When it Comes to Wikipedia Nofollow Doesn't Mean No Value

In the land of link obsessed search marketers, the nofollow tag is not popular. Especially when sites like Wikipedia make use of it. Why? Because the nofollow tag means that search engines won't pick up the incoming link and use it to boost search rankings. Yes, a link on Wikipedia can be incredibly useful in terms of direct traffic, but if you're obsessed with links for the sake of increased rankings, a nofollow can be a deal breaker.

Unless you're crafty like Matt McGee.

Matt has a great post today over at Small Business SEM that points out the incoming link benefits of a Wikipedia listing. Yes, he mentions the obvious traffic potential, but he also points out that with Wikipedia content doesn't just appear on Wikipedia...

He goes on to give an example of content showing up on a third party site without the nofollow in place, meaning that the Wikipedia content IS sending some link juice toward the linked sites.

I'd also point out that the value of Wikipedia traffic tends to be pretty high as well. When Matt Bailey did some talks on engagement rates from various social media sources earlier this year, he found that Wikipedia traffic tended to be very highly engaged and to have a pretty strong conversion rate.

Another good reason to remind yourself that sometimes you gain more value from the link traffic than from the link juice.