Link building for local SEO has one major challenge – majority of the websites that a business can be linked to are not link worthy, mostly because they are small business sites that lack the resources to create consistent, high quality content that earns links and distinguishes them as high authority sites.
However, local small businesses mostly focus on securing a few local directory links, meaning that securing an edu link can place you above the rest of your local competitors, particularly in less competitive fields.
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Best Local Link Building Strategy
Scholarship link building is a respected strategy, because a business can secure high quality, high authority backlinks. However, remember that this is not a strategy that you can execute in a sitting and be done with it – it requires an investment on your time, resources and the desire to genuinely add value to the community through a high quality scholarship program.
Scholarship edu link building strategy has been widely applied, but most people do it sloppily, just to earn links, which means the true value of the strategy is never realized. If you want to earn true value, you need to be methodical about your execution, and here’s how to do that.
Getting started
The first step is to defined the parameters of the scholarship: how much, for how many winners, basis of award, qualification criteria, contact information, duration and repeatability of scholarship, application process, disbursement process and the privacy policy and disclaimers.
Once you’ve decided all the details, create a page with all this information on your site, which is the page that universities and colleges will direct interested parties to.
Be creative
Having created the page, invest in a designer who will create a supplement scholarship overview which will be attached to your outreach communications. This will probably be a brochure. Have it well designed and professional-looking, which says that you’re serious about the scholarship program, and hence win the trust of those you’re reaching to.
Identifying opportunities
Your prospecting efforts will depend on the nature of the scholarship you’re offering. Look for opportunities within your location using the following filter in Google Search:
[city/county/town] [institution type] intitle:scholarships
The institution can be high school, college, university or trade school depending on the target beneficiaries. You can take it a step further and search for specific programs where the scholarship is tied to a particular industry e.g. law school, art school or business school. Depending on your capabilities, you can also offer a national scholarship.
Outreach
You should have a tracking document, such as a spreadsheet where you’ll maintain details about the status of your outreach plan. A few columns that you can include for instance may be School, URL, name of contact person, email of contact, position or contact, outreach date, follow-up date(s), comments/notes and links earned.
You might also like to maintain a list of live links, dead ends and other details that are important. Look at schools’ sites to find out whether they post external scholarships. If they’re in your locality, you can also make a visit there. If too far, send an email to find out who to contact in connection with outside scholarships.
Draft your outreach email and include a PDF file of the designed brochure or other write-up about the scholarship. Be sure to include a direct link to your scholarship page. If they haven’t responded in a couple of weeks, send a follow-up email, but first check to see if the scholarship has already been published.
Keep prospecting and reaching out to new opportunities as and when they arise.
Author Bio: Vinod Jethwani is the CEO and Founder of Walnut Solutions and he helps web based companies with his SEO strategies to grown their revenue. He started his career in 2007 as a software developer with an Indian based MNC and later in 2011 became an entrepreneur. Follow him on Twitter @VinodJethwani
