Wikipedia:Search engine optimization
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This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline, it simply reflects some opinions of its authors. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page. |
Wikipedia attracts many links and contains a large amount of content on a broad set of topics. As a result, Wikipedia pages tend to rank well in organic search, and to acquire high PageRank on Google, the most popular search engine as of 2007. Wikipedia pages rank highly for many high volume searches. These factors create a strong temptation for editors to add linkspam to promote their own sites. Indeed, some search engine optimization (SEO) specialists have suggested that webmasters add links to Wikipedia. The Wikipedia community frowns on this practice.
If you are an SEO practitioner who has come to Wikipedia seeking to increase the link popularity of your site, first of all, welcome! Second, we hope you will learn more about how Wikipedia works, because we want you to be a productive member of our community, rather than a source of linkspam. Before you make any edits, please familiarize yourself with the Wikipedia conflict of interest guidelines.
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[edit] Best Practices for SEOs and SEMs Participating in Wikipedia
There are a variety of ways that Wikipedia can help your marketing efforts:
- If Wikipedia has an article about your organization, you are welcome to correct link spam or vandalism in your article at any time. If you would like to edit the article, the best practice is to post your suggested revisions to the article's talk page and ask other editors for help getting the material into the article. This procedure helps prevent conflict of interest. You can also announce yourself on the article's talk page and offer to provide answers if other editors have any questions about your organization.
- By participating in articles related to your field, other experts or journalists may notice you. Avoid self-promotion when editing articles. Constructive participation in Wikipedia can create public relations opportunities. You may want to create a user page for yourself with a short bio and a link to your personal site to provide more information about yourself.
- Many organizations seek to inform and educate the public. By linking to relevant Wikipedia articles or copying Wikipedia content to your web site, you can help your users.
- If you are seeking to educate the public, feel free to expand and create articles, so long as you follow Wikipedia's policies, guidelines, and community customs. Improving the public's understanding of topics may coincidentally improve market conditions. Again, avoid promoting yourself or your products within articles, and maintain neutral point of view. Wikipedia is for education, not propaganda.
- Remember that you are a guest in Wikipedia's house. While you are here, you will get the warmest reception if you follow house rules and customs. If you don't like the rules, you are welcome to comment on the rules' talk pages and request changes. If you build concensus, you can even edit the rules.
[edit] Can Wikipedia Increase Your Link Popularity?
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a search engine, nor a directory. There is no need to add every website that might be relevant to the external links section of an article. Long lists of external links do not add value to articles, and may reduce article quality by confusing the reader. To help create and maintain high quality of articles, many Wikipedians monitor recent changes for link drops. While an editor may get away with adding unnecessary links to a low profile article for a short time, improper links tend to be deleted immediately from high profile articles. In any case, when improper links are removed, the editor who added them may receive a spam warning. Editors can be blocked from editing Wikipedia after receiving several warnings.
Before adding external links to articles, please read the Wikipedia external links policy. When citing an external link as a source for a statement, make sure that you have chosen the most Wikipedia:Reliable sources available.
[edit] Wikipedia's Use of noindex and nofollow
Wikipedia user and talk pages use the nofollow attribute on external links. Google and other search engines claim to disregard such links when calculating link popularity. Certain Wikipedia pages may also use the noindex robots meta tag value to prevent search engine indexing. You may freely place links on some of these pages, but doing so probably will not help your rankings in the major search engines.
As of January 21, 2007, at the request of Jimbo Wales, Wikipedia has placed nofollows on all external links in an effort to deter spammers. Matt Cutts a software engineer at Google has claimed that Wikipedia's nofollow policy will not seriously affect Google's search results "given the way that we process Wikipedia links."[1] That cryptic comment may suggest that Google was already treating Wikipedia links differently than other links.
[edit] Blacklisting
Websites which are repeatedly SPAMmed on Wikimedia wikis or are utterly unsuitable for any legitimate use may be placed on the WMF-wide m:Spam blacklist. Once done, no URI pointing to that server will be accepted and all existing links must be removed to allow future editing.
[edit] Is Wikipedia a Public Relations Strategy?
There may be instances where Wikipedia's interest in creating high-quality encyclopedia articles coincides with the interests of businesses that want to better educate the public about particular topics. The Wikipedia community recommends focusing on the edit, rather than the editor. If a commercial interest is seeking to educate the public, they can possibly add appropriate, neutral point of view material to Wikipedia without provoking a backlash. Adding spin to Wikipedia is highly discouraged and will usually result in a rebuke. Likewise, starting an article about a non-notable subject in order to promote the subject will usually result in the article being deleted.
Bite: Can you explain why it’s a bad idea for a PR firm to be editing Wikipedia on behalf of a client? How does the Wikipedia community react to such activity?
Wales: It is a bad idea because of the conflict-of-interest. It is perfectly fine to talk to the community, to show them more information, to give them things that show your client in the best light. But it is wrong to try to directly participate in the process when you have an agenda.[2]
[edit] Paid Editing and Conflict of Interest
If an editor is paid, that signals a likely conflict of interest, but unpaid agents can also face a similar situation. Agents should maintain the same standards of behavior as if they were the principal. Any editor, even the subject of an article, can make certain kinds of edits, for instance: reverting vandalism, and clearing linkspam. To protect their own own reputation, agents may announce themselves on the talk page, and place any remotely controversial edits there, so somebody else can add them to the article. In general, a principal's interests benefit most by encouraging neutral editors to work on the article. Agents are probably wise to take one step backwards and let the community maintain the article, while they offer support. Agents can, for instance, identify new facts or sources on the talk page so other editors can verify that information and add it to the article. Agents can also offer to answer questions.
[edit] Unintended Consequences
Wikipedia:Conflict of interest contains this warning:
Be careful what you wish for. You may get it, and more. If you create a PR puff piece about your client, other editors may ruthlessly edit the article, rather than delete it. The resulting article may be quite different from what you intended, and may become a permanent fixture near the top of the search results.
[edit] References
- ^ Nofollow's Historical Changes (and Associated Hypocrisy), Threadwatch, 25 Jan, 2007
- ^ Jimmy Wales on PR in the social media era, bitemarks, August 29, 2006
