Creating A Scholarship For SEO
-
My client is a Law Firm just outside of Tampa, and I am trying to get her keyword phrase: "Tampa Car Accident Attorney" in the top 3. One of the strategies I want to use is to create a scholarship for "Tampa Area Students and how a car accident impacted their life" or "Tampa Area Students and how they think they can decrease car accidents." (that's still be worked on). Once the scholarship is created, I want to put it on our Tampa Car Accident Attorney page, and get other companies to link to that page.
My question is what links should we go after? Because that will tailor it to who we give the scholarship to. We could give it to a University of South Florida student, and get one .edu link. We could do the same thing for the University of Tampa, or Stetson Law School, but we'd only be getting one link from each of them.
If we set it up for high schoolers, we can get more links from the community and schools, but I'm not sure high school .edu links matter all that much. Is 10 high school .edu links as important as 1 college .edu link? I don't know. If anyone has had an experience with this or any insights, I'd greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
-
lol.... Something like that might get fantastic action if it is on one of the big newspaper sites.
-
I'm surprised as well.
I was thinking that creating PR release about how "I can't give away $25K" might get the fire started.
-
TheDude: Thanks for sharing this information. Sorry that this has not worked as expected.
I am surprised that the spectacular prize has not produced a spectacular impact. Really puzzling when free money isn't like throwing gasoline on a fire.
Good luck.
-
EGOL, I had the same mindset when creating our scholarship program (see: http://www.jwsuretybonds.com/scholarship/). I figured the $25,000 prize and allowing anyone going to an accredited U.S. school would take care of it self.
We still decided to play it safe and have an internal resource reach out to universities and scholarship sites to get the seed started. We started this in the beginning of the year and here is what we've found...
- Sometimes a spectacular prize is something perceive as too good to be true. This goes for the universities and students alike.
- Universities WILL link to you, but you need to search out the ones that do.
- Universities are AWFUL at letting their students know about scholarship resources. If you want a lot of entries, it appears www.fastweb.com is by far the best resource. We now get about 1,000 hits a day from FastWeb (just got listed 2 weeks ago) and are only now beginning to see entries pick up.
I'd like to do this every year, but in order to justify it we need more qualified entries and **a lot more buzz. **
In our experience, the spectacular prize did not care of things like you and I presumed. Our internal resource is still working hard to spread the word.
-
You can get links from many colleges and universities, but the process is time consuming. Make sure that you (or your client) is administering the scholarship, and not another organization. Most schools will have an "External Awards" page and you can get links. Typically the administrators in the Financial Services/Awards are the ones who can get results, but I have found that they need to be approached individually, and the content of the emails tailored to them and their school.
Additionally, if your award is geared toward a certain segment of the student population, look at faculty or department sites as well as clubs or organizations for awards pages or blogs as well.
-
Most universities are going to list the scholarship on a page of their website that contains information about the scholarship and other related scholarships. They might say that the scholarship is funded by a specific company but if you think that you are getting a link out of it that is being presumptuous. They are probably NOT going to link to you. Look at their scholarship pages. My bet is they are NOT linking out.
So, if you want the scholarship to get big buzz it better be a really big prize and your website needs to be the exclusive source of the full details about who is qualified to receive it, how to apply, and if it is awarded on the basis of competition or merit, how the winner of the scholarship will be determined.
How much should the prize be? Before I answer, I will say that you should be in this for helping people more than for SEO. I'd start at $5,000 or more. With a new prize awarded each year. You can get a bit buzz with a scholarship of that size. You will get zero buzz with a $500 scholarship.
-
I haven't done it yet, because I still don't know how best to approach it. Here are the options that I know of in my area (Tampa, Florida). If I go through one of the universities in the area, they will setup the scholarship for us free. So, there's no time, money or effort expended other than stroking a check. However, they only want the scholarship to go to one of their students (makes sense). So we will only get one link out of that, even if it is an .edu link.
On the other hand, if we do it for say "aspiring women professionals," then we can get market it to all the various women's clubs in the area, youth groups, churches, etc. So before we pull the trigger, I am trying to decide is it better to get 1 .edu link or a bunch of other links. I was hoping someone had some experience or studies on this I could look at, but so far I have not got anything conclusive.
-
Awesome post! I'm also thinking of launching a scholarship program for business management and marketing students. Not sure how to approach colleges and universities. Were you able to get any .EDU links from yours?
