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Wikipedia is a useful tool for SEO
Although not all of its content is fact-based, much of it is still very informative and valuable to know about brands and companies!
Many people are familiar with how you can use Wikipedia as free content to gain knowledge or learn something new, but what many don’t realize is that some of this information can also be used to boost your search engine rankings and increase traffic to your site.
In this article, we will go over five ways that you can leverage inspiration, media, and other forms of content from Wikipedia to improve your online presence and get more exposure.
What to do when Wikipedia is not accurate
When doing content research, make sure that what you are reading is from an authentic source. Check if there have been any changes made to the article recently or whether it has been updated frequently.
Does this sound too easy? It can be difficult at times!
There was a recent scandal where some writers were paid by another writer to write fake reviews of their product. These reviewers would use good quality sources to back up their claims and even got some high ratings which helped them gain credibility with people who read the review.
It is very important to be careful about online reviews as they can heavily influence other people’s decisions to buy or not buy a product. A few bad reviews may scare away potential buyers so it is best to be aware of that.
Wikipedia is a great tool in helping your business grow but you need to be extra cautious about how much trust you place in the website. Even though it is free to access, it does cost the publishers money to keep running and updating the articles.
Avoid using content from Wikipedia
Many people begin to edit articles or create new pages on Wikipedia by the help wikipedia page writers of in order to earn extra points or even rewards. It is not always obvious what will get rewarded though.
Some individuals add external links to their user page or write an article about their favorite movie that is already covered with another article. This may look good at first, but it can backfire later when both topics are linked together.
In these cases, users might feel compelled to contribute more to keep up with the trends, which could lead to plagiarism or negative comments. These distractions can easily break down morale of community members and prevent others from editing or creating new content as well.
Wikipedia has many opportunities to generate revenue through advertisements and sponsored content. The most effective ways to use this income is still debated, however.
Avoid advertising directly on the site by promoting products or services via link exchanges, etc. Instead, spend your money elsewhere to maximize results.
Use Wikipedia for content marketing
With all of the information at our fingertips, it is easy to get distracted by the amount of data we have access to. With the internet growing more crowded with every passing day, using other people’s research as your own source material has become common practice.
By incorporating sources that are already popular, you start to rack up some very impressive credentials for yourself – you gave credit to someone else!
This isn’t always practical, however. For example, if you were doing an article about how to bake the best chocolate chip cookies, who would you give credit to? Probably not anyone outside of your family unless they actually held a cookie baking contest under their name!
Luckily, there are plenty of great online resources available to help you out. Two of my favorite go-to sites are Wikipedia and How To Give Feedback.
You see, both of these websites contain lots of helpful tips and tricks for those reading their articles. They also include ways to improve your writing or design skills by looking around them.
Their main goal is to create a community where everyone can contribute and learn from each other, so most users are willing to share their knowledge with others.
That being said, browsing through their pages quickly reveals something interesting: almost everything is linkable. Almost anything you want to read or learn about can be linked to another site or page just like this one.
Your job now is to find the right place to put those links.
Combine it with blog post content
Another way to use Wikipedia as free content is to combine it with other writing you already create. Rather than creating an article about how great your favorite movie or TV show is, why not make a list of all the important themes in the show and then link to the corresponding article? or how about linking to an anecdote or story related to the topic?
This can be done very easily using our website tool that does the hard work of finding quality links for you! Simply pick the topic you would like to write about, and we will quickly find articles and resources to improve your site’s page rank.
We have made it easy to keep up with the latest news on Wikipedia by adding an “Add to Wiki” button directly on each article. Creating high-quality content is one of the most effective ways to gain backlinks, so if you are struggling to come up with ideas, try looking through some of the popular topics on Wikipedia and see what sparks inspiration.
Adapt your writing style
In addition to using information from sources such as encyclopedias or other websites, you can also use articles written by other people to help promote your product or service.
There are many ways to do this, but one of my favorite is simply copying what successful companies have done before.
By analyzing how corporations used marketing strategies and incorporating these into our own, we get some great ideas that we can apply to our own projects.
What I mean by that is, instead of just reading about how Amazon marketed their products, why not find something else they published and see if it applies to yours?
You could even look at the things they’re no longer advertising and see whether there’s anything similar in your field. Then, add those components to make your own advertisement!
This way, you’ll be giving new life to old tips and tricks while developing your own.
Reference Wikipedia articles
A great way to use Wikipedia as content or direct link bait is to look at an area of your business domain that people are already very familiar with. For example, if your company does online courses, you can pick any topic about learning online and see what links there are to other related pages on Wikipedia.
You could also do a quick research project by picking a random topic and seeing what Wikipedia articles linked-to-match. These will almost always be solid references that other sites mentioned as important resources!
Your website can then contain a short article built off of one of those references, accompanied by a picture or two to make it more engaging. If possible, include some inline comments about the referenced page so people can talk about it together.
This will help drive organic traffic to your site, while simultaneously creating valuable content that people can share.
Link to other websites
A link is another way to use your website as an avenue to promote someone else’s site or service. It’s typically referred to as a “link up” which means you give credit to something excellent that existed before you made it yours by incorporating some of their ideas into your own.
By adding quality links from external sources to your page or article, they will help boost the authority of your site!
Many people start using linking as part of what makes an effective link. Some examples include posting about related topics or products on social media, writing comprehensive original content on your site or product, and actively promoting others via social channels and forums.
But one of the easiest ways to add links to your site is to look at the online encyclopedia like Wikipedia.
What are we talking about?
Wikipedia is a free online reference source where anyone can contribute and edit articles or even create new ones.
It has over 39 million active contributors who write and update thousands of different pages every day!
A lot of these updates focus on giving more in-depth information than anything else, so most people find them very helpful.
The thing about editing Wikipedia though is that everyone does not always agree with each other.
For example, there was a time when defining terms such as ‘homosexuality’ as a disorder was controversial. However, today this definition has been accepted worldwide.
So why not add some of those
Encourage commenting
One of the most powerful things you can do to improve the readability of any article online is to encourage comments. Online content that encourages conversation and feedback are way more interesting than those that don’t!
This applies particularly well for articles in niche fields or areas where there isn’t much competition. In these cases, people may not know very many other sources like yours so they will likely look to leave comments and start conversations.
Your job as the owner/author of the article is to make sure that doesn’t happen by leaving neutral or positive comments yourself. Positive comments help promote engagement and discussion which is what you want your article to do.
Wikipedia is a great source of information so why not use it for some additional marketing? By adding your own link in the comment field of an existing article, you can create backlinks (or links from your website to another site) and boost your search engine rankings.
These are also helpful ways to spread your message and increase traffic to your own site!
