Ways to Get Wikipedia Backlinks | Are they important for SEO

I did not add Wikipedia links as a way to get backlinks to your blog in my previous post where I discussed easy ways to get backlinks in 2015, because I wanted to share the trick in an elaborated way which I have done here.

There may be many questions in your mind, are Wikipedia backlinks even important for your blog ? Is it easy to get backlinks from Wikipedia, how do we get links from Wikipedia ? There may be many questions on Wikipedia backlinks and I had some experience on them, in this blog post, I will try to cover up everything.

Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia contributed by the millions of people who use it. It is seventh most visited website in the world as per Similarweb.com and Alexa.com. The traffic alone for Wikipedia in the month of December 2014 was expected to be around 3.3 billion as per similarweb with an average page view of 3.12 per visit.

Are Wikipedia backlinks important ?

<a rel=”nofollow” class=”external free” href=”http://www.bucsnation.com/2014/1/1/5253078/mike-sullivan-retrospective”>http://www.bucsnation.com/2014/1/1/5253078/mike-sullivan-retrospective</a>

The above code is an example generated from Wikipedia page HTML source where it links to one of its external reference website. The tag external and nofollow itself represents that Wikipedia does not pass link juice to the external reference websites.  So in a general, basic and traditional knowledge, Wikipedia backlinks are not much useful to webmaster and they do not add value to your blog.

However Google and search engines have changed over the course of time. There was a time when you could accumulate dofollow backlinks with targeted keywords in your anchor texts from high PR websites and you would rank ultimately, but the concept has changed as search engines have been improving their algorithms. Google has been updating its algorithm to ensure great user experience.

There are different user access levels in Wikipedia. From unregistered IP addresses to newly registered users to administrators. There are roughly 24 million authors in Wikipedia and you can be one of them, however the user generated encyclopedia ensures its credibility with different administrative staffs that confirms quality assurance. Although you can update Wikipedia article yourself, the users with higher level access checks and confirms that the content you have added adds value to the wiki rather than self promotion.

Above figure shows Wikipedia’s traffic insight from similarweb. According to figure, search engine loves Wikipedia because of the fact that it has been able to maintain its quality. About 81% of the Wikipedia’s traffic is organic which ensure search engines like Google regards Wikipedia as a high authority websites. It is almost impossible for you to get your links permanently on Wikis until they add value to the readers. So if you have a link from Wikipedia, search engines certainly appreciate that. You would get a good value from Wikipedia, even they are nofollow links, because more naturally valuable the links are, more value you get from search Engines.

Beside backlinks, you would also get some traffic from Wikipedia links.

The above image is the screenshot of the traffic that I got from wikipedia in a year(Jan 2014 to Dec 2014) to my football blog givemegoal.com that I sold recently. Although the number is not very high, but at least I got some referral traffic from Wikipedia.

How to Get Wikipedia Backlinks

Now that we already know the value of Wikipedia backlinks, we will be discussing on the ways to achieve the links. I had a lot of backlinks for my football related blog from Wikipedia and I will discuss on how I got them.

You will need to find some wiki that you can have your links on. They should be related to your content and your links should add value to the wiki, until and unless you want your links permanent in Wikipedia.

The above figure is a screenshot of references from Wikipedia page of Nepalese Footballer Bimal Gharti Magar. I had four links from my previous website in the references. Besides, I had my links approved in tons of Footballer’s profile, so until you add value to the wiki, it is very easy to get links from wikipedia.

So what do you do to get links from Wikipedia ?

Before starting, you will need to create a profile and start contributing to Wikipedia. Although you can edit wiki as an unregistered user and Wikipedia tracks you from your IP address, however links added from valuable profiles are highly likely to get for a long time. So before adding links, I would suggest you to create your profile and contribute to the community. Contribution means to edit some other Wikipedia pages that needs to get updated. This way, you will get your Wikipedia profile more valuable.

Second, search for the wiki where you can add your own links, you can always use Google for the process. For example, you can use this keyword to get wiki related to your niche.

site:wikipedia.org “your keyword”

search for this keyword and you will get wiki related to your blogs where you can add links.

In the above image, I have searched for wiki with my keywords and with ‘citation needed’. These means Wiki has something that needs reference, and here you get the advantage. Wikipedia itself has been asking for the links. So if your link can prove the information, then your links are more likely to get approved. You can now link your website to a Wikipedia for your existing blog post that adds value, or you can create a new content to get your links approved.

Beside, you can also search similarly with ‘dead links’ instead of ‘citation needed’. Dead link refers to websites that were previously live but now does not exists. You can replace your links with the links those are dead.

The two in one advantage

The dead link search not only helps you get Wikipedia backlinks but also opens you with some more options on getting backlinks. The article by Doug Cunnington explains ho you can take advantage of dead links with the help of wikipedia. Search for dead links in Wikipedia with your keywords and spy their backlinks and take them into your own advantage. Once you find websites that links to those dead link, you can contact the webmaster personally and ask them to replace the dead link with your blog links.

You can find out the complete guide of broken link building on moz’s broken link building bible, which is referred to as one of the most essential and effective backlinking strategy.

Wrapping things up

It is quite easy to get Wikipedia backlinks until you provide value to the pages. You can certainly enjoy great value from Wikipedia links and get referral traffic to your blog at the same time.

Beside you can also use Wikipedia to find out broken or dead links, check the sites that have linked in to those dead links and ask the webmaster to replace the link with your content.

Comment your thoughts below, and I will try to reply every one of them.