Some digital marketers choose to leverage link building strategies when working with Wikipedia. The large online reference library is a perfect target for link building, considering the millions of articles and the sheer number of external links that live on the site.
Link building is a strategy that allows individuals, brands, and companies to improve their backlink profiles, and thus their SEO efforts. With the help of Wikipedia, you can strategically recommend your preferred links be added to key articles that 1: pertain to your business and 2: provide additional, relevant information to searchers.
Today we’ll be discussing how to use Wikipedia for link building, how to find link building opportunities, and how to suggest links be added within Wiki articles.
How to Find Broken Links on Wikipedia?
Finding broken links (also called “dead links”) and suggesting they be replaced with your preferred link is a common strategy used on Wikipedia. It not only fixes a problem (a link that doesn’t work when searchers click on it) but it also helps you step closer to achieving your digital marketing goals.
For starters, a “broken link” is one that, for various reasons, does not open the intended content for those that click on it. You may experience long loading screens, a 404 error, or an error message that says the page doesn’t exist anymore.
To find these link building opportunities on Wikipedia, you should first think about what types of topics make sense for your link to appear in. For example, if you run a specialized french restaurant, maybe you could appear in articles discussing the history of French Cuisine or in a Wiki article about popular restaurants in your city.
Once you’ve figured out the topics that make sense for your brand, it’s time to develop your broken link strategy.
Strategy #1: Check the Competition
No matter what type of marketing you do, it’s always a good idea to check in on the competition. This is because knowing what kinds of links your competitors are getting will clue you in to what kinds of links you could expect to earn as well.
You can check your competitor’s backlink profiles through different marketing platforms like SEMrush, Ahrefs, and other free tools across the web. Take a look at your competitors’ broken links – are any of them from Wikipedia? These are good opportunities to seek out. Once you know which Wikipedia pages they are coming from, you can make a note to visit that page for other broken links and request edits.
The edits you suggest will replace any current broken links with active, working links coming straight from your page. You can suggest link changes be made in the “talk” section of the respective Wikipedia page on the upper right side. This method will not only boost the quantity of links in your backlink profile, but give your competition something to sweat over, too.
Strategy #2: Check Wikipedia
After checking for ideas from your competition, you can then find broken links directly from the source itself, Wikipedia. To do this, you can search for the phrase “dead link” that appears in the reference lists of Wikipedia articles.
Once you find the dead link, you can request the link be replaced with your page instead. You can even search Wikipedia’s dedicated page to all the broken links they have recorded at any given time.
Be careful though, because it’s not a good idea to mindlessly go editing your link into a bunch of random articles (or too many within the same article, either.) Wikipedia editors and admin will take note of this and will stifle your SEO efforts.
Strategy #3: Use a Search Engine
Lastly, you can use Google or other search engines to quickly find broken or dead link opportunities. In the search bar, use the search command: “site:Wikipedia.org” [your keyword] “intext:dead link”.
This will instruct the search engine to cater your results specifically to only broken links on Wikipedia that are centered around your keywords. You can do this search multiple times with a variety of keywords to give yourself a breadth of articles to choose from. Plus, if some don’t get approved, then at least you’ll have a few others to strive for.
This strategy is the quickest and most effective way to find and leverage dead links on Wikipedia.
How to Add Links to a Wikipedia Article
You might be wondering how to simply add links to Wikipedia, regardless of their status as broken or active. The good news about Wikipedia is that any user can suggest edits to any article.
As a registered user, you can create anonymous edits by clicking on the top right hand corner of any article where it says “talk.” On this tab, you’ll see directions for suggesting edits and this is where you’ll suggest your links be added. You may need to give reason as to why the link should be included.
When using Wikipedia for link building, you should keep in mind that Wikipedia does not tolerate spam and content should always follow the guidelines of being neutral in point-of-view and unbiased. Try adding links to Wikipedia articles and see how it works in addition to other strategies in your digital marketing plan.
Closing
Link building is one of several ways individuals, businesses, and brands use Wikipedia for their marketing efforts. If you don’t have a designated marketing professional on your team, or working on Wikipedia is outside your realm of comfort, speak to a Wikipedia expert who knows the ins and outs of the extensive database. It can help you get the results you’re looking for in a reasonable amount of time. Wiki experts can help you with all things Wikipedia page creation, Wikipedia page deletion, libel and privacy invasion, and more. Check out our other articles for more information on utilizing Wikipedia!
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