A government backlink is a link from a federal, state, or local government site that points back to your site. Official government sites can be recognized by the .gov extension in their URL, a top-level domain that is reserved exclusively for United States government organizations.
Back in the day of early search engine optimization (SEO), government or .gov backlinks were the holy grail of link building. Today, their value is hard to quantify without providing the full context of the acquired .gov backlink, its relation to your site, and the wider umbrella of your link building methodology.
We’ve identified 10 major factors that contribute to the current value of a .gov backlink, including:
- The domain authority (DA) of the .gov site—a higher DA means the site has more SEO weight due to its domain age, industry relevance, and continuous trustworthiness
- The DA of your site—a higher DA means .gov sites will be more willing to link out to your site
- Whether the .gov backlink represents a federal, state, or local government institution—federal sites are at the top of the governmental hierarchy, followed by state and local government sites; backlinks from federal agencies like NASA provide the best SEO endorsement you can get from a .gov backlink
- The contextuality of the .gov backlink—or its relevance regarding the niche, page, heading, and paragraph location of the featured backlink
- Your site’s backlink profile—or the quality and quantity of your referring domains; one .gov site can provide you with 100 backlinks, but it’s still considered by all major site auditing tools as a single referring domain
- Your site’s external link profile—or the links that live on your site and point to different sites, including external links to .gov sites and internal linking that points back to your content
- The anchor text of your .gov backlinks—a backlink featuring “click here” will be less relevant to readers and web crawlers alike, passing on a smaller degree of link juice to your site compared to a more contextually relevant anchor text
- Your backlink neighborhood—or the collection of sites you have the most common with in terms of your backlink profiles
- Your domain history and past transgressions—domains used for spamming in the past will be permanently flagged by Google and relegated to the bottom of search results, regardless of the acquisition of new and legitimate .gov backlinks
- The strength of your offline brand—each .gov backlink that points to the Coca-Cola Company will arguably have more weight than an equivalent .gov backlink that goes to a new startup site
In summary, .gov backlinks are still valuable, but the context around getting them is very important for their impact on your site’s rankings. Plus, they don’t carry more weight than conventional backlinks from non-government sites, and in some cases may even hurt your long-term SEO goals. Things like spamming, using private blog networks (PBNs), and employing black-hat link building techniques to forcefully get a .gov backlink can lead to all major search engines flagging and delisting your site.
Are .gov Backlinks Easy To Get?
The short answer is: no, legitimate .gov backlinks are very hard to acquire. This fact is owed to three main reasons.
First, it’s the rule of supply and demand. The U.S. General Services Administration places the current number of active .gov websites at around 6000, which is a limiting factor if you want to create multiple link building outreach campaigns over an extended time. Eventually, you’ll run out of .gov sites, and not every government site will award you with a backlink in return.
Additionally, regular citizens can’t register a .gov top-level domain, only people directly involved with government organizations can. The rules for registering a .gov domain are very strict. You can’t simply reach out to a typical online registrar and ask them for a .gov domain. To become eligible for one, you must provide the necessary paperwork that proves you’re a legitimate government operator and are allowed to run a .gov site.
Second, because of their trustworthiness, the value they provide to the general public, and their content quality, .gov sites typically have high DA scores. For example, NASA has a DA score of 93, while the Food and Drug Administration and the state of California have DA scores of 86 and 97 respectively.
In SEO, earning a backlink from a high DA score site is an uphill battle. A high DA score, coupled with the fact that .gov sites are online representations of existing government bodies, leads to more stringent rules about who gets a backlink from a .gov site. Even if you work hard to earn a backlink from something like a state-wide scholarship campaign, .gov sites must adhere to the existing bureaucracy and follow their internal rules. So, it might take a while before they approve or deny your backlink request.
Thirl, scoring a backlink from some .gov sites may be impossible without knowing the people who are responsible for running and maintaining these types of sites. Building relationships outside the confines of the internet is not easy, and it may require a complete reinvention on your part of what it means to run a successful site.
How to Build .gov Backlinks
There are multiple strategies to identify government sites that are niche-adjacent to your site, screen the most promising leads, and utilize an effective SEO approach to build .gov backlinks organically and at scale.
Here’s an in-depth breakdown of these strategies.
1. Use the “Site:” Operator to Identify and Capitalize on .gov Backlink Opportunities
The site operator is considered an advanced Google search operator. Advanced Google search operators are a combination of commands, characters, and rules that help you get better results in Google Search. They do this by filtering out unrelated sites and narrowing down the pool of potential hits to better match your search query.
Government sites are ripe with backlink opportunities, but if you can’t find .gov resources that contextually match the content, mission, and goals of your site, you’ll have a harder time scoring a high-quality backlink and staying open for future partnerships.
The site operator can be used to:
Find open .gov blogs and forums
Keep in mind that spammy, low-effort, and paid third-party blog commenting efforts can backfire and tank your rankings, so you should avoid those at all costs. On the other hand, properly done blog and forum commenting campaigns are an excellent approach to building legitimate .gov backlinks.
