I don’t pretend to be an expert on SEO, but I can spot a good idea and follow up on it. The following, when done correctly, can benefit both wikipedia and you (original credit goes to the author, Dominic of DigitalPoint forums).
1. Get yourself linked to from Wikipedia. You can either add your own link to a relevant page (somewhat tacky and could be construed as astroturfing) or wait until someone else ads a link to your valued content. Don’t add your link to pages that aren’t relevant. Its an easy way to make wikipedians angry (karma’s a bitch);
2. Search wikipedia via google for a mention of your keyword / phrase. Edit appropriate resultant pages to link to the wiki page that links to your page. This funnels visitors and Pagerank, which can ultimately help increase traffic;
3. I’m not sure I agree with the following, but because wikipedia can be edited by anyone the following situation may occur. So you should have an idea of what could be done. If someone repeatedly edit’s your link out of the wiki page, but they still link to your competition, you can click the ‘What links here’ in the lower left column and do the reverse of the above by removing the pages that link to the current page and thereby decreasing the overall importance of the page.
09 May 06
11:25 am
Have you tried this?
09 May 06
11:30 am
Why do you ask? I have never linked to myself from wikipedia.
09 May 06
6:51 pm
Well maybe you should! Lots of these people (not all) make a ton of money for spewing complete bullshit.
Interesting. I came across a link to my own brother’s e-commerce blog on Wikipedia which he did not put up there… what was really odd was that the entry was about/by ShopWiki or whatever that service is long before their launch and updated as time went on… like free PR, not actual objective content. I was pissed people were using Wikipedia like that and getting away with it, but it had a link to my brother so I had to let it go.
I’ve wanted to edit pages on Wikipedia with my knowledge of certain things that I have on pages with outdated material or lacking content but I don’t really know much about proper procedure, don’t want to read the epic amount of documentation, and I’m scared of the wikipeianazis bring their wrath down upon me if I were to do something wrong, haha.
I think the only time you should add a link to your own material is if it’s VERY specifically related to a very specific topic, such as if you’ve written up articles on some academic research you’ve done in a certain field. That would be acceptable.
If you’re on the fence about it, maybe you could post it to the pages Talk page or whatever and say it’s content of your own so you don’t want to add it but if anyone wants to review your submission and add it you’d like to contribute in that manner.
I went to add some info recently actually and I can’t remember my password for the life of me, lol.
09 May 06
8:25 pm
Thats a good idea (regarding being on the fence). Add the link, leave a note, and someone will get back to you if they don’t like it. Or maybe a competitor won’t get back to you and just delete it. But at least you are transparent.
I have added links to wiki pages from other wiki pages (where appropriate), and I have written completely new pages. In both cases I haven’t done academic research on the subject, but it might be that academic research isn’t really apprpropriate. Editing in wikipedia is so easy, its a wonder why it isn’t a mess of crap.
10 May 06
2:43 am
Contributing to Wiki…
Here's a good SEO tip about using wiki for SEO. In fact, I use this one myself. Wikis contain vital information about specific topics. The idea behind a wiki is to have a repository of user editable encyclopedia (wikipedia)…….
15 May 06
3:15 pm
As a sometime Wikipedian, I have to object to this. If you are adding a link to wikipedia for the purpose of increasing your pagerank, you are doing it for the wrong reason. Articles like these are going to flood the Wiki with ‘vanity links’ making the Wiki editors very grumpy and suspicious of any link to a blog. Net result, it’s going to be harder to link to actually useful information.
As for removing internal Wiki links, well that really sucks. Doing crap like that is likely to get you banned from Wikipedia. It’s not a good idea and it will not help your page rank.
Why not spend your time building up original content on your website, instead of tearing down Wikipedia?
16 May 06
8:43 am
Adding links for purely pr purposes is tacky, no doubt. But I recently found one of my pages linked to from wikipedia. The page was sort of orphaned and backward, out of the way. By adding a few links from highly relevant associated topics the orphaned page became much more accessible. As a bonus, I see a little traffic. Everybody wins. Isn’t this what the wiki is about — constant improvement?
Is this tearing down wikipedia? No.
