News Source: http://www.smallbusinesssem.com
Published: Jul 13, 2007 - 12:12 pm
Story Found By: MattMcGee 1780 Days ago
Category: Link Building
That’s true, but we’re overlooking one Big Fact: Wikipedia content doesn’t only appear on Wikipedia.com. It’s freely licensed, and liberally used by other sites.
And the external links aren’t always no-followed on those other sites.
Want an example?
13 Comments
Comments
This was an excellent point, Matt -- and the example from Answers.com makes it so clear.
Embarrassed to say - but I had no idea. I had continued to create the links b/c of all the traffic it sent. Thanks for pointing that out Matt! It makes everything much more worthwhile.
I used to hammer the wiki with links to our various domains. All of them being relevant, not spam. They’ve been able to remain in Wiki to date and even though the dreaded "no follow" tag is there, we get tons of referrals, almost always from the "external links" section. One domain, for example, received 400+ visits from a wiki page in a month, out of 4200 visits. It’s a small site, but thats a great percentage of visitors from wiki. Great weekend to all!
the hated and much maligned wikipedia does still serve a purpose for SEOs
Valid point. And one that many don’t even think of. Even if you can’t count on Wikipedia to give you any link love, you do get a nice chunk (several of our clients do) of visitor referrals from placing external links.
yeah we have seen this over the past year. one of our analysts noticed it when studying a client’s inbound links. Definitely a good reason to get links in wikipedia, at least for as long as the ride lasts. ;) Additionally, we are actually seeing a blip on the radar when it comes to referrals from wikipedia. who would have thunk it? I link for the purpose of both traffic and potential SEO value! :p
I thought this was such a good post when I read it yesterday, Matt. And here it is, at the top of Sphinn! Way to go. Miriam
Followed or not followed I’ve seen up to 25% of sites total traffic coming from less than 5 appropriate Wikipedia links.
Bear in mind that spamming Wikipedia is very dangerous. Once you get blacklisted, all your links disappear, and your search rankings may fall through the floor too because the blacklist is public and licensed GFDL. How could Matt Cutts ignore this list when it’s presented on a silver platter?
"How could Matt Cutts ignore this list when it’s presented on a silver platter?" Maybe he sees the conversation for what it is and you’re the one looking for villians.
I have had success with this kind of situation, which I appreciated. Wikipedia didn’t give me any juice on the links, but it was certainly worthy of some in my particular cases. Happily I got it from some other scrapers. If a link is worthy of surviving the editors at Wikipedia, that’s often a testament of value.
But it’s going to take more than this to make me like Wikipedia.
Indeed. Plus, if you check out the "discussions" pages, you’ll find those link ARE do follow (at least last time I looked!