Backlinks from Wikipedia – How to Get in 4 Easy Steps

Backlinks are still one of the best ways to build your website authority. It’s not about the quantity but the quality. The more authoritative websites link to you, the higher the chances of boosting your SEO. But how about you get backlinks from Wikipedia?

Wikipedia comes in the top 5 authoritative websites. The domain authority of Wikipedia is 100. If you receive a backlink from such a high authoritative website, your rankings are definitely going to improve.

Before I give you the way of getting the backlinks from Wikipedia, let’s do some fact checks:

• Wikipedia links are no-follow links. (Don’t worry, the links are worth a lot more)
• Anyone can edit Wikipedia.
• Wikipedia hates promotions and affiliate links.

Are Wikipedia links worth it? They are Nofollow!

Nofollow links basically mean that any link having a Nofollow tag, search engines are going to ignore that link. Also, those links won’t impact your website ranking or authority.

But these are mere interpretations from various Digital Marketing experts. Google hasn’t officially said that Nofollow links don’t carry any weight.

This has been the most controversial topics of SEO and Google says – “In general, we don’t follow them”

But but but, what do they mean by “In General”?

That means in certain cases, they may follow such links.

Adam White, founder of SEOJet bought a bunch of Nofollow links from the top authoritative websites with an anchor text of “backlink software”.

Then he shared the stats:

I hope by now it is clear that Nofollow links do have some importance.

Moreover, it is important to have a balance of Nofollow and Dofollow links. It shows search engines that you are following natural strategies.

Now coming our topic of getting backlinks from Wikipedia, it brings a lot more value.

Wikipedia ranks on top results for most of the topics and hence, it is one of the most visited websites on the internet. So, you will receive some of the traffic due to your link listed on Wikipedia.

Also, there are higher chances that other websites start giving you backlinks without any effort.

How to get Backlinks from Wikipedia?

There are definitely some proven ways to do this. Here are the top 3 when we talk about Wikipedia:

• Dead Link Opportunities.
• Broken Link Opportunities
• Unique Link Opportunities

You will find 100s of articles about these 3 methods on the internet. But today, I’m going to show you the way which you would have never heard about. Or at least I’ve not seen anyone sharing this openly.

I’m not sure if this is completely new. Let me know in the comments. If this is something new, we will call it Nikhil’s Wikipedia Backlinking Method. ?

Well, it’s a mix of Broken Link and Dead Link opportunities. Everyone talks about building links through broken links on the internet. But I’ve hardly seen anyone sharing steps of how to find that specific page (not Wikipedia) which has broken links.

In dead links opportunities, all you have to do is use this search query:

site:wikipedia.org “Keyword phrase” “dead link”

There is a Wikipedia bot and tool called WP:IABOT. It runs continuously checking all articles on Wikipedia if a link is dead.

But this bot takes a lot of time to indicate if the link is dead. So let’s start with the process that I follow:

Step 1 – Find Expired Domains

No, we are not buying any domain. Visit expireddomains.net and create an account.

Once you have created your account, Visit Column Manager and add Wikipedia links as shown below:

Now search for the specific keyword you’re targeting (Without Spaces). In my case, I’ll search for “Webhosting”. 

Sort the result by Wikipedia Links by clicking on “WPL” in the columns.

Step 2 – Check Backlinks

Expireddomains.net gives you a complete list of the expired as well as for-sale domains. So, it is important to check the domain is really expired.

I mostly target domains that are open for offers or have a price tag on them. Because the seller knows the importance of backlinks from Wikipedia. Also, we can steal their quality backlinks.

So once you are sure that the domain is really expired and doesn’t even have a proper website, check for their backlinks. I go to SEMrush and check for the backlinks that an expired domain has.

Hands down, SEMrush is a great tool for SEO Experts, Digital Marketers, and Bloggers. I extensively use it for Keyword Analysis & Research, checking backlinks, tracking my positions, and competitive analysis.

Since you’re my reader, here’s the 7-Day Completely Free Trial for you.

Note: It is better to have at least one paid tool which can show all the backlinks. Most of the quality expired domains have thousands of backlinks. Which means you have the opportunity of creating 1000s of backlinks.

After checking for backlinks, I found a domain Top10WebHostingSites.org which was receiving a link from hi.wikipedia.org/wiki/होस्टगेटर

This is the Hindi version of Wikipedia and the information is about Hostgator. Getting links from the English website would be difficult but other languages work too because the domain remains wikipedia.org.

So we have to find where the link is located, mostly they are in the Resources Section. If you have difficulty in reading other languages, you can always translate it in your web browser.

Step 3 – Check the Expired Domain in Wayback Machine

Now check for the expired link in Wayback Machine by Archive.org

This is an internet archive that has all the old pages stored. So our intention here is to see the kind of article which was written. So that we can write in the same style.

I found that this website was a web hosting review website and they had reviewed Hostgator.

Now, we have to write a Hostgator review using resembling the same information. (Don’t copy it)

Use the content idea and create a new one out of it.

Step 4 – Submit the Link to Wikipedia

As mentioned above, anyone can edit Wikipedia so open the page which was linking to the expired domain and click on edit.

You may change the translate the website usually, the edit button is on the top.

Once you click on edit, you will get the source code of the page, press Ctrl+F and search for an expired domain.

Replace the expired link with your Link.

Also, enter the basic details such as your site name, date added and year added.

You will find the publish button below. Once you publish, you will be asked for the reason of changing, you may state that the previous link wasn’t active anymore and hence, you are replacing the link.

And Voila!

You just got a backlink from Wikipedia!

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Now you can check all the quality links through SEMrush and follow the basic broken-link building procedure. You may contact the site owners and let them know about it.

Broken links create a bad user experience and hence, nobody wants them on their website.

It is highly recommended that you don’t start spamming Wikipedia just because anyone can edit it. Keep things simple and normal. Don’t overdo it.

If you’re added to their spam list, your rankings will be negatively affected. As Wikipedia publically show “possible spam” next to the links.

Also, keep in mind the article or content you link to MUST NOT contain affiliate links because Wikipedia hates them. I didn’t know this earlier and a lot of my links were removed from Wikipedia.

Conclusion

This may look like a lot of work but it is going to build your authority in the long run. Even 3-4 backlinks from Wikipedia is more than enough to create an authority in Google’s eyes.

Wikipedia has been on the internet for a long time and it is here to stay. So you should definitely invest your time in building links from the world’s largest encyclopedia.

I hope this link building strategy helps you in obtaining some links. If not Wikipedia, you can definitely use it for searching other authority websites. I have backlinks from Mashable, Techcrunch in some of my blogs. Just because I chose to go the other way round.

So, are you going to use this link-building strategy today?