How to get backlinks from Wikipedia
Wikipedia is one of the oldest and authoritative website. It is currently ranked 5th in worldwide according to Alexa. It ranks for every single term searched for somehow or other. Since it receives most of the traffic from search engines. It is considered as one of the authoritative website. Currently it receives around 40% of the traffic from search engines according to Alexa. See below.
Alexa rank for wikipedia
Image Source: Alexa.com
According to wmflabs.org Wikipedia receives around 7 billion impressions every month. Having a link in a website which receives billions of impressions is really worthwhile. You will get targeted traffic to your website by having a link in Wikipedia.
In this article I am going to show you
About Wikipedia Authority:
If you are an avid internet user, you might already know about the power of Wikipedia. It ranks for every keyword mostly in top 10 in Google search results. The only bad thing with Wikipedia is that they nofollow all external links in their website. So, you will get absolutely zero domain authority passed from Wikipedia to your website if you earn a link in Wikipedia. The reason why Wikipedia nofollowed all the external links is that they wanted to avoid spammers invading their site for the reason of simply getting a link to their website from Wikipedia.
Then you might wonder, why the heck I care in getting a nofollow link from Wikipedia. The reason is simple, nofollow links are also useful for your website in other ways. Here is the story published at moz blog explaining why nofollow links are equally important. Nofollow links may not increase your domain authority. But, they will be helpful in getting targeted traffic to your website and which may lead to your website conversions.
Apart from that, when you get a backlink from Wikipedia, you will also be able to get backlinks from other authoritative websites, since, many publishers will use Wikipedia as their source of information for their writing needs. So, if a website publisher uses a Wikipedia topic as their source of writing, you can get a backlink from their website if you have a link in that Wikipedia page.
Ways to get backlinks from Wikipedia:
Dead link approach method:
Dead link
Every website will have dead external links somehow are other. But for Wikipedia with its sheer amount of articles, it will have countless of dead links for sure.
Wikipedia describes a dead link is a link which is no longer active or which leads to a 404 not found page. A dead link in Wikipedia article or in its citation indicates its moderators that this dead link needs to be fixed or should be replaced with a working link.
As a SEO enthusiasts we always strive to get good backlinks to our website in order to increase our blog’s visibility in search engines. Whenever we see a dead link in Wikipedia, its better we first act, in fixing the dead link with our link, so that, we will get relevant backlink and also relevant traffic to our blog.
In fact Wikipedia also don’t want dead links in their website, so they help people like us in giving information about their dead links in their website. You can access the dead links page here.
Earning links from Broken Links
One of the best ways to earn a backlink from authoritative websites is by using broken links method. Research websites which are in your niche for broken external links in their website. If you find some broken external links in their website, try to write content in your website which the broken link used to offer and email the website owner saying the following links were broken and your website link can offer the same value which the broken link used to offer.
Then the website owner will gladly consider your suggestion and will replace the broken link with your newly written article link in his website. In this case, both the website owner wins by getting his broken link fixed and you win by getting a free backlink from authoritative website.
Ways to get more backlinks from Wikipedia
Wikipedia logo
By combining the above two methods, you can get more backlinks to your website by using Wikipedia. The process is simple. We can get broken or dead links in Wikipedia easily. Then you can find more backlink sources, by finding the links which are linked to the broken page which you found through Wikipedia and get backlinks from those sources as well with backlink explorer tools.
This method will get you more relevant backlinks and also relevant traffic to your website.
Follow the Steps below to get a backlink from Wikipedia:
Step 1: Search Broken Link
First of all, find the broken links or dead links in Wikipedia with the following advanced Google search query.
Type the following in Google to get information on broken links in Wikipedia.
Site:wikipedia.org “Your Keyword Phrase” “dead link”
Or
Site:wikipedia.org “Your Keyword Phrase” “Citation Needed”
For example take my niche as an example. See below for screenshot.
Example: 1
dead links
Or with this search query
Example: 2
citation needed
In the dead link approach I am using the following result.
Step 2:
After opening the above result in a new tab in your browser. Press Cntrl + Fin your browser and type “dead link” in the search “Citation needed” if you are using the citation query.
Step 3:
Now, you can see the external links which are dead. See below for screenshot.
Step 4:
Next, open Wayback Machine Archive in your web browser. Now, copy the broken link from Wikipedia and paste it in the Way back machine archive search.
In my example, here is the dead link I found via Wikipedia.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/meet-google-s-culture-czar-339275147.htm
I am now, searching the above webpage in Wayback machine archive to see how it used to look earlier.
