Wikipedia is the place for all your information needs. If you want to know about something—whether it’s a person, place, thing, event, or anything else under the sun—there’s most likely a Wikipedia page about it
A Wikipedia article provides tons of value to users looking for the information they need about the topic. But it’s also a valuable search engine optimization technique for generating backlinks to one’s website.
This post tackles the significance of a Wikipedia link is to search engines and how you can build topically relevant backlinks from the platform to your site.
Why Securing Them Will Improve Your Site’s SEO
As an authoritative website, it only makes sense if you try and secure backlinks from Wikipedia pointing to your site, right?
Unfortunately, not a lot of SEOs agree for two reasons:
- First, Wikipedia links are nofollow, which means they don’t pass link juice to your site. In layman’s terms, the backlink you’ll get from the site, in theory, won’t improve your site’s search position.
- Securing Wikipedia backlinks is notoriously difficult. It has a group of admins and editors who will ruthlessly remove backlinks without an explanation.
Some of these reasons have merit. Regarding the latter, for example, you can try and secure Wikipedia backlinks if you want to. But it comes at the cost of spending weeks and months knowing exactly how to do this.
At this point, it may be better to build links on other sites instead.
Despite these arguments, below are counter-arguments as to why you MUST get Wikipedia backlinks by hook or crook.
#1 – Wikipedia is a “Seed Site”
We’re beating the dead horse here about Wikipedia being an authoritative website.
However, let’s look at how Google views Wikipedia as a website.
When using backlinks as a ranking factor, Google refers to its web-link graph to determine the distance of a “seed page” from a “seed site” via links.
Wikipedia is the perfect example of a seed site because it has the authority and trust of users. And the links found in the Reference section of all Wikipedia entries are the seed pages.
The fact that Wikipedia links to these pages mean that they provide value to the entry and help sustain the integrity of the site’s authority.
From here, Google computes the distance of all web pages from seed sites like Wikipedia and its seed pages.
For example, if the Wikipedia seed page has a backlink to your site, you have close proximity to what Google considers a seed site. This results in the search engine ranking your web pages higher on organic search.
On the other hand, if a page doesn’t have a link from seed pages, Google looks for other links from these seed pages, and so on, until it finds your page.
The farther the distance of a page is from a seed site in a web-link graph, the less authoritative it is in the eyes of Google.
So, you need to find a way to be as close to these seed sites and pages as possible, starting with securing a backlink from Wikipedia.
#2 – Nofollow Links are Now Treated as “Hints”
Nofollow was first created to combat comment spam back in 2005. It is also used for sponsored links, so inform Google that the link is placed in exchange for money to avoid getting penalized.
A lot has changed since then regarding nofollow links—the most significant being the introduction of the rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc.”
(Source)
These tags will be used to indicate sponsored and user-generated content links.
This leaves nofollow links in an interesting predicament. Nowadays, nofollow links are treated as “hints,” which means Google may or may not factor them when ranking site pages for their target keywords.
The reason for the shift is that the majority of website backlinks have the nofollow tag. They make the search engine’s job of determining which web page to index first for a search term much harder due to their immense volume.
But by considering nofollow links as part of the ranking equation, Google now has more link data to use, which can help them rank the right pages for the search terms much better.
Keep in mind that Google may not consider nofollow links at all. So, just because you have lots of nofollow backlinks, doesn’t mean you’ll see an organic traffic surge soon.
Nonetheless, this update makes nofollow links even more valuable than ever. Aside from making your link profile appear more natural, these links can impact your search rankings moving forward.
#3 – Wikipedia Links are Bragging Rights
Some links are much more valuable than others, and we’re not just talking about them being dofollow links.
Despite not passing link juice, it’s possible for nofollow backlinks to be more valuable than dofollow links.
Some websites are easy to get dofollow links. Ask them if they accept guest posts on their sites. If they do, submit articles with a link to your site. If all’s good, they’ll publish it on their sites.
