "Cached". You can also do this by searching for "cache:[url]". If you use a browser that has a URL bar that doubles as a browser, this can be really quick, if you just add "cache:" in front of the URL of the page you're already on.
3. At the top of the cached version of the page, you'll see a Text Only option. Click on that. Search for your link. You might need to view the source for this, if you don't know the anchor text that's used. If you can find the link, there's a good chance that Google can, too.
4. Double check that the link isn't nofollowed, and is a correct, direct link.

Why aren't I ranking when I have better inbound links?

Inbound links, while incredibly important, are not the be-all end-all to SEO. If you're not ranking as well as you think you should be, check these things:

• Is my page as relevant to the search query as the page ahead of me? Relevancy can have a huge impact, especially when competing sites have a similar number of backlinks. I would determine relevancy by: is the search query in my page title as well as my competitor's? Do I use the keyword on my page as often as my competitor? Do I use the keyword on my site as often as my competitor? Do I have the keyword in anchor text in links to my page as often as my competitor?
• _Do I have as many links to the ranking page as my competitor? _Google definitely looks at the strength of the entire domain for rankings, but links to the relevant page are much more powerful.
• _Do I have a domain that's as strong as my competitor's? _To the opposite point, if you have 10 links to your page, and your competitor has 5, but they have a DA of 60 and you're DA 50, they may still win.
• _Has this competitor been around longer / been ranking for this term longer than I have? _Historical ranking definitely plays a factor in SEO. That doesn't mean it can't be overcome, but expect it to take more links than your competitor has to outrank them. It can sometimes take twice as many links as the #1 result to claim that spot.

I know this is probably more info than you needed, but I'm not sure why you feel that you're not ranking where you should be, so I wanted to share my methods so you can tell me where you have questions, or where you disagree.

Let me know your thoughts!

Kristina

[KristinaKledzik]

Yeah, the 301ing could be creating an issue. Google Webmaster Tools really isn't good at following through redirect paths. After hearing that, and reading everything that Matt researched, it's probably worth reaching out to your .edu partners and asking them to update their links to the proper URL for your site (including if it's https now!).

Also, forgive me if I just missed your answer, but have you set up an https profile of your site in Google Webmaster Tools? Google absolutely distinguishes between the two - my site upgraded about a year ago, and I watched traffic drop in one and jump in the other. I keep both now to monitor inbound links that are to either. It's worthwhile creating a profile with and without www as well.

[gundogs]

Yep....which brings us full circle to my original question. Not sure why "You should see some of the remaining 15 in Search Console though. Not sure why you aren't seeing as many are older links."

It's frustrating because most sites ranking above me for certain keywords have crappy links and zero edu/gov links. I have to be missing something. I ran all the tools that others have recommended on this thread and, other an missing alt tags, I don't see any issues.

The only thing I can think of that some of these links point to pages that are 301 to new pages. We migrated from ASP classic to .Net so pages had to be renamed but we went through the process of doing the 301 correctly and notifying google via sitemaps.

[gundogs]

Thanks but these aren't training events. It part of the on-going curriculum and have been on department homepage for years. Many of the links are even part of the departments main menu.

[EGOL]

I used to be a university webmaster and can tell you that pages for "training events" are of temporary usefulness.  After the training event, links to the page used to market your event are removed and replaced by links to future events.  Often they have a "training calendar" page or a "what's happening on campus" page that is used for "August 2015 events" and then unlinked from the main website in September.

After the event is over these defunct training pages might still exist on the university server but they are orphan pages that have no links pointing at them.  Eventually, search engines will forget about them and drop them from the index.

So, these links have value that evaporate as the event becomes history.

[MattAntonino]

Tulane.edu, tulane.net, tulane.org & about 15 other sites link to the non-www version.
Worcester, ETSU & AIC (along with 3-4 others) link to https version

Also:
etsu.edu/crhs/aslp/audiology/resources/default.aspx is 404
lakeerie.edu has https issues of their own so the page is missing

In my full look I saw 145 edu links to your site. Of these, hastingscenter looked like it was removed. That leaves 132 unique EDU links.

Of the 132, 108 are not indexed according to SEOTools.
Of the remaining 24, 9 are Worcester, Tulane or AIC.

Accounting for duplicates I see ODU, Setonhill, HamptonU, Pihma, mmm.edu, stanbridge, ccac, lec.edu and lakeerie.edu that should be in Search Console.

You should see some of the remaining 15 in Search Console though. Not sure why you aren't seeing as many are older links.

[gundogs]

Thanks. I think you're probably right. I have had 2-3 audits done and they usually come back with the same canned responses I could have gotten myself using the free tools. Never really helpful.

[gundogs]

Interesting because we just switched to https last week and I don't see any of the EDU links pointing to https since it didn't exist. Where are you seeing that at and which link?

[gundogs]

Thanks. All our links from EDU sites appear directly on medical department pages for universities. We handle all their regulatory training. It's listed within their curriculum so you can't really get more relevant.

[MattAntonino]

A lot of the links you have from .edu sites are linking to the https version of your site. You link to the http version in your profile. When you're looking in search console, which version are you looking at?

I was able to find the links in both Majestic and Ahrefs but many are https ... they may not show up in your link profile if you've only claimed the non-S versions. (I've seen stranger things in Search Console.)

I doubt Google is ignoring them but it may not be displaying all. They don't always show you everything they have and I always take SC links to be more of a representative example than a full collection.

[cbielich]

"and considering how many we have it's amazing our rankings aren't better"

I think you may be in the wrong mindset in all this

Remember that Google determines the quality of the backlink from the quality of the site. That can be determined to the reputation of the entire site or the page itself. Just look at JC Penny and it's faults. They are a VERY reputable company and they still screwed up.

Honestly whether it's a .edu, .gov or whatever else it may be coming from Google doesn't care, it only cares about the quality.

Just because you have a ton of links from a .edu really doesn't mean jack squat (TBH).

My .edu links never show up in my Google Webmaster Tools

Who knows, that could be for many reasons, it does not necessarily mean that Google does not already know about them and are not considering them.

Hope that helps

[MoosaHemani]

I would advise checking your link profile in ahrefs.com or Mozscape and see if those websites are appearing. If yes then this is not a big problem sooner or later Google will add them in the index. But if you don’t find in Ahfres.com this might be a problem.

Again why rankings aren’t getting better have to do with quite a few things which includes your website content, technical issues, 404 pages, redirections, duplicate content and more!

My advice is to ask someone to do a website audit and see where the problem is so that you can fix things accordingly.

Hope this helps!

[Alick300]

Hi,

Did you  check them in open site explorer or majestic seo or Hrefs? unfortunately Google doesn't show all its links.It can take a while for new links to be found by Google.  They say it can take a couple of weeks but I've seen links that took months to be found.

Hope this helps.

Thanks