Creating A Scholarship For SEO

[KempRugeLawGroup]

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!

[EGOL]

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.

[dimanyc]

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?

[KempRugeLawGroup]

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.

[EGOL]

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.

[lautman]

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.

[TheDude]

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...

1. Sometimes a spectacular prize is something perceive as too good to be true.  This goes for the universities and students alike.
2. Universities WILL link to you, but you need to search out the ones that do.
3. 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.

[EGOL]

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.

[TheDude]

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.

[EGOL]

lol....  Something like that might get fantastic action if it is on one of the big newspaper sites.