For example, posting the same comment on dozens of .gov sites simply won’t work. Your comments must be unique and add to the discussion in a meaningful way. Even then, most .gov sites don’t allow anonymous users to freely post on their blog and forum pages. When they do, they restrict comments to prevent external linking or to add the “nofollow” tag to a backlink.
In theory, the rel=”nofollow” HTML tag tells search engines to ignore that link and avoid assigning any value to it. However, Google, Bing, or some of the other popular search engines may sometimes decide to ignore the “nofollow” rule and process it as an ordinary backlink, regardless of the user’s specifications. In any case, adding the “nofollow” tag is NOT recommended if you want to pass some amount of link juice to the site you’re linking out to.
To identify government sites with open forums, blogs, and comment sections, search Google using a combination of the following site operators:
- Site:gov “forum”
- Site:gov “blog”
- Site:gov “post a comment”
- Site:gov “logged in”
- Site:gov “your site’s niche”
Identify guest posting opportunities on .gov sites
Guest posting is a proven method of winning a high-quality backlink regardless of your industry, and it also works well with .gov sites. It can help you earn backlinks from local, state, and federal websites.
To find .gov sites that are open to guest posting, use the following site search operators:
- Site:gov “guest post”
- Site:gov “guest author”
- Site:gov “guest blog”
- Site:gov “write for us”
- Site:gov “submit a guest post”
Typically, the rules for publishing a guest post on a .gov site will be stricter and may require a couple of drafts before they accept and publish your submission. Still, the benefits of having your commentary featured on a .gov website, not to mention the value of a contextually relevant backlink, far outweigh the time and effort you’d spend writing the post.
Locate resource pages on .gov sites
This is an extremely potent tactic for local business owners, smaller companies, and individual contractors looking to expand their online reach and have their URLs displayed on a government page. Local governments often feature directories and resource pages to help connect their citizens with the most relevant organizations, including private businesses, help centers, and local shops.
Manually identifying such opportunities can take a while and may not get you the results you want. This is why it’s better to use the following site search operators:
- Site:gov [your region/state] “resource”
- Site:gov [your region/state] “resource page”
- Site:gov [your region/state] “directory”
- Site:gov [your region/state] “business directory”
- Site:gov [your region/state] “community”
If you can’t find a local or state directory for your region, it might be a good idea to reach out to your government body and ask them if it’s possible (and what would it take) to get listed in their business directory or resource page.
2. Leverage the Reliable Potential of Broken Link Building Campaigns
Ssome .gov sites have resource pages, lists, and directories that contain helpful external links to other websites. Over time, the external links can become broken due to deleted pages, renamed URLs, and entire websites going offline. If the external site still exists, a broken link will redirect users to a 404 page. If not, users will encounter an error message.
This is a great opportunity to replace those broken links with a topically relevant page from your site.
Once again, use the site operator to find relevant .gov resource pages:
- site:gov “useful links” AND [niche]
- site:gov [niche] intitle:”useful resources”
- site:gov [niche] inurl:resources
- site:gov [niche] inurl:links
Then, use a Chrome extension called Check My Links to find the number of broken links on a page.
Additionally, you can enter the URL of the missing pages in SEMRush or Ahrefs to find more .gov backlink opportunities, as well as more sites in general. The second part could help you build non-government backlinks down the road.
To identify the content of the deleted page, enter the URL into Wayback Machine, click on your preferred date, and choose a snapshot to display.
Upon opening the snapshot, you can see the content that got deleted.
If you have a comparable page that could inherit this link, reach out to the webmaster of the .gov page and courteously explain your case. If not, then you’ll need to write a new article from scratch that is relevant to the topic on the deleted page and present it as a viable alternative to the broken link.
They’ll be more likely to replace the broken link with a page from your site if:
- You offer a contextually relevant page
- Your page features high-quality content
- Their page is very popular with users
- Linking out to your page doesn’t break their terms of service (TOS)
To identify the person responsible for managing the .gov page that hosts the broken link, use the following operators:
- Site:[URL] “contact”
- Site:[URL] “email”
- Site:[URL] “write to us”
Finally, it’s time for the outreach phase of your broken link building campaign.
If you have multiple contacts, you can use an automated outreach email service such as Mailshake or Gmass. If you have a single lead, you can simply write them an email from your personal or business account.
To ensure writing a compelling pitch, follow these best practices:
- Be courteous, professional, and upfront about your intentions
- Use the person’s first name to greet them in the pitch
- Point out the broken link on their page
- Explain why your page is a good alternative for their broken link
- Include a hyperlink to your page
Here’s an example:
Hi [First Name],
After browsing your page [.gov URL], I noticed it contains a broken link.
It seems like the resource it was supposed to link out to was removed a couple of months ago. I double-checked, and the URL redirects to a 404 error page.
As it happens, I have a topically relevant resource [your URL] that could prove to be a great alternative for your missing link. It covers the same topic in even greater detail than the original post.
Let me know if you’d be up to include my page in place of the broken link.
Best regards,
[Your Name]
It’s a good idea to check the status of the broken link periodically. Sometimes, webmasters may include your page without informing you about the change.
