July 17, 2007 Comments
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Wikipedia, the often misunderstood group edited encyclopedia, has long had a love it or hate it relationship with search marketers. While their decision this past year to mark outgoing links with the nofollow tag has lowered their value in some search marketers eyes, those who seek links for traffic sake know that a well placed link in Wikipedia can send wonderfully engaged traffic. Even more importantly, Wikipedia entries rank well on search engines and can help secure yet another placement in the top ten for your business name. The question is, how does a search marketer make use of Wikipedia without setting off a firestorm among the editors?
Wikipedia Administrator Durova offers up some insight and some words of wisdom in a column today over at Search Engine Land.
After sharing some insight into the perils of editing entries to spin them in a positive direction, Durova puts together a list of "eight underused Wikipedia white hat strategies."
Here are four of them:
1. Provide line citations. This is one point where an SEO professional's interests often coincide with Wikipedia's goals: factual verification is important to the project. When used judiciously, citations can be the most durable way to send traffic to your client's website. Focus on topics where that site is strong on content and compliant with Wikipedia's Reliable Sources guideline. In many instances a client's site may be a self-published source, which limits how it can be used as a reference. Sourcing is welcome at articles that are already flagged with requests for citations. In other instances it is better to post preformatted citation suggestions at article talk pages. Supply text that summarizes the referenced content when making a citation, use wikimarkup, and conform to whatever citation format is already in use at the page. Act with care in order to avoid Wikipedia's spam blacklist or criticism from volunteer editors. Tailor each suggestion to relevant content in the particular article.
2. Use edit summaries. These are courtesies to other editors who review your contributions in history files. Edit summaries are also an effective feedback to self-limit against link spam. If you can't think of anything better to write than "inserting outgoing link", it's time to rethink your practices.
3. Seek mentorship. Wikipedia's Adopt-a-user mentorship program helps new users adjust to site standards. This can be particularly useful because some people come to the site with misconceptions drawn from inaccuracies in mainstream press reports about Wikipedia. Experienced editors and administrators interpret formal mentorship as a positive sign.
4. Get to know the "what links here" tool. Each Wikipedia page has an index that controls the internal incoming traffic. Wherever a Wikipedia article has a durable outgoing link to your website, examine its incoming links list for any obvious omissions, then run a text search on those omitted pages. If the title of the other article already exists in unlinked form, go ahead and link it. Otherwise compose sample linking text and propose it at that article's talk page.
The other four suggestions follow suit with these four. All of them basically remind users to learn how the system works, to play well within the rules and to consider what your edits are offering to the Wikipedia readership rather than simply to your own business ego.
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