What will the government’s plan to close 600 websites mean for SEO?

Just a few of these sites include:

So this equals a good TLD, fresh content and excellent natural links from other large authority links. These are three factors every webmaster dreams of and so even one link from a site like this will surely give you a big boost!

Google has many algorithms to determine if a backlink is of high quality relevance and naturally, trust is highly important.

This factor alone is a bonus point. Going one step further, you’ll realise that all .gov and .edu sites will naturally gain a high PR and will have lots of fresh unique content posted daily (due to the large body behind them).

Back in 2007, the government announced the close of 551 websites. Some of these no longer exist but others are still up and running and could be included in this next cull.

Authors: Ahmed Bhula, Dave Stopher, Gemma Neesham.

It is clear that whatever action site owners intend to take as a result of the government decision, this shakeup will definitely make things more interesting in the world of SEO.

Why Government Links are good

Others, who are clever and move quickly, could see themselves filling the gap and becoming the new authority domains in their industry.

Returning to the discussion in question, no person will doubt that .gov and academic sites are 100% official and there can be no doubt as to their content as all sites with these TLDs need to be approved and pass various requirements before they can gain such a domain.

Note – Not only .gov links but this is also applicable for .ac.uk – and .edu in the US.

It was obvious that when the new government came into power, they were going to have to make major cutbacks in order to try and reduce the country’s debt. No sector seems to have escaped the spending cuts, with everything from the NHS to schools all being affected.

Although 600 sites are likely to have an effect on many sites, I would not stop my efforts to continue to link build from these sites. In my opinion, it is more likely for a standard site to close than a .gov or .edu. Why? Millions is spent on these sites!

Gemma’s View

Next in the firing line are online costs. In a bid to save £100 million per year, the government has announced that they will be shutting down around 600 websites. The amount spent on these sites is surprising; it has been reported that the government currently spend £32 million a year on staffing costs to maintain their websites and that last year, the Business Link website alone cost £35 million to run.

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For example, an .ac.uk or .edu site needs to be managed by an academic institution and a .gov site will be a government site.

The government’s decision to close 600 websites will have a huge impact on the SEO in some industries such as business (especially if we see the close of sites such as the Business Link, which has nearly 500,000 pages cached by Google).

SEOs have always advised about the benefits and advantages these links have and why you should exert lots of effort into this.

So how do the online cutbacks affect SEO? Ultimately this will mean a major shakeup of the UK search results. The sites in question are all high traffic, authoritative sites, trusted by the search engines. This means that any sites that rely on the trusted links from these government sites will suffer and could possibly face a large drop in the rankings.

This shakeup could also be seen as an opportunity for others. The loss of the government sites is going to leave a big gap in some industries and the opportunity for sites to reach those top few spots in Google, which were never possible before due to such high competition from authority sites. Others out there may also scrape the content of these condemned sites and encourage users who previously linked to the informative government sites, to link to them instead.

The changes will mean that companies will have to move quickly and analyse their links. If they rely too heavily on the government sites set to close, they could find themselves taking a major drop in rankings.

Ahmed’s View

Before I mention why these links are among the highest value, let me give you some info on Google. Google wants to display the most relevant and useful sites in its SERPs and one of the main methods used to find the perfect sites are through the different backlinks a site has.

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