Use Wikipedia to Promote Your Cause
Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) is the largest community-written and user-edited encyclopedia on the web and one of the highest ranking websites for thousands of search terms. Anyone can write or edit an entry on this encyclopedia, even without a Wikipedia user account. Because of this, Wikipedia has become one of the fastest growing sources of content online and one of the most read.
While the reliability of content on Wikipedia is often challenged, Wikipedia has nonetheless grown in popularity and is one of the first sources of information many internet users turn to when seeking answers.
Wikipedia has over 75,000 active contributors and receives more than three million pageviews every day. Adding your URL to a Wikipedia entry can bring in a steady stream of visitors to your website (usually between 1 and 50 visitors per day). Unlike traffic from social media websites, the daily traffic you receive from Wikipedia should persist for as long as your link remains published on the encyclopedia.
Having said that, direct traffic is usually secondary to the Search Engine Optimization benefits gained from a keyphrase-rich link on Wikipedia. Search engines place high trust on links that persevere. So, webpages that remain linked on Wikipedia are rewarded with higher search engine rankings.
Wikipedia Links
Before placing links at Wikipedia, it's wise to build a reputation as a valued, content contributor. If you ignore this advice and just add links to your own webpages, self-appointed editors will be trigger-happy with the delete key.
When you do start placing links to your own webpages, do so in conjunction with adding useful content to the Wikipedia article. Spend a little time working on the article during several consecutive days (this makes it difficult for editors who might otherwise delete your link).
The "external links" section of a Wikipedia page often has the best potential for bringing-in traffic to your website. But, editors are quick to check and delete links that spring-up here. If you're willing to risk it, be sure to use a keyphrase-rich link and follow the format used by other "external links."
Example:
- Swaddling Your Baby --University of Florida/IFAS Extension Department of Family, Youth and Community Sciences
Publishing your link in the Wikipedia "references" section will help protect the link from deletion, a tactic which can be particularly useful when trying to place a link on a heavily-monitored Wikipedia article. Note: Always accompany your reference links with content sourced from the linked page.
If the Wikipedia article uses the footnote format, include your link as a footnote to some useful piece of information. By doing this, editors will have to choose between deleting the information and keeping the link. Most often, they'll choose to keep the link.
Example:
Over time, it is possible to create dozens of Wikipedia links to your website. However, beware of overdoing it with one account. If an editor happens to notice that a single account created multiple links to the same website, that may lead to a review of all your past edits. It is possible that an editor may then wipe-out all of the links you've created. Avoid this by asking several volunteers to participate in the Wikipedia community and consider your webpages as source material for Wikipedia content.
