SES: Dealing With Wikipedia

We all know that Google loves Wikipedia, so if you want to be friends with the former, it’s best to make peace with the latter.  A session at SES San Jose titled “Wikipedia & SEO” addressed some of the best ways to do this.

It also addressed some of the worst ways (to attempt) to do this.  Neil Patel advised listeners to refrain from link building or spamming.  It’s also a bad idea to add biased information or delete accurate info; generally speaking, just don’t break Wikipedia’s rules.  Obey them, and Patel believes your site will gain authority links, traffic, and branding.

Jonathan Hochman noted that competing with Wikipedia is still hard, however, as it can outrank anything for almost any generic search phrase.  And yet, on the bright side, your competitors will face that same challenge.

Don Steele, who works for Comedy Central, told of how his company made pals with Wikipedia.  In the past, Comedy Central identified relevant traffic and edited pages.  Now, it identifies relevant content and posts references and discussion pages.  Like the other speakers, Steele stressed obeying Wikipedia’s rules.

And Stephan Spencer encouraged listeners to be active members of the community, as well.  He also suggested that they incorporate content edits when adding a link, as this makes it harder to revert an edit, and that links get added within references as opposed to the external links section.  One last piece of advice from Spencer: use tools that email you when changes to Wikipedia are made.