As to removing wiki links, I prefaced it with my thoughts on the matter (’I'm not sure I agree with this…’). And, I don’t think removing links would get you banned unless you were removing relevant content links.
A lot of SEO is shady. Like many things, this could be used for good or bad. Either way, tearing down the wiki is a little much. Besides, I believe in Karma — I wrote a whole new page for wikipedia. Everybody wins.
17 May 06
8:31 am
Just remember the primary goal of wikipedia: to be an encyclopedia. Although you may not abuse the system, other readers of this article and the other forum will. I know wikipedia can handle it, but I think the net result is that it will be harder to link to any blog.
18 May 06
6:49 pm
Hey Sherman, in case you check back in, see what I said in my comment above and let me know if that would be proper procedure if you had a link to extremely relevant material that you were the author of, if you should post it to the discussion page for that topic and let objective 3rd parties review and decide whether or not it should be there.
I had learned a lot about wikipedia before as I tend to delve into things but thanks to illness I really don’t retain much of what I’ve done for the past few years without repeating it an extreme amount.
So the question is, is there any way to contribute without devoting a portion of my life to going over the rules and practices time and time again? Even if it’s just flagging something that I think is highly questionable material, is there a simple way to do that?
It’s an invaluable resource and sometimes I see things I’d like to add missing material to or sometimes I come across pages that really frustrate me as I feel they have no place there such as some of the obviously commercial pr that might fly under the radar of others. Unfortunately I don’t have the time it would take me these days to invest in learning what should be a simple matter for someone that’s been online long enough to have been a CIS Wizop and later a news editor for a few big sites in the mid 90s. Sadly, there’s no entry I can even find involving the term wizop or any variant thereof, but we were the people in charge of the forums that made up Compuserve. But as I said, I wouldn’t know where to begin adding my knowledge of the intracacies and hierarchies that made that service tick.
18 May 06
8:43 pm
I’m sorry if my post seemed overly harsh. After reading Dominic’s article I got a little testy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Contents/Getting_started
If you want to add something to Wikipedia, just do it. The #1 guideline is that it should be material that belongs in an encyclopedia, verifiable fact and original material. If you see commercial PR, you can either try to rewrite it or just delete it. Just make sure to write a short justification in the edit summary. Make sure you read the discussion page for an article you are editing. Don’t worry, if you screw up someone else can revert the page. I think it’s also better to make small incremental edits, than to rewrite an entire page in one shot (but sometimes it’s called for).
If you would like to add an article on Wizop: I would suggest creating a Wikipedia username and logon. Then do a search for Wizop, when nothing comes up you can click “create this article”. Go ahead and link to your site, but it would be good etiquette to disclose the possible conflict of interest on the discussion page.
Anyway deepthought is right when he said that you won’t get banned for removing links. “With enough eyes all bugs are shallow.” Although that is meant to describe open source, that phrase exemplifies what powers Wikipedia too.
My point is that you should dive in and do it. If you act in good faith and communicate with the other editors then you will have no problems.
19 May 06
2:43 pm
That’s nothing else than spam. The Wikipedia team asks to not to write about youself in the free encyclopedia.
19 May 06
5:37 pm
No one said they were writing about themselves. Granted, there was talk of editing the wiki such that both the wiki and you benifit. But you won’t find a page on maxpower on wikipedia (if you do, I haven’t written it!).
26 May 06
11:24 pm
People who are power Wikipedians would be wise to simply put the URLs (their own, their friends’, their faves) on their user homepages. That way, the articles retain integrity.
03 Jun 06
1:21 pm
I think the wikipedia thing is really useful
06 Jun 06
12:51 am
Thanks for the tip. Wiki is getting more and more indispensable to my daily routine.
18 Sep 06
7:37 am
No one can deny how such link would be useful, but it’s not an easy job to get that link.
15 Oct 06
2:00 pm
I tried to make an article on Wikipedia about my website once but it got deleted the next day :(. Seems they have pretty good moderation over at WikiPedia. Might try this one when my site gets more popular though.
13 Jul 07
11:57 pm
This won’t work because of the Wikipedia editor nerds who scan the site in order to find links like this and delete them. There’s other ways.