Wikipedia - a source of traffic
Last week I added a link to a Wikipedia page. The link goes to one of the pages in this blog. That link has brought in well over 100 extra visitors so far…
So, 100 visitors is not that much, but extra traffic means extra readers. Extra readers means good things, right? Of course, I have no idea if those people who linked through read any of the blog other than tha actual linked page…
What is Wikipedia
Basically a very large site detailing "everything". You can find pages from Christina Aguilera to the downfall of the Roman Empire, and everything in between. It's put together by the public, hence it is very easy to manipulate to your own needs. Simply edit the page to add your link. Link: Wikipedia
Wikipedia Spamming
There are tools and systems out there which can be used to "spam" wikipedia. This is not what makes the world go around. I am talking only of adding serious links to serious Wikipedia pages. Not fluff links that help nobody.
Traffic and other benefits
Wikipedia has massive amounts of traffic. By adding good links to pages, you can make some of that traffic flow to your sites. Page Rank - most Wikipedia pages have PR of at least 3, usually 4, sometimes 5, even 6 - consider that most Wikipedia pages have very few outgoing links, it is possible to become the sole "out link" on a PR5 page…if PR floats your boat, that is bound to help with rankings and your eventual PR.
Actual Stats
I added a link on a Wikipedia PR4 page. The page in this blog that I linked to is already at #17 in the Google Serps for Keyword 1, and #10 for keyword 2. Bear in mind that high PR pages (4 or better) get spidered by Google all the time, you can plainly see the benefit of a link…
Go To It!
Please post good and useful links to this resource; Wikipedia
Comment by Dave — April 26, 2007 @ 3:44 pm
Wikipedia won't of course give you PR link-love as it implements the no-follow tag.
It's certainly a good way to build credibility and your authority on a subject, and give you extra traffic via Wikipedia.
A link I placed on Wikipedia, for example, lead a journalist to visit one of my sites and contact me in regards to an article she was writing.
Voila! Instant national exposure through a few minutes work.
Comment by James — April 26, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
I was under the impression that Wikipedia used nofollow on links so PR would not transfer so I have not tried to get links from Wikipedia.
Even if it does not, from what you say here, the traffic alone would be worth it.
Thanks
Comment by gary — April 26, 2007 @ 5:09 pm
You are quite right. Probably done to stop those tools being employed by various little linkspam scrotes.
No bother; Y!,MSN and myriad others take little notice of nofollow - and the normal traffic from the link is well worth it.
Comment by Oli Allen — April 26, 2007 @ 6:32 pm
Of course, if the hardcore Wikipedia users get even a feeling that you own the link…
Comment by gary — April 27, 2007 @ 3:27 pm
Yeah, there are already some users who have taken my comments as meaning we should all be spamming Wikipedia with links to MFA sites and all the rest of it.
Here ya go;
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-April/031050.html
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2007-April/031051.html
Which is precisely what I am not advising. I am advising to add good, useful links to relevant Wikipedia pages.
Comment by Fred Bauder — April 27, 2007 @ 3:40 pm
Good useful links are fine. Crap is not.
Comment by Steve Summit — April 27, 2007 @ 3:49 pm
Here's the deal with "good, useful links". Are you adding them primarily to benefit the person reading the Wikipedia article? If so, great. But if your primary (or even secondary) motive is to drive traffic to your site, well, in that case you're serving yourself first. And, sorry to say, Wikipedia exists to serve its users, not you.
Comment by pcb21 — April 27, 2007 @ 6:10 pm
Good useful links are good useful links, irrespective of who posts them. If a few extra bits of traffic encourages people to make WP better by adding good useful links, then everyone's a winner.
Comment by gary — April 27, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
Seems as though I might have inadvertently set some people off…the debate about spamming will go on forever.
However, one of the Wikipedia Users raises a good point about the use of nofollow; Wikipedia is all about content which is "good", and yet outgoing links are "nofollowed". What this means is that Wikipedia don't trust their own content. And if they don't trust it, why should the users?
Now I have zero concern whether or not links are nofollowed - that's completely up to the site owner. The intent of this post was to show that traffic can be got from the most unlikely of sources - consider that the page I added the link to, is a page detailing an outdated piece of software! I expected hardly any visitors, perhaps 3 or 4 per week. To get 100, was surprising and pleasing.
So where does this leave things? Well, the link I added to Wikipedia is still there on the page, though someone has kindly changed it to a proper external link. Being a "noob" Wikipedia user, I added it under the "see also" heading. Whoever did that, thank you very much
It's been interesting to see the reaction, not only on the Wikipedia Mailing List, but also on the SEO forums that have linked here and of course on this blog post. Perhaps we have all learned something new today
Comment by Oli — April 27, 2007 @ 11:22 pm
From the POV of Wikipedia, they're right not to trust the content - I could go on there, make something up that looks vaguely belivable and reference my own site as a source.
Perhaps a better system would be to allow trusted admin users to "de-nofollow" certain links, after they had been checked for accuracy.
Unlikely to happen, of course
Comment by Matthew Brown — April 28, 2007 @ 12:30 am
Actually, some method of whitelisting links has been discussed; not sure if it'll get implemented, since Wikipedia has more programming requests than programmers willing/able to work on it.
Nofollow has cut down on the people spamming random links hidden inside off-the-screen divs and other such tricks. It's less of an issue with respect to on-topic spam, which tends to get more human attention anyway.
Comment by gary — April 28, 2007 @ 12:28 pm
I believe that people rely on "nofollow" too much - it's a solution which tries to jam a square peg into a round hole. Better than nothing though, I guess.
Thanks for your comments all.
Comment by ash — May 1, 2007 @ 2:58 pm
I believe the nofollow tag is seen by search engines as
'Hey, this site owner doesnt really know this owner all that well, so lets not give him any credit for that link'
Ive added my link (china car times) to a few articles on Wikipedia - always in the external links section and always to the right page. If wiki has a page on the automaker (for example) Geely, I put a link in the external links to my info on Geely.
Its a shame the blasted moderators always see it as spam, when it is clearly a resource that would be beneficial to a person doing research on the automaker Geely, Chery, etc.
Comment by gary — May 3, 2007 @ 9:07 am
Funnily enough, the external link to a good resource on this blog has been removed from the wikipedia page. Reason given; this here (traffic from wikipedia) post.
Not that the actual post linked to is not relevant or a spammy type MFA site or anything, oh no, it's the fact that I posted about the "traffic" aspect. Kind of strange reasoning. Oh well.
Comment by Will — May 3, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
The first rule about Fight Club…
Comment by Oli — May 3, 2007 @ 10:24 pm
Doesn't suprise me, there's much more politics involved in Wikipedia than consideration for end users
Comment by look, research! — May 4, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
Read (intro/nutshell): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links
Tremble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents/Links
Consider (intro/nutshell): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest
Think: Best for you, and best for Wikipedia, is to add information (a sentence, a paragraph) to the article, and then cite the useful site as your source. That way everyone is happy, and your link is far less likely to be removed.
Use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_sources
Comment by Oli — May 5, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest in a nutshell: Don't write articles that you actually know something about