Many colleges and universities have alumni associations that allow them to fundraise from their former student population, and also can provide powerful networking opportunities for alumni that are members. Many of these organizations are given a special section of the University’s website for information about alumni or the activities of the organization.
In many cases alumni organizations operate a membership directory on their website to help alumni connect with each other and to give members the opportunity to update the public on their professional and personal goals.
Many of these directories offer the opportunity to include a link to the alumni’s website or their employer. In some cases where a website is not an option members may be able to reach out to the Association to see if it’s possible to add a link anyways.
The most obvious way to utilize this opportunity is for business owners and entrepreneurs to join their University’s Alumni Association and add a link to their company’s website within the membership profile. However this tactic can scale across your entire employee workforce as well. This can be easily done by either asking your employees if they are a member of any alumni organizations or to have your HR department review any resumes on file for universities that employees have attended.
If any employees are currently enrolled in any alumni associations you can encourage them to reach out to the association with their information that should be included in the alumni directory including the URL to your company’s website. If very few of your employees are current members of an association, encouraging them to join may be a beneficial undertaking if a backlink is provided within the alumni profile.
Also many alumni associations like to provide a featured column within its own publications about alumni that are doing remarkable things within their careers or personal life. If you or any of your employees have received company or industry accolades it may be advantageous to provide a brief press release about this news to the alumni association’s communications office.
They may consider writing a featured column about the alumni within their digital or print publication which will likely also provide an opportunity for a link back to your company’s website.
Don’t want to do the link building work all by yourself?
We can build links FOR you
These are just two ideas to leverage a university’s alumni association to generate backlinks. However, there may be other opportunities that maybe you are unaware of. You should learn as much as you can about each alumni association before engaging with them to understand the best approach and to uncover any opportunities for links that you may not have considered in the past. Good luck and congratulations to all your academic and professional success!