SEO Wikipedia Style
*This is a guest post by Jason Capshaw*
If you have been in the internet marketing game for any length of time, chances are that you have run up against a highly-ranked Wikipedia page in your search vertical. SEO is no exception.
Not only does Wikipedia have the first two spots, but it also has a “Show more results from the wiki” underneath its listing. Of course, Wikipedia has major domain authority with 82 million inbound links, and it even outranks Google’s own SEO page.
Compared to some of the other pages in the search result, the two Wikipedia pages featured have less external backlinks. As a matter of fact, six of the other listings on the first page have many more inbound links to their pages. Also, listings on the second page of search results have many more inbound links.
It would be practically impossible to replicate Wikipedia’s domain authority. However, what is not difficult to replicate is how Wikipedia wields its authority. Within every page on Wikipedia where “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization” is mentioned, it links to its own internal page about the subject.
A site search of Wikipedia (site: Wikipedia.org search engine optimization) produces 62,800 results. Many of these pages link to our top two search results.
Wikipedia does not rely on a huge side or header navigation to give users the ability to drill down to their topic of interest. It only links to itself from within the main content section of the site. Links from the main content sections are much more valuable and pass more authority to the receiving pages than headers or side navigations.
By implementing a similar strategy within your own website or blog, you can boost search rankings without completely depending on offsite link building tactics.
Implementation Tips
The home page is usually the most authoritative page on a site. Linking to important pages from the content section will boost their rankings. Blogs naturally do this with the most recent posts, but most static sites do not use this tactic.
Hide important header and sidebar links from the search engines on the home page of a site with javascript or an iframe since only one link and anchor text will be counted. Now, link to the important pages of your site from inside of the main copy and unlock all of the real authority that your homepage carries.
Automation is obviously the easiest way to use this tactic unless you have millions of users ready to edit your content. I use a plugin that automatically links to a page of my choice every time a keyword is used in the text of my blog. It’s much easier than doing it manually.
Some have said that one drawback to using this tactic is that pages become diluted and users find the links confusing, and may jump out of a conversion funnel. Testing should be done on a case by case scenario; however, it does not seem to have hurt Wikipedia’s user base.
Jason Capshaw is founder of an Atlanta Web Design and SEO services company. He lives with his wife and two children in Hampton, GA.
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18 Responses to “SEO Wikipedia Style”
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worth the time i spent on reading your article. I will consider testing it on my personal website.
Really useful tips mentioned here.. Even i’m going to try adding a plugin to link other sites automatically, been doing it manually all this while. Thanks for the info..
very useful tip Jason,
These are really an important & useful tips.Thanks for sharing this informative article with us.
Great tip and coupled with google only usilising the first link on a page means that by simply re-ordering your content putting it first in the code followed by headers, menus and footers means you can dominate!
Just remember not to nofollow any secondary links as that cancels out ALL instances of that link on your page
Thanks for sharing this!
Very useful article, but I would like to know how to put my website address also was to
Thank you
How internal links affecting your position in google?
Hi, good post. I have been wondering about this topic,so thanks for sharing. I will certainly be subscribing to your posts.
Wikipedia is on top for a reason that’s for sure!
This post is well written.I am interested very much in the subject matter of your blog.It’s my first visit.First time I have seen your blog and what a great post that was!Thank you so much.Keep blogging.
Very nice article but will you please describe how to put URL’s in it.
This article is very helpful for search engine optimization purpose & thanks for sharing such a informative post.
thanx
This is a very Precious topic about SEO. As i m new in SEO this ll really help me…
Hope u ll come wid some more information…
Thank you very mich for these useful tips and thanks for sharing !
The essence of this article is that links within text carry the most weight. As you mention, there are good plugins to do this. In the article WordPress SEO plugins, I provide a review of the top 3 and one I selected: SEO Smartlinks. I use it on all sites and across sites.
Good article, very useful. The main question, however, is how to get Wikipedia link to you. Any thoughts?
Great Experience, will recommend them to everyone.Thanks For Sharing.