Wikipedia is one of the biggest, oldest and most authoritative websites on the internet which makes Wikipedia backlinks one of the most powerful links on the planet.
But are Wikipedia backlinks still as effective in 2025 as they used to be?
Short answer – Yes, they are!
The March 2024 Google search algorithm leak confirmed that Google is collecting link signals from sites like Wikipedia with its “pagerankNS” metric.
This means that Google values links from highly trusted sites like Wikipedia when calculating your site’s authority.
By the end of this article, you’ll know:
So, if you’re ready to build the kind of links that really put your site on the map, read on…
What Will I Learn?
Wikipedia shows up in the search results for most terms.
It‘s a seriously authoritative site and building links from them is a strong endorsement for your site.
Google loves links from Wikipedia and they should since real moderators review the links which is why you should build links from them.
Over the last few years I’ve found an easy way to build Wikipedia backlinks that is simple and effective.
Not only that but with my personal twist you’ll also get links and traffic from other authoritative sites as well!
How?
Because the entire site is focused on delivering high quality information on a specific search term to their readers. Whether that’s information about:
The best bit?
If your site is linked from a Wikipedia page it will generate additional links from other websites looking to use your site as a reference!
So Wikipedia isn’t only a backlink, it’s a traffic generating, natural backlink generating machine! And is a worthy place of spending your time.
In the next section I’m going to talk you through the three main types of links we’ll be looking to build in Wikipedia.
Building links in Wikipedia isn’t as simple as saying…
“Hey, my article is better than that dudes! I want to be featured there instead.”
The way to build links in Wikipedia, although it’s easy, needs to be done tactically.
That means there are three opportunities to build links that you’re looking for:
Let’s take a look at what each of these is in detail, and how you identify them for your own site.
By Wikipedia’s definition a “Dead link” is used to describe a link that is no longer active. Meaning that the content that was once on the other side of the link isn’t there anymore.
This provides a perfect opportunity to replace the old link with a new link from your site, as long as the content is relevant.
This indicates to Wikipedia moderators that the link needs to be fixed or updated.
But you don’t just want to add as many links as possible. You need to be strategic…
When evaluating a dead link opportunity, look for:
Wikipedia is just like any other website. Because there are so many links, hundreds of them are broken and almost impossible to keep on top of in real time.
So your opportunity for building links here comes in the form of providing them with the content they need to fill that link. Simple, eh?
One of the more white hat link building tactics is to scour the web looking for broken links.
But that is super time consuming and can often result in a lot of work for not a lot of outcome.
Here’s the thing…
If you’re a savvy SEO, you’ll have realised that if the link is broken on Wikipedia it is broken for all the sites that link to it as well.
Meaning from one broken link you can find anywhere from five to five thousand link building opportunities, depending on the niche and the topic.
To speed up this process, Wiki Grabber to find a relevant Wikipedia page with a broken link.
Then, you can use a tool like SEO Minion to find the broken link on the page.
There’s a good chance that if Wikipedia links to the broken page, other sites on the internet are also.
Not only does this give you an opportunity to earn a powerful Wikipedia backlink, but you can reach out to those other sites to recommend your content as a replacement link.
Simple, right?
Turn one broken link opportunity into potentially hundreds in minutes.
If you don’t have the content for the broken link yet, don’t worry, we’ll explore that later in the article.
Everyone is able to create a Wikipedia account in minutes.
And that means you have access to create your own link building opportunities on specific Wikipedia pages.
For example, I could use a search operator like this-
Then, I could easily edit the Wikipedia keyword research page I found using the search operator and add in my own links to my own articles in the relevant sections.
This would be by adding new content that improves the overall structure and information on the Wikipedia page.
Whether it’s a new sentence, paragraph or entirely new section.
But I don’t recommend you just do that. Simply because all links from Wikipedia have to be approved by moderators.
So if a page suddenly has five new links all pointing to one Wikipedia page, there’s a good chance you’re going to get caught out.
Instead you should go in and do your duty as a good Wikipedia citizen and update content, repair broken links and add new findings where possible.
Then if your article happens to be one of the ones included then that’s a good result for everyone involved.
If you combine the dead link, broken link and unique link opportunities you have a flexible, easy to manage Wikipedia backlink building strategy.
You can:
If you can replicate this with four or five pages, the amount of links you’ll be able to build with targeted, relevant pages keeps growing.
This approach makes it really easy to get some serious link juice & relevant traffic!
Want a step-by-step approach for implementing all these strategies to build Wikipedia links?
Download the free Wikipedia Backlink SOP. It is a complete practical guide that shows you the exact process we use to build high-authority links for our clients.
