.gov Links Are A Ranking Factor Or Not?
Links are just like the currency of the website. They give many benefits to website owners. If you use many links on your site, it says many things about your site like trustworthiness, relevance to specific topics and regions, and your associations. By linking trustworthy and high authority sites to your website, you can get even more benefits. There is a belief that .gov links are the most valuable link and they directly affect organic rankings. Therefore some people tend to sell .gov links. What do you think, .gov links are a ranking factor or not?
The Claim for .gov Links are a Ranking Factor
Government websites publish useful information like financial information, health information, statics and reports, special announcements, and so on. Before publishing them, the government does checks and balances to make sure to publish correct information. And also they always try to make quality information. Much funding are going to government communication and publishing to make it works.
Therefore not only people but also search engines believe government sites are trustworthy sites. These contents are widely shared by social media users, mainstream media, and some organizations. If a government site links to your site it means they trust you. It gives you more benefits than building links with some bloggers or nonprofit local sites.
The Evidence For .gov Links are a Ranking Factor
People tend to believe that .gov links are a ranking factor and they are valuable. What they think about it,
- “You can increase your trust rating by having trusted and reputable websites, like academic learning websites and government, link back to your own site”
- “These backlinks will boost your site’s authority and Google Ranks because of the extremely high authority of the.edu and.gov sites.”
- “These links give your website ranking signal. Your domain authority is improved by links from sites with high authority like these.”
You can be confirmed that .gov links are a ranking factor by looking at such evidence s. Don’t be hurry to make a final decision. Look at the sources before it.
The Evidence Against .gov Links are a Ranking Factor
The opinion of .gov links are a ranking factor has been disproved many times. Let’s go way back to 2008. Google’s Matt Cutt has said,
”According to our policies, a link is a link. People want to know what is the worthiest link from .gov or links from .edu or links from DMOZ. They always ask questions like ‘ would these links boost organic rankings?’ , ‘is links come from .edu better’. The answer is no. It doesn’t. .gov or .edu sites tend to get higher ranks. It’s because many people link to those sites.”
The first thing you should determine about any given link is not its domain authority or any other metric. It is logical for this entity to link to this specific piece of content the that matters most. For example, would the US department of agriculture link to a post about the benefits of various faucet types written by a plumbing company? That’s wouldn’t be for sure.
If you are thinking to chase nonsensical links just for a second, look at the below explanation.
Final thoughts
Links are links. It doesn’t matter which links are them. Links a Google ranking factor. If you are thinking .gov links are more powerful and different or they will impact organic rankings than other links, you are totally wrong. All kinds of links are the same and impact ranking on the same way. Google has many ranking factors to consider. Therefore don’t waste your time for this. Try to make quality, reliable, trustworthy and autoreactive sites instead.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do you know if a site is government?
Genuine government websites can be found at gov.in. Before engaging in any financial transactions or sharing your personal information, you need to verify credentials of other websites with extensions of “. in” or “. org” that pretend to be official government websites.
Are all .gov sites government?
A. gov domain can only be obtained by public sector and government organizations with a U.S. base. Any federal, state, local, or territorial government agency or other publicly managed organization falls under this category. Any tribal government acknowledged by the federal government or a state government is also included.
Can a private company use gov domain?
Only government organizations are permitted to use the domain name gov. Government organizations’ use this domain to communicate with the people. Any private person, business or companies cannot use this domain gov.
https://home.dotgov.gov/registration/requirements-retired/
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ranking-factors/gov-links/
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