Sphinn - Wikipedia is #1 : What Are You Going to Do About It?

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Wikipedia is #1 : What Are You Going to Do About It?

Went Hot: September 25, 2007 - 10:18 am
Posted By: lorenbaker 649 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.searchenginejournal.com)
Category: Google SEO

We all know Google loves Wikipedia. Here are some reasons why and what we as SEO's, bloggers and web publsihers can learn from the Google-Wikipedia relationship; and apply them to our own sites.

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from patbdoyle 649 days ago #

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Excellent article. Some very good lessons to be learned. Thanks! P.S. I wonder if the underscores rather than dashes helps too: Animal_Farm rather than animal-farm: it just looks better and less spammy.

from planetc1 649 days ago #

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Thanks Loren, this is something that really pisses me off and it's good to get it put in my face as a reminder of work to be done.

from mpilatow 649 days ago #

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Excellent points. When I link to external sites I generally take the time to find definitive resources and while Wikipedia offers decent top level info in most cases there are much more desrving sites. I still tend to believe that laziness is the biggest reason why Wikipedia stays high in the SERP. Everyone complains about them but then they go and link to them because they are too lazy to find a better resource. That one always makes me laugh and grit my teeth. On one blog post they cry about Wiki owning the top positions and the next post has a freaking link to Wikipedia.

from corey 649 days ago #

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when wikipedia is #1 its easier for me to steal that spot, so i don't mind it so much. here's the formula:

1. trade links with the wiki. insert your link using anchor text that matches your page title and the phrase you're trying to steal, and link to the wiki from your page. i use more generic text for the link back to the wiki like "widgets on wikipedia"

2. wait for 3 months.

3. remove your link to the wiki so the link is now one way only from the wiki to your page.

that's how i'm stealing wikipedia's #1 spots. what seems to happen is that the traffic from wikipedia earns you additional links all over the place, and then when you break the link exchange the value of the link from wikipedia increases.

pages that are very similar that don't get the wiki link (maybe i used dmoz instead) take way longer to climb to the top of page 1, and have trouble out ranking the wiki.