But this leads us to an important question, how do you find all of these link opportunities?
Well there’s a really simple, free, solution for that…
The easiest and cheapest way to find dead Wikipedia links is with Google!
Let me show you how it works:
Just head over to Google and use this advanced query:
site:wikipedia.org “Keyword phrase” “dead link”
If I use this for a similar category to above, search engines, I’m greeted with a lot of pages showing a dead link:
Pro tips when searching in Google:
By clicking on one I’m able to use the exact same CTRL + F (CMD + F on Mac) method to find the dead link. Like so:
This method is as simple as it gets, but you’ll have to do a little more work on finding the relevant pages.
But it’s there if you need it.
Download my Wikipedia Backlink SOP for a systematic approach to finding opportunities and tracking them properly.
So now you know how to find the broken link opportunities, let’s look at how you can get the actual links for yourself…
Now you’re armed with a Wikipedia link building tool – let’s look at a specific example, selected at random – Binoculars.
If I run this through Google you will find a bunch of pages about binoculars that feature broken links:
I’m going to choose this option because it’s hyper-relevant to the binoculars niche (based on zero experience with binoculars):
And in the page we can confirm that, yes, it does have a dead link:
Now copy and paste the URL and head over to the Wayback Machine tool.
Copy the link into the search bar and hit “Browse History”:
This will show us what the page used to look like before it was taken down. Have a read of the content to see if it’s related to your website.
When you’re reviewing old content, you need to score each opportunity based on:
Sometimes, you’ll find what looks like a good opportunity, but in the end, it’s not worth the hassle.
Just keep that in mind when evaluating each potential Wikipedia link opportunity.
If it is relevant to your site you either need to:
You can even just rewrite the content that shows up in the Wayback Machine if that really floats your boat.
And if it’s not relevant, keep following these steps until you find something that is relevant.
But let’s say for argument’s sake that it is relevant to your site.
Here comes the really fun part…
Take the dead link and run it through a tool like Ahrefs, Majestic or SERPed to see all of the backlinks pointing to it.
As you can see with this one there are 46 links and 39 domains pointing in its direction:
30 or more is a good number of links to have because it means it’s worth the effort. Why?
Because it’s a topic people want or need to link to.
It gives you a lot of options of webmasters to write to (success rates aren’t always high) and it means it’s worth investing your time in creating the content should you need to.
And because this link needs updating, it’s time for you to swoop in and make it happen.
Either create a new page as I mentioned earlier or update your existing content to fit.
Make sure it ticks all of the boxes that a Wikipedia page would need to use this blog post as a reference.
Here’s what to keep in mind:
Remember: Wikipedia is about providing users with accurate, in-depth knowledge – not promoting your site.
Then you want to export the list of websites from Ahrefs that currently link to the dead link and look up all of the contact details. A tool like Hunter can help you with that.
Then you can send an outreach email to each of those to let them know about the broken link and your potential replacement.
If you’re stuck for an email to send to a webmaster you can use my own template below:
Hi [insert webmaster name],
I’m a big fan of your site! I found a broken link the other day and wanted to let you know about it.
The page where the link appears is [insert url] and the anchor text is [insert anchor text].
The broken URL is [insert broken url].
I found a similar page that even has a link from Wikipedia if you want to update the link.
[your website url]
Keep up the excellent work! Thanks!
Keep a record of the Wikipedia link building process. Download the full Wikipedia Link Building SOP here for free.
On your search for dead links you’ll come across some pages that are a real mess. They’ll have been flagged by Wikipedia to be improved but nobody has gotten around to it yet.
These are perfect opportunities for you to add your own unique external links.
For example take a look at this page on language barriers:
The Wikipedia Moderators are just crying out for you to come in and improve that page. And, well…sprinkle it with a few external links for your time.
If you’re running a language learning blog, for example, you could come in and create this page newly. Finding all of the resources you need to turn this page into an encyclopedia page.
You could even rework the content you’ve written afterwards to create a blog post for your own blog, hitting two birds with one stone.
In this section let’s look at how you can capitalize here and generate some wonderful free backlinks for your site.
Anyone can create a Wikipedia account – it is 100% free.
Just click on Create Account in the top right corner of the site:
There are some prerequisites that are a must at the beginning of any Wikipedia link building campaign.
Once you have created your account, follow this account warmup strategy:
Your aim is to build a relationship with the platform and gain more advanced privileges.
After day 10?
I recommend going into the Wikipedia article you’ve found and adding citations, cleaning up dead links and using other people’s sites and content.
(Feel free to use my blog to update articles – contact me if you do).
