The scholarship link play — put up a $500 award, email every .edu financial-aid office — got so abused that most universities stopped linking and Google stopped caring. Sponsorships still work, but as marketing with a link attached, not as a link scheme with a donation attached.
The scholarship tactic, and why it aged badly
Around the mid-2010s, SEO agencies noticed universities would link to any legitimate scholarship. So thousands of thin essay-contest pages went up, financial-aid offices got buried in identical pitches, and the tactic ate itself. Many schools now refuse outside scholarship listings or route them through nofollowed databases. Google has been clear for years that it recognizes the pattern. A cannabis brand running the play today is late to a party that got shut down.
The .edu link is not magic anyway
The tactic survived on the belief that .edu links carry special weight. Google has said repeatedly there is no .edu bonus; those domains tend to be authoritative because universities earn citations, not because of the extension. A link on a scholarship-listing page five clicks deep in a financial-aid directory, with no links of its own, passes little regardless of the domain it sits on. Chasing the extension was always the wrong target.
What sponsorships still do
Sponsorships work when the thing you sponsor has an audience. Industry conferences list sponsors on pages the whole trade visits. A hemp trade association links its members. Local music festivals, harvest events, and advocacy groups in legal states publish sponsor pages that local press links to. You are buying visibility with a link included, and judging it as marketing keeps the spend honest: would the exposure be worth it if the link were nofollowed? Sometimes yes. That is the test.
Disclosure: paid placements need rel=sponsored
When you pay for placement, the link is an ad, and Google's guidance is that paid links should carry rel=sponsored. Plenty of event sites do not bother, and at small scale that is their risk more than yours. But do not build a strategy on volume-buying followed sponsor links; a backlink profile where most followed links trace back to invoices is exactly the pattern link-spam systems exist to catch. Sponsor things worth sponsoring and let the attributes fall where they fall.
A worked example: one competition, three links
A concentrates brand put $2,000 into a regional cannabis competition: logo placement, a booth, a sponsor-page link. The competition's site linked. So did the local alt-weekly's event coverage and an industry newsletter's recap, neither of which was paid. Two of the three links came from editorial coverage of a sponsorship that existed for marketing reasons. That ratio, earned coverage around a paid anchor, is what a good sponsorship produces.
Key takeaways
- Scholarship pages stopped working when every agency ran the same play; universities adapted.
- There is no .edu ranking bonus, and a buried listing page passes little either way.
- Judge a sponsorship as marketing first: worth the money with a nofollowed link, or not at all.
- The best sponsorships attract editorial coverage, and those unpaid links are the prize.
Frequently asked questions
Do scholarship backlinks still help a cannabis site?
Rarely. Universities tightened listing policies after years of SEO-driven scholarships, and Google recognizes the footprint. The money and effort now return more through sponsorships or content that earns coverage on its own.
Do sponsorship links need rel=sponsored?
Under Google's guidelines, links you pay for should carry rel=sponsored, and the publisher controls the markup. At small scale, unmarked sponsor links are common and low-drama, but a profile built mostly on paid followed links invites exactly the scrutiny you want to avoid.
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