On the other hand, getting Wikipedia backlinks isn’t as straightforward as it seems.
Since contributions from users power the site, you can sign up for an account for free and make edits on the entries to improve the quality of information on each.
But just because you implemented changes on entries doesn’t mean they will stick there forever.
Since you’re working with other Wikipedia contributors and editors, they’ll be just as vigilant regarding any changes made. If they feel your changes aren’t justified, they will revert the piece to its original version.
The same goes for backlinks you place in the References section of an entry. If other contributors don’t feel that your reference warrants a mention in the piece, they’ll remove it just as fast as you included it.
This shows that the difficulty of getting backlinks on Wikipedia makes them even more valuable.
How to Get Backlinks from Wikipedia Articles
Before building links on Wikipedia, make sure to narrow down informational pages on which you want to build links. Only pages that provide value to the entry will successfully be included as a resource. Editors will remove marketing and landing pages that you will try to include as links.
From here, you should start with scouring for link building opportunities on Wikipedia by following the steps below:
Become a Trusted Contributor on Wikipedia
It’s possible to make edits to Wikipedia articles without an account. But having one makes building backlinks on the platform much easier.
As a member, you must follow its guidelines to a tee. For instance, you can only edit semi-protected pages if your account is four days old and you have made ten edits with it.
But just because you have more editing privileges doesn’t mean you can freely change the pages you want links from.
Wikipedia admins have the final say on whether the edits made on a page are legitimate. If they don’t meet their standards, they will revert the page to its original state and remove your backlink.
So, it’s important to become a trusted member of the platform. That means editing more than ten pages to make them better and going out of your way to befriend other contributors and admins.
The time it takes for you to achieve the necessary authority depends on how active you are on the platform. But if done successfully, you can get on their good side and make editing other pages with your links much easier later.
Find Dead Links from Relevant Content
After building clout as a Wikipedia contributor, you can leverage your newfound authority by looking for entries from where you can get backlinks.
Type in your topic on the search bar to find relevant Wikipedia pages where you can potentially get links.
From these entries, determine which among the external links on each one return a 404 error page. Use a backlink checker like Check My Links Chrome extension to spot these broken links.
It’s possible that the error is a false positive or that the links that the extension deemed broken work. In this case, always check the link yourself first to see if it’s broken or not.
Check the Web Resource
Next, find the closest one that matches the dead link from the list of pages you want to link to.
To do this, you must first check the broken page when it was still working.
Go to Wayback Machine and enter the URL of the dead link there. It will show you the dates in a calendar of the page’s saved versions online.
Click on the latest versions to see what the page looked like. It’s possible that some of the versions are producing a 404 error. If that’s the case, work your way back in the calendar to find the version that works.
Then, you want to use the information from the page and incorporate it into your existing content. This gives Wikipedia editors all the more reason to link to your resource from the Wiki page.
Don’t have a page similar to the dead link? No problem! All you need to do is make a better version of the broken page on your site and pitch it as a web resource for the Wiki article.
Since your page will be identical—if not better—than the resource the Wikipedia article initially linked to, there’s a good chance that the editor will keep the link you added.
Get Wikipedia Backlinks Easy with Wiki Wookiee
You can sign up for a Wikipedia account and work your way into becoming a well-respected contributor on the site, where you can make changes to entries at will.
However, getting to this point is time-consuming since you’ll have to be active on the site and build relationships with other contributors.
To simplify the process, you can place your order for Wikipedia backlinks with us at Wiki Wookiee!
Our human editors will take care of placing a backlink to your site on the most relevant Wikipedia entry. Then, they will devise a strategy to ensure the link stays on the page.
Also, we will review your web page and see if getting a backlink on Wikipedia with it is possible according to its guidelines and policies. If not, we will refund your order as we don’t want to force something that’s not possible.
Wiki Woookiee also has a 3-Month Link Warranty. That means if your link got removed from the site within three months after it’s been published, we would replace it with another link for free.
Click here to learn more about our Wikipedia backlink services.