Wikipedia is Still Useful for SEO
Written on April 29, 2008 – 2:39 pm | by Will Paoletto |
Even though Wikipedia added nofollow tags in early 2007, backlinks you manage to snag there will still help you from an SEO standpoint. Why? One simple reason: content scrapers. Wikipedia is believed to be the most heavily scraped site in the history of the Internet.
Let’s take this example. Say you were able to secure an external link on the Wikipedia page about cats, here. Congratulations. You just snagged a dofollow link on a PR 4 page, here. Answers.com is one of the many legitimate sites that scrapes content from Wikipedia, and it’s an authority one at that. They were nice enough to keep the content they scrape from Wikipedia dofollow. So how many backlinks will you pick up in the future from that one Wikipedia link? Too many to list, provided your link stays on Wikipedia for any length of time.
If you’re paranoid that having your link appear on a black hat scraper site will hurt you from an SEO standpoint, don’t be. The odds are against that happening in this situation. Google should be able to figure out that the only reason your link was involved with a bad neighborhood was because it appeared in content scraped from Wikipedia.
The other common opinion is that if you manage to pickup an external link on a popular or semi-popular Wikipedia page, many people will see your link and naturally create backlinks to it. Wikipedia pages do tend to get loads of Google traffic. This isn’t April 2007, so Wikipedia doesn’t rank number 1 for everything anymore, but I’m sure you’ve noticed it’s still fairly popular in the Google SERPS. And by “fairly” I mean “extraordinarily.” I’m digressing, but Wikipedia is the classic example of a site who’s success was truly driven off the back of Google. In fact, I would venture to say that if it wasn’t for Google, Wikipedia never would have entered into the mainstream.
Back on topic, finding sites that scrape Wikipedia is easy. Infinitely harder is getting external links to stick on Wikipedia. Here are two methods:
- Fill in missing citation gaps. Wikipedia will occasionally have sentences with a “citation needed” link after them. Create content on your site that revolves around that missing citation. If its quality is high enough, Wikipedia may let that pass as the citation.
- Manufacture a Wikipedia page that has high relevancy to an existing page. Link to that new page from an existing Wikipedia page. Add an external link to the new page as a reference. This has a higher probability of sticking since the page is fresh and needs sources.
Don’t let the fact that Wikipedia added nofollow tags stop you from using it in your link building endeavors.
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7 Responses to “Wikipedia is Still Useful for SEO”
By Nihiltres on Apr 29, 2008 | Reply
…but don’t actually *spam* Wikipedia. That’s most likely to get your site blacklisted, which can really hurt your SEO as many other spam blacklists out there mine Wikipedia’s.
Instead, try to actually contribute content - it might be harder, but it’s much less risky, and it’s better for both Wikipedia and you.
Oh and although Wikipedia may have a reputation for cracking down on spam, if you offer content only via a discussion page, and say “Yes, that’s my site, I have a conflict of interest, but do you think that this would add to the article?”, people will be much more likely to treat you nicely.
By Shell Harris on Apr 30, 2008 | Reply
Nicely stated, Will. Of course getting into Wikipedia has been made more difficult by the spamming practices of many SEO companies, but this makes a link from Wikipedia all the more precious because of this. Although I do believe the powers that be err far on the side of conservatism when removing content they deem unworthy.
But a link can drive much traffic as our client BestBullySticks.com can attest. They have a image on the bully sticks page of Wikipedia with a reference link to their site.
By locjan on May 3, 2008 | Reply
Thanks for your info. I have always ignored wikipedia. Now I’m aware that this is important.
By pushkar on May 5, 2008 | Reply
I do not think that no-follow would discourage people to contribute, if you are a serious contributor to the wiki, you can add your link to it. Provided the addition you have made is not spam and is promptly a part of the article. So you have added a link, the purpose now should be different, earlier people were looking for link building, adding link even with a no-follow tag definitely would give you traffic if not links to increase PR or SERP position
By Peter on May 5, 2008 | Reply
Interesting perspective. I was unaware that answers.com 1) uses Wikipedia and 2) removes nofollow for the results.
Wikipedia has never been a part of my link-building strategy. Thanks to this article, that very likely will change.