Let’s say you’re aiming for a 70-80% clean up of the page, leaving just enough room to add details from your site in there.
Once those changes are approved, you’re now ready to drop a link to your site on your target Wikipedia article.
Before we start editing Wikipedia and updating it with our citation/link fix there are a couple of things to think about.
Here’s how to make sure your edits get approved:
I cannot overstate how important it is that your links slot naturally into the page!
When you submit the edit, it will need to pass human moderation so you have to take that into consideration.
If you’re just throwing out a link to a site with poor quality content that has nothing to do with the required citation or dead link fix it is not going to get approved.
So if you don’t have relevant content on your site to use as a citation/reference already then put some time and effort into creating it.
Basically just because you have a blog post about learning Chinese, it doesn’t mean you get to drop it anywhere.
Editing an article on Wikipedia is super easy, just find what you want to edit and click on the edit link.
Once you have done that you will be taken to the Wikipedia editor.
There are a couple of Wiki markup basics you need to know about editing content:
With that in mind, make sure you are logged into your account then fix the dead link or add your citation as required:
Once you have done that preview the changes and make sure everything is working ok.
If you are happy with it fill out the edit summary with your changes and click on save page:
Now just sit back and wait to see if your change is approved! If you spent time creating your account with a bit of history (they log your IP address) you won’t have a problem here.
Simple, right?
For the full Wikipedia link building system, download my free Wikipedia Link Building SOP. It shows you step-by-step how to build as many Wikipedia backlinks as you want.
BONUS: Learn how to build powerful edu backlinks & gov backlinks.
There you have it – The complete unlimited Wikipedia link building playbook!
Not so difficult, right?
The more changes you make, the stronger your relationship with the platform will be. That means you can add more links.
It’s like a compounding link building strategy that works!
Get started now:
I recommend adding a link to your site for every 10-12 citations you add on a page. That will keep everything looking above board for the moderators.
The goal is to get Google to sit up and notice that a trusted website like Wikipedia links to your site.
More trust = higher rankings for you!
Just remember that there are three types of opportunities you should be looking for:
Ready to implement this strategy right away? Download my complete Wikipedia Link Building SOP – It has everything you need to implement these tactics at scale.
Building links with Wikipedia is effective and comes with lots of benefits outside of just having a link on their site, including relevant traffic and backlink opportunities with other sites.
There best part?
It’s a completely white hat SEO strategy that improves the internet and the Wikipedia platform by fixing broken links. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Let me know how you get on with this strategy in the comments and if you need help with link building in general you should take a look at:
Next:
I want to show you how to use Gmail for link building.
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Thanks Matt! That was too easy! Just added my link as an external link reference to Wikipedia, I hope it gets approved!
Good luck 🙂 Follow the advice and you’ll be fine – the fact you have already submitted the link means you didn’t follow the advice though 😉
Outstanding info!
Thanks Curtis!
Thanks Matt! Great strategy and best of all, you give it away for free! Thats why I hang out on your blog everyday!Knew I had read about it this somewhere but couldn’t remember where. Have evernoted it now! Cheers 🙂
Haha glad it helped you Munir =D
Hi Matt,All OBL’s on wikipedia are now nofollow. Does the crazy high authority carry enough weight in the serps? Worth testing.Of course, for diversification and authority, you can’t get better than the pedia! 😉
Yes – I stopped caring about follow/nofollow years ago
Wow! That was a really good post. I’m going to try this out soon. The good think about Wikipedia is that it not only sends that authority juice but also sends valuable traffic. That is why it is so important to put in relevant links to relevant pages only.
Let me know how you get on Wolston!
This is too rad.
Haha good luck =D
Sweet, superb & easy! Strange as it may seem but sometimes one of the simplest result yield good results.Very nice post.
I live my life by the KISS rule, keep it simple stupid
Nice find Matthew 🙂 Does this method work for medium sized (20-50 pages of content) affiliate or adsense sites?
It works for any site that adds value to the Wikipedia experience
This is brilliant! Your straightforward, no nonsense advice really is top class. You truly add 200% value to every piece of content you produce. Thanks for sharing!! – Ricky
Thanks Ricky 🙂 Glad you liked it!
Hello,This is as easy as it can get to have a wikipedia link. This will be a slap for those who sell wikipedia link from 100 bucks or more. In past, I did something similar but it didn’t work. But I will try this again and see if I can get some strong links to sites stuck at bottom of page 1. Thanks for sharing this Matthew.Priyank.