If you don’t get a response and the page still features the broken link, you can follow up with the webmaster up to three times in the original thread. Simply ask them if they had the chance to consider your request and if there’s something you can do to help. Eventually, you’ll either earn the backlink or move on to test other .gov link building strategies and tactics.
3. Build Relationships With Government Officials, Politicians, and People Associated With .gov Websites
If you’re serious about .gov link building, eventually you’ll reach a point where you have to interact with a government official—either by phone, email, or in person. This is an excellent opportunity to start building and fostering long-term working relationships and assert your website as a proven authority in your field.
Here’s a couple of ways to do just that.
Write a well-researched study on government-related issues
For this project, you’ll need writers with experience in domestic politics to produce a high-quality study that addresses some of the most common social issues in your area. You can achieve this by writing about your products and services through the lenses of a common social and political issue, including the environment, education, and healthcare.
More broadly, use these 5 tips to produce a quality study:
- Choose your topic carefully—you or your writers must have a high degree of expertise in your chosen topic and it must be of great interest to government bodies; for example, if you sell online courses, you can do a study on the current state of the educational curriculum in your region or the impact of rising school administration fees on the parents’ budget
- Perform a thorough research—your study must be backed by comprehensive evidence, data-driven facts, and reliable sources; an elaborate study will be of greater interest to a .gov site and will capture their team’s attention more quickly, thereby increasing your chances to earn a mention and a backlink on their page
- Publish your study—Once it’s done, upload your study in the appropriate category on your site, and, if necessary, create a new page on your site for the study to live on; make sure users can easily find and employ all website navigation best practices for an optimized SEO approach
- Conduct a .gov sites email outreach campaign—create a list of .gov sites that would be interested in your study, find their contact information with a tool like Hunter, and use an automated email service like Pitchbox to send your pitch to multiple .gov site at the same time
- Offer exclusive data—to increase your likelihood of getting a response, you can offer an exclusive insight into your study for the .gov sites, such as a chapter that isn’t publicly available in your published study
Keep in mind that not all .gov sites you’ll reach out to will include your study on their websites. The industry average for a successful link placement in a typical email outreach campaign varies between 2-5%, and that’s on a good day. However, you should keep trying until you earn at least five backlinks from high DA .gov sites. If you can get there, you’ll attain a huge SEO boost for your brand in the vastness of search engine results pages (SERPs).
Interview a local government representative
If you’re an upcoming online brand but don’t have the budget, time, or expertise to produce an elaborate study, this solution might be a more apt approach to acquiring valid .gov backlinks.
Most government representatives love publicity and will jump at the opportunity to be featured in an online publication. From their perspective, an interview with a respectable site will do wonders for reaching the public and getting their message across.
During the interview, make sure to:
- Understand the government representative’s motivation—knowing the specific reasons they’re doing the interview and the most pressing issues their office currently faces will guide you to ask better questions
- Avoid making the interview too complicated—remember, your goal is to earn a .gov backlink, not solve a complex social issue in a single sitting; keeping the interview simple is a good approach to enable the politician’s goodwill and have a constructive talk around any subject of interest
- Keep an open mind—it’s important to strike a delicate balance between asking the right questions and keeping an open mind in how you process new information; allowing the interview to progress naturally will increase the chances of a .gov website posting it on one of their pages
Additionally, you can also be proactive and openly ask the .gov website to feature the interview and credit your site with a “dofollow” backlink. “Dofollow” is not an HTML tag, but rather represents the absence of the “nofollow” tag in the structure of a typical hyperlink. A “dofollow” link passes more SEO value from the website that provides the link to the website that receives the backlink.
Lastly, interviewing government officials is not just about getting a backlink from a .gov site. It’s also about creating quality content that your readers will be happy to explore.
Be on the lookout for government partnerships
If you run a commercial website, it’s going to be tough to secure a government contract or enter into a partnership with a government organization. But, this notion is not outside of the realm of possibility. A successful government partnership will bolster your site rankings, introduce your brand to a wider audience, and strengthen your professional reputation in your industry.
The crux of this strategy revolves around identifying suitable opportunities. Then, you’ll need to craft a comprehensive proposal and apply for the partnership as a contractor or a direct partner in government-led projects.
One of the most common government partnerships comes in the form of government requests for proposals (RFPs). You can use the FindRFP official website to find these opportunities or perform a Google search to target RFP partnerships in your specific field.
For example, if you have a food blog or run a restaurant with an online presence, you can perform the following search:
- site:gov RFP hospitality
This will give you an idea of former and new RFPs, including what government entities look for in partners in the hospitality industry. You can offer to become an outlet for updates regarding hotels, restaurants, and cafes in your local area, or even win a state or federal contract if the partnership permits it.
Once the partnership ends, you can request a backlink from the government agency to showcase your participation in the joint project, demonstrating the extent of your contributions.
Granted, RFPs are rare and demand crafting an elaborate proposal to be considered eligible for winning a government contract. But, if you can get one to work, it’ll be a real game changer for your business and the future prospects of your site.
