Sticky-Wiki Dos and Don’ts: How to Improve your Chances of Maintaining an Incoming Link on Wikipedia
*This blog post was written by a guest blogger that specializes in Boston SEO services.*
Imagine how much traffic you could get with a longstanding link to your site from Wikipedia. This would be incredibly valuable for your company profile and reputation. Only problem is, Wikipedia definitions can and are constantly edited and changed by anyone with a computer and internet access (brainpower is not a requirement, unfortunately.)
Luckily, there are some tips that can help you retain an incoming link on Wikipedia.
Here are the Wiki link retention dos and don’ts:
Don’t…
- Link to a Wikipedia article from your site in an attempt to be reciprocated.
This just won’t work. Plus, you are linking to content that is changing so frequently, you can’t always know what it is. Directing your visitors to low quality content will damage your site credibility.
- Create a profile that makes it obvious that you are in the internet marketing business, seeking improved rankings out of your Wiki participation, or are a self-promoting blogger.
Wikipedia and its users will immediately sabotage your leveraging attempt if they think you have a cheap alterior motive for participating.
Do…
- Consistently spend time contributing to and improving Wikipedia entries of all genres.
This will legitimize your participation and others will appreciate your invested interested in improving this resource. This means people will be more willing to overlook subtle self-promoting content that you add.
- To further improve your reputation on Wiki, (and therefore your chances of incoming link retention,) add content to wiki subjects that you are actually knowledgeable about.
That way you’ve done your part to contribute to the integrity of the site—consider it good karma.
- Any time your edit an entry in your own self-interest, take the time to also add something that is generally valuable to other Wikipedia entries.
This will help disguise your agenda.
- If you can’t think of a topic to contribute to, click the Random Article link on the navigation sidebar.
This will let Wiki randomly suggest some topics to you, and diversify the breadth of your topic entries.
- Notice which information sources linked to on other wiki entries have maintained a link for an extended period of time. Insert links to similarly high retention link resources on your own Wikipedia entry page.
Keep a running list of these sources; frequently, they are reputable blogs, news sources, and informative guides.
There’s no guarantee that following these tips will give you an established incoming link from Wikipedia; however, overtime, as you build your merit by consistently contributing valuable material, the odds of maintaining a sticky-wiki link become increasingly more favorable.
14 Responses to “Sticky-Wiki Dos and Don’ts: How to Improve your Chances of Maintaining an Incoming Link on Wikipedia”
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Good points. Some folks trully believes that is not cool to manipulate Wikis in such a way.
The fact is that if you’re contributing, then there is nothing wrong.
Thanks for sharing!
“This will help disguise your agenda.” – That sounds so naughty, but is an accurate way to encapsulate the use of Wiki for marketing purposes. If you stagger professional vs. personal interest/hobby participation – building up your profile over time can be a lot of fun, too.
This approach is definitely acceptable. It’s simply using the online resources you have, contributing to the topic at hand and getting a slight benefit, all at the same time. We, as humans are prone to getting some sort of benefit out of the things we do or we wouldn’t do them.
If we can tap into these online resources (without using spam) and provide a genuine contribution, than everyone wins.
Great article and definitely a unique approach!
Great tips, but Wikipedia use nofollow, is this good for SEO?
Ann Smarty Reply:
January 28th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
I’d view this as the indirect link building method: people use Wiki links very often for research. By placing your link there you increase its visibility and chances to get more “natural” links from other sites.
This only works if your link is worth it of course.
Frank Marcel Reply:
February 4th, 2010 at 8:01 pm
Despite do/nofollow, your site might get a good amount of visits from Wikipedia, at least, this is how it works for me! =)
I don’t think anyone should be comfortable saying that nofollow tags absolutely remove any and all organic search ranking benefits from a link. There is evidence to the contrary. Also, direct traffic from a Wiki article is relevant and can be massive – so either way it’s still an excellent use of time.
I actually have two incoming links from wikipedia (one from the US version and one on the German version) on of my sites. How I did this? By being the leading source on that specific topic and by not placing the links myself. I didn’t write the specific entry, nor did I ask for a link back. I just helped out explaining things and answering questions.
In this case I don’t really care about the specific SEO benefit (pr or no pr? meh). I did however notice that certain sites are copying the wikipedia entries (including links) so you might get a few extra (dofollow) backlinks if your link is included in a wiki entry. Also I think a link on wikipedia can be useful (and might be used by searchengines) to show tat your website has authority on a subject.
Excellent advice for Wikipedia!
This is a great list, but of course the best Wikipedia links happen naturally over time as you build your business and become a trusted source of information in an industry.
Sounds good in theory; in practice the strictures of Wiki make it impossible to contribute to an article without specialist knowledge. I defy anyone to use ‘Random Article’ as the basis of their attempt to contribute.
David Pye Reply:
February 4th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Finding and adding a related resource under the external links heading is always an option. One needn’t actually alter the body of the article.
Frank Marcel Reply:
February 4th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Use Random Article and a Google Search. So you kind of become an specialist. You’ll just need some creativity.
There is one more tip: Buy an expired domain with existing Wikipedia Backlinks
after lot of work…link is aprooved…and still there for 2 weeks hope dont delete it
thanks