How to Leverage Wikipedia for Off-Page Link Building?

The SEO world is constantly evolving. That’s why you need to brush up on your knowledge in this field every few weeks. But one thing that has remained constant in the SEO world is ‘the influence of backlinks’. It has been one of the greatest influencing factors that determine your SEO ranking. And this is why getting backlinks from high ranking websites is a major part of any SEO strategy.

For example, Wikipedia link building strategy.

You might be thinking now, what? Wikipedia? Yes, you read it right. Wikipedia is like the top-ranking website on the internet right now. And getting a backlink from such a website will definitely help your SEO rankings.

But is Getting a Wikipedia Backlink Worth The Effort?

SEO experts have varying opinions on ‘if Wikipedia backlinks bring any value to SEO’. So, what’s the actual deal?

• No-Follow Links

Wikipedia links are ‘no-follow’ backlinks. So, it doesn’t carry any link juice causing it to fall under the category of no real SEO importance. That being said, but Wikipedia has great potential to direct huge traffic towards your website. And till now we know, more traffic means better SEO ranking.

• Builds Authority

The authority of a website is determined by how many high-quality links pointing to that website. And this is exactly where the Wikipedia link building strategy comes into play. Although the backlinks are no-follow, still the links hold a lot of weightage as Wikipedia editors do not allow anyone to simply add a link to their website. So, if you manage to get a link, you will be automatically considered a high-authority figure.

• Attracts More Backlinks

When you get a backlink from Wikipedia, you will attract more backlinks from different websites. The reason? Now, you are considered an authority figure in your niche. As a result, other publishers will want to link to your content. In short, Wikipedia is the ultimate link building machine for you – only if you succeed in getting a backlink.

• A Difficult Process

Getting a backlink from Wikipedia is no easy task. This also means that most of your competitors aren’t able to get a link from them. So, just in case, if you manage to achieve this task, you will automatically rank higher in the SEO race in your niche.

Next question is, how will you manage to get a Wikipedia link building opportunity?

3 Ways to Get a Wikipedia Backlink Opportunity

1. Unique Link

One of the easiest ways to get your link on Wikipedia is to create your account and edit a page with your link. Although this sounds simple, there’s a chance of your link not sticking to the edited content. Why? Because Wikipedia’s editors are quite ruthless in chopping the links out.

2. Broken Link

Another white hat SEO trick is to find a broken link on Wikipedia. You don’t need to be a genius to know that if the link is broken for Wikipedia, it will be the same for all the other websites linked. It means, just because of one broken link, you can find two to two thousand link building opportunities. It is definitely a tedious process to find a broken link, but once found, the benefits are worth the efforts.

3. Dead Link

Another great opportunity to get a link from Wikipedia is to find the dead links and update it with yours. Wikipedia has thousands of links, and hundreds of them are either broken or dead links. Moreover, the editors help you out by flagging them dead links. So, just find them in your niche, and find a great opportunity to link it with yours.

How to Find The Opportunity?

Now, first of all, you need to find the dead links to replace them with yours. So, how are you going to do that? Here are three ways to find dead or broken links on Wikipedia.

1.Wikipedia’s Page of Dead External Links

The best place to look for dead links is on Wikipedia itself. It keeps a track of all the dead links that need to be edited and publishes it on a page. It is definitely a handy feature but just needs extra time to go through all the pages.

2. Google It

Another method, and can be considered as one of the easiest methods, is to google it. 

Run a query on google stating site:wikipwedia.org “keyword” “dead link”. For example, your keyword is marketing, then the search query should be ‘site:wikipedia.org “marketing” “dead link”’. And Google will come up with all the pages that contain a dead link and your keywords. Find the ones related to your niche, and you are done.

3. Make Use of WikiGrabber 

If you want to simplify the process further, make use of the WikiGrabber tool. This tool is specially made to scour through the thousands of Wikipedia pages and find the broken and dead links for you. Just enter the keyword you are looking for, and the tool will show you the results of all the pages that need citations and includes dead links related to your keywords.

How to A Obtain Link That Will Stick?

Now you know how to find opportunities. But that doesn’t mean the work is done. You need to actually make your links stick to the Wikipedia page and not just brush them off. So, how to do that?

1. Create High-Quality Wiki-Worthy Content

Wikipedia has strict guidelines to make sure that they remain authoritative informational sources. And therefore, you need to make sure that the content you link to the website is wiki-worthy.

How will you do that? Simple. Spy on the content of the link you are planning to replace. Use Wayback Machine tool. Just copy and paste the link of the webpage you are planning to replace, and this tool will show you how it looked before. Check the content if it is relevant to your website or niche.

So, create relevant content, link it to the specific page, and write as the content matter expert with stats and other researches as your backup. And you may increase the chances of getting a Wikipedia link pointing to your webpage.

2. Use Wiki-Worthy Links

Wikipedia has strict guidelines as anyone can edit the content. To make sure that the editors don’t flag you as a spammy website, use content that is:

• Relevant
• Not self-promotional
• You are a high DA website

Do not get disheartened yet. Wikipedia accepts content from any website holding a ranking above DA 30. But if some other source is competing for the same space with a higher ranking, then they might get preferential treatment.

Adding Your Link to Wikipedia Page

Finally, we are on the part on how to actually edit the content and use your links on the wiki-page. This is the simplest part. You have two options for editing and adding your links:

1.Registering an Account

This mentions your name as a recognised contributor for the information edits.

2. Without an Account

You will not receive any credits for this edit and your IP address will be used in place of your name.

Once you are done deciding which method to use, go to the page and click on the ‘edit’ option. Add your link by including it in the ‘cite’ option. And then, do not forget to save the changes you have made to the webpage.

Tada! You are done adding your link to the Wikipedia page.

Final Thoughts: It is Worth It

I agree that it is quite a task to search, create, edit, and finally get approved by the editors to get a mere Wikipedia backlink. But it is definitely worth all the efforts. Why? Because it helps you in:

• Establishing authority in your niche
• Driving traffic to your website
• Boosting your SEO ranking

So, go and try these steps to get a Wikipedia link building opportunity and give a boost to your off-page SEO tricks and strategies.