Step 5:
Click on Browse History in order to see how it used to look earlier. After I clicked on Browse History button, I got the following results.
Step 6:
Now in this step, I will look at its earlier copies and see if the webpage can fit in my niche. If the webpage is related to my niche, then I will recreate the same topic or similar topic in my website. Or else, I will keep on searching for more dead links until I find a dead link which can fit into my niche.
Step 7:
Now head over to Ahrefs or Majestic Seo to find what other websites which linked to this dead link in the example as shown in the above.
Here in this example I am using Ahrefs tool for my needs. Create a free account if you already don’t have an account with them. Now, after creating an account with them, paste the dead link which you already got from the above and click on Search to see if there are any websites which linked to that page other than Wikipedia.
Luckily, yes there are.
In the above, there are around 126 backlinks for that specified dead link. That means, there are around 126 pages which linked to that dead link and an over 75 domains which actually linked to that deadlink.
With Ahrefs and Majestic, you can also find the pages which used to link this broken link. So, now you have lot of resources to earn good backlinks from authoritative websites.
Step 8:
In this step, by looking at Wayback Machine archive of the broken link which you got from Wikipedia, try to create the same content in our own writing style uniquely. If you already have a similar content which the broken link used to offer, then you can link your existing content in place of the broken link in other websites and also in the Wikipedia page.
Steps for replacing the dead link with your link to get a back link from Wikipedia
Step 1:
Create a free account with Wikipedia in order to replace the dead links with your own links.
Step 2:
In order to escape the Wikipedia moderation radar, you need to edit few articles without using your own link in the first place. Try to help the Wikipedia by editing few broken links by replacing them with legitimate sources. In this way, your account will earn some credits and Wikipedia will give some value to your account as the time passes on. Once your account gets some credibility, then you can edit the broken link of your choice and replace it with your own. This way, your edits will stay longer.
Step 3:
Once, you finished creating an account, you will be shown up with Edit this article option.
Or you can click on Edit at each section in the Wikipedia article to edit the article source code.
Step 4:
From the first example, here is the Wikipedia page where I found the broken link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google
This page is very popular one, so, Wikipedia restricted editing this article for new users and allowed to accounts which has some editing history. To edit this article, your account should have some editing history. So, for illustration purposes, I am taking another example here.
Take this link as an example in which you can find dead link too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu%27s_Link_Sleuth
The above link is not so popular and I can easily edit this link with no problem. And there is a dead link in it already.
Step 5:
I am clicking on Edit button at the top to edit the Wikipedia article. After clicking on Edit button, there is an option to switch to Source editing in the top right hand side of your page.
Click on Switch to Source Editing to edit the source.
Step 6:
Now, Press Ctrl + F in order to search the phrase dead in the source code. Type dead in the search, to find the dead link in the source code.
Step 7:
Now, edit the source code with your website page link and don’t forget to write the description and info to the moderators saying Dead link updated with new link.
See below for example:
Step 8:
After you’re finished with editing the article, click on Save Page to save your changes. Though you can see the changes immediately, but it will take some time to pass the moderation by Wikipedia moderators. Once, Wikipedia moderators think that your link is useful to that page, your link will stay longer in that Wikipedia page.
Step 9:
Now, finally you got a backlink from Wikipedia. It’s time to reach other webmasters which you found through Ahrefs and Majestic for more links.
Reach out to the webmasters by using their Contact us or email form with the following message.
Subject: Broken Link found on (website.com)
Dear Webmaster name,
I am an avid user to your website. I wanted to let you know that, recently I found a broken link on your website.
This is the link to the page where the broken link was found. Insert the page URL where you found the broken link.
This is the broken Link URL Insert Broken Link URL
This is the anchor text used for that broken link Insert broken anchor text
However, I found a suitable page which can replace the broken link. Here are the details of that replaceable link. Insert your link here
And here is the anchor text you can use Insert your anchor text here.
Keep up your good work,
Regards
Your Name here.
Conclusion:
Getting backlinks from Wikipedia is very easy. All you need is good research for dead links in your niche. Once, you found the dead links, create a similar content offered by the dead link and get some trust to your account by editing other dead links in Wikipedia. Once you get enough credibility to your account, you can edit the article of your choice in Wikipedia and replace the dead links with your own link which will earn backlinks from Wikipedia.
Apart from that, you can also search the dead link in Ahrefs and Majestic tools to find more sources for the sites which linked the dead link, which will give you access to more backlink sources. You can reach out to those webmasters and ask them to replace the dead link with your new link. In this way, you will get more backlinks to your website.