What is Wikipedia?
Wikipedia has evolved into the world’s largest encyclopedia and one of the most frequented sites. But how is information assimilated into Wikipedia in the first place?
Wikipedia, also termed as a wiki, is a special kind of website that allows many people to contribute to the content. The word Wiki means’ quick’ in Hawaiian. The name is aptly derived from the fact that a wiki is a quick way to locate information on a web page on the most basic level. With the help of Wikis, online collaboration amongst people is possible. This implies that a group of people can contribute information to a wiki without seeing each other face to face. Although Wikipedia is the most well known and ambitious Wiki, there are plenty of other specialized wikis for collaborative research and just about anything else you can imagine.
Many wikis are limited to a specific group of people. However, Wikipedia allows anyone in the world to create an account, sign in, and then contribute to the information on a topic.
Wikipedia is ranked amongst the Internet’s ten most popular websites. It is a free-of-cost Internet-based encyclopedia and used very popularly by netizens for general reference work.
Why is Wikipedia an excellent source of referral traffic?
Wikipedia is one of the most suitable sources to boost your rankings. It is Google’s choicest website in terms of authoritativeness and trustworthiness.
Wikipedia offers an excellent opportunity to boost your online presence and digital marketing. It allows anyone from anywhere to make amendments to its pages, provided that the information being entered is error-free, factual and adds some kind of value. This is why Wikipedia has excellent domain authority. People scour Wikipedia pages for valuable information, so when people follow your link on Wikipedia, you can look forward to some excellent referral traffic!
How to score Wikiworthy links?
You can follow a few initial steps as a precursor to scoring links from Wikipedia.
1. Your content should be Wikiworthy.
Making changes to the content on Wikipedia is not a child’s play! The content posted or edited by you is subjected to thorough scrutiny by the admins of Wikipedia. They will accept or reject your content after having checked it for authenticity. If they find your content not meeting their standards, they may reject it and remember Wikipedia is very stringent when the quality of the content is in question!
- The editors of Wikipedia will reject content that promotes your own business and flag all such content as spam.
- If your references are not from reliable sources, your content is subject to rejection.
- The editors do not accept duplicate content. Your content should be fresh.
Only when your content meets the quality guidelines set by Wikipedia will your content be available to the public for viewing. Wikipedia is a hard-task-master and tracks your profile. If one of your articles is declined, your future ones are also liable to be rejected.
Backlinks can be acquired from Wikipedia in three ways:
- By polishing the existing content.
- By finding broken link opportunities
- By identifying missing citations
Each of the above processes can be used in combination or in isolation to find backlinks in the best possible way.
Build links naturally- Focus on content
You might be tempted to chase links first before developing the content but believe me if you focus on the content-driven strategy for a specific niche that is scalable, then links will come automatically to you.
Take care of these three simple measures, and you will earn a permanent link to your site:
- Make sure that your article is related to a Wikipedia page
- Ensure that the Wikipedia page is asking for help, reference, or citations.
- Contribute at least one or two lines before adding your website’s name or adding your website URL on the Wikipedia page.
Let us put an example: Suppose you have a blog on your site that writes about “Hazards of sitting at the computer the whole day”-
- First, if all, you should try to find a Wikipedia page related to this article. Type “posture Wikipedia” and hit enter.
- Go to a page that talks about postures while sitting at the computer. But wait to check whether this Wikipedia page meets your second criterion- the article should ask for some help, reference or citation.
- If the article is asking for a citation, then it is best for your backlink project. Now click on the Edit button.
- Find a place or a section in the article where you can add your website’s name or get a backlink from that section.
- Now, considering the third point- you need to contribute some lines; for example, you can type- “if you sit at the computer the whole day, it can create a problem for you.”
- Now you add a citation. Copy the article’s link and paste it in the section where you added the comment. Then click the Generate button. Make sure that Automatic is selected in the ‘Add a citation’ dialog box.
- This will create a backlink for your site. Click on the Insert button.
- Click on the Publish Change button. This will ask you for a summary of the changes you have made. In the text box type, “I have added a comment on how sitting at the computer the whole day can create problems for you.
- Once again, click on the Publish Change button. Then you will be asked for a Captcha. Solve the Captcha and again click on the publish change button.
- Now The Wikipedia page is live with a backlink to your website.
Use Wikigrabber tool
You can also use the Wikigrabber tool to find Wikipedia pages that contain dead and broken links. You can replace these dead and broken links with your link.
Wikigrabber tool helps find relevant articles that require citations or contain dead or broken links.
The editorial guidelines set by Wikipedia are very stringent. Marketers often overlook Wikipedia in the quest for many high-quality links.
Earlier, finding a dead or broken link was cumbersome. Marketers had to manually search for relevant articles and scan through every article in the hope of finding a backlink.
Wikigrabber simplifies the entire process. You are required to enter a search query to your niche. This will return a list of Wikipedia citations related to your niche but need citations or broken/dead link replacements.
You can now delete broken link citations in the following steps:
- Find the dead link citation.
- Click the Edit link.
- Delete the Entire code between <ref></ref> tags
- Click the Save Button
How to Add Your Citation Link
- Click the Edit Link
- Click the Cite References <ref></ref> button
- Paste your URL between the <ref></ref> tags
- Click the Save Button
Using Google Advanced Search
Following similar footprints, Google Advanced Search can be used to find pages relevant to your niche. The pages that need editing either have missing citations or contain dead links that need a replacement to make the link active.
Use the following example in your query:
site:Wikipedia.org “marketing” “deadlink”.
The query will fetch you a list of Wikipedia pages that contain deadlink in the marketing niche. It would be best to find the most relevant article from the list to insert your link.
It is essential to check how relevant the dead link ins to your link. So, to know what the dead link referred to, use the tool Wayback Machine. This tool helps you extract the original content of the dead link.
Type the URL of the dead link in the Wayback machine tool. This throws back the content of the dead link.
Recreate content that adds value to your site for the 404 pages.
Next, go to the desired Wikipedia page and edit the desired content.
Place your URL and provide the other information asked for.
Conclusion: Remember, Wikipedia is a community by the people and for the people. Getting a backlink should not be your sole purpose. You should focus on adding value and being a part of the community. Then earning backlinks from Wikipedia will be trivial.
If you find link building time consuming and tricky, getting expert help will be a smart idea. Connect with us and will be happy to lend a helping hand.