-
It sounds like you are prepared to spend a ton of money on engineering and promotion. I would instead put all of that money into making the prize a spectacular amount. Not $500, not $5000... but spectacular. The promotion will take care of itself. Consider opening the contest to a very broad geographic area - line the northern hemisphere. Get permission to publish the essays. Now you have what you need.
Substance will defeat SEO.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does redirected traffic still contribute to SEO?
My company recently rebranded with a new website (and comparatively lower authority). We've built a bunch of backlinks for our old website, which now redirect to the new one, and I was wondering if these still contribute to SEO? Is there a difference in the SEO effect of a direct link versus a redirected one?
Link Building | | Russell_Chua0 -
Citation, Google Plus and SEO questions
Hi, I have a website www.gemslearninginstitute.com. We offer different after school programs for kids located in Canada. I have a very basic knowledge of SEO. I have a few questions. Just wondering if someone can please help me. We offer UCMAS Mental Math Program, Tutoring and Chess School/Coaching and runs a Chess Club. I would like to boost my google ranking and get more local traffic. 1- My citation is not consistent. Which program should I use to correct the citation and delete duplicate or inconsistent listing automatically. 2 - Should I do the citation with my company name only “GEMS Learning Institute” or Should I do like this “GEMS learning Institute – UCMAS-Tutoring-Chess”. Which one is better? 3- Right now I have two different google plus business pages. One with the name of “GEMS Learning Institute” and the second one is UCMAS. Should I have only one page as GEMS and delete the UCMAS. 4- I am not sure how to check if my site is penalized by google. 5- How can I measure things which are working on not? Can you please recommend next steps should I take after doing citation to improve the ranking? Thanks in advance and appreciate help.
Link Building | | fslpso0 -
Is it Good For seo?
After Create i backlink use google add url tool to index the backlink url in google . is this method is good for seo
Link Building | | watchwrestling0 -
Where Do I Post to Hire SEO Experts
I am looking to hire an expert link builder who specializes in building very high-quality links and creating content that attracts links. There used to be a board on the site to post this to, but I cant find it anymore. What is the best way to find qualified SEO experts who are mozzers?
Link Building | | gametv0 -
SEO in multiple languages
I'm doing SEO for an apartment rental web-site. We have one web-site for each destination. And for some (popular) destinations we have a separate domain for some languages. For instance: http://www.barcelonacheckin.com/en for English and http://www.barcelonacheckin.com/fr for French In another destination we have http://costabrava-ok-apartment.com/en for English and http://www.location-costabrava.fr/ for French. We have good result with the separate domains for languages. But I'm facing two problems: We do not get any progress in the ranks in English in any Web-site There's a lot written about SEO in English and there are many opportunities to build relevant links. But we are out of sources for eg. French. Our SEO routine exists of participating in forums on famous travel web-sites, guest post exchange with our blogs, link exchange and presence in Social media. Can anybody give us some suggestions?
Link Building | | jereprieto0 -
What are the best SEO agencies for link building?
I am not looking for a full service SEO agency. I just want link building. Not paid links, not link networks, not blog comments, not bookmarks...real, legit, decent links. Does anyone have any experience working with an SEO agency that helped them develop their link profile positively and at a reasonable price? I'm willing to pay for the service, I just want to work with someone who won't buy links or send a bunch of spam our way. If anyone has worked with such an agency, please let me know so I can contact them for more info. Thanks!
Link Building | | DanDeceuster0 -
Blackhat SEO firm had more success than whitehat me
I’ve been link building for a small online store. Before I took over their SEO, they hired a company who got them lots of spammy links over a 12 month contract. The spammy links didn't seem to improve or hurt rankings on their main keywords but general search traffic has almost doubled. Now I’m doing whitehat SEO for them and getting links through emailing bloggers and giving them reasons to link to us. Over 2 months (amongst over things) I’ve obtained links from around 35 websites, mostly PR 3 – 4 with a few up to PR 7. On my own website, a couple of links like this would produce a noticeable effect in the rankings, but I can’t seem to budge the ranks for this website. I’m concerned that they might just want to go back to their old SEO firm for more spam links. Am I doing the right thing? Am I getting links quick enough and how can I argue the case for whitehat if they’re getting more noticeable results from blackhat?
Link Building | | davidtube0 -
Article spinning - is it a spam or legitimate way to build SEO
I am being told by one SEO company that article spinning is the best way to achieve best rank on google. They use software that modifies articles and then submit them into lots of blogs and directories. I am worried that this is not a good long term strategy vs manually writing articles and put them into directiries
Link Building | | bfurman0