Well most people don’t spend time fixing up a few articles with their account first before going for the money shot
Hi Matthew,Great article, never really thought about fixing dead links as a strategy!2 questions for you if that’s okay?1. You mentioned that Wikipedia provide a list of articles queued up for improvements but where would this be found as I can’t find it!2. After making a few edits of articles how would I know when/if I’m considered a legit contributor on the site?
The idea is not bad and will work but it requires I guess a lot of work but I know if we made to get a backlink from Wikipedia it could simply boost our rankings.I love the idea. Thanks for sharing! I will try it for sure.
It’s pretty straight forward to do if you already have good content on your site.
Came here from Sean Donahues blog and very glad I did. Wrote a piece on Wikipedia years ago on virtual assistants and you’ve reminded me to go back there. Thanks guys, great information.
Thanks 🙂 Glad you liked it!
Now this is easy. I agree with you that Wikipedia is one of the most searched website in the World Wide Web that attracts millions of internet surfers every day. Being able to find a way to be linked with them would be great! I will absolutely do this. Giving the step by step procedure really helps, by the way! Thank you.
Let me know how you get on 🙂
I was finding a way for getting…backlink from wikipedia…and now there is a little hope for the link…..Nice Post I’m Following u with Feeds……
Let us know how it goes!
I am new to blogging and learning Everything about it whether it is SEO or anything else. You have written up a healthy tip to get a golden Backlinks from the Wikipedia. I am just taking an action just after reading your post and writing this Comment.Thank You Matthew Woodward. You are turning it up for me. Thanks again.
I didn’t write it but glad it helped!
This is really a gold for me! I am implementing this right now!
Let us know how you get on!
Cool tips. Thanks a lot for sharing. A lot of SEO’s gave up on Wiki’s as a link building tactic because of how saturated they have become, but those who think outside of the box always win. Cheers.
winner winner chicken dinner!
Would this technique also work for niche eCommerce businesses? As Google Adwords is so expensive!
If it provides content that delivers value
Thanks for this really smart tip. Until now I didn’t even noticed that Wikipedia is marking dead links with the “dead link” sign 😉
Have some fun with it 🙂
Let us know how you get on with it!
Hahaha probably ^^
This is a cool and really sneaky backlinking trick. Didn’t even know you could edit dead links on Wikipedia, so I’ll have to edit some articles and then find something relevant and give this a try.Thanks for sharing this with us!Nigel
Let us know how you get on!
Hello Matthew,Excellent write up. This is something really interesting. I tried up the same strategy, but could not be benefitted for longer period of time from Wikipedia. I would also like to know is there any way we can do the same ( I mean can we use the same strategy for finding broken link from other blogs and site similar to wikipedia????).Once again thanks for sharing this important post with usArjun
Yeah there is a couple of links in the post you can follow about broken link building with other sites
I already read this in other seo blog, but this is more comprehensive and well detailed. Much easy to understand and easy to follow. Worth sharing to others.. thanks…
Glad you liked it!
No worrys glad you enjoyed it!
It’s all down to the quality of content your linking to
Don’t they just delete it, if you’re trying to use wikipedia as backlink for your website?
Not if you take time to add value
Fantastic tips! I’ve just started following your blog and must say, it’s quickly becoming one of my favorites.
Thanks – no kudos for me on this one though 🙂
Really awesome post! Loved the way you use such simple tricks to get high quality backlinks from authority sites. Wikipedia link would be perfect anytime for ranking my keywords on Google.Thanks for sharing 🙂
Good luck =D
This is incredible article. I searched around web for wikipedia links, and I got 2 links within 20 minutes 🙂 Hope moderators will approve my links.Thanks for sharing such an amazing tip Matthew!
Its not my tip but I’m glad it paid off for you!
Just wonder how long you have to search to find a broken link that fits your site or keyword you try to rank for. Tryed it out on several keyphrases and the broken links I’ve found were totaly unusefull to build links to regarding my origin keyphrase. Furthermore the Wayback Machine didn’t even have one ressource in its archive… What could be the reason?
The reason is your focused on anchor text instead of just the link
Thanks Matthew,Recently, you have been dishing out more on relevant ways to harness free traffic. I really gained a lot from the Tynt blast. I am moving right away to check up on this.Thanks men, you made my day
Glad it helped – you shouldn’t thank me for this one though!
From a Wikipedia editors perspective with 10,000+edits and 4 years on it, this is more like it when it comes to inserting links to Wikipedia. The major hurdle would be the patience to build an account with several edits before link insertions are made.
Thanks for the insider tip!
Actually he found me ^^
Any Broken Link on matthewwoodward.co.uk? 😛 i Want to add my blog’s link there 😀
Nice ^^
Hi Marius – Thank you! Thanks for the advice on that. I definitely had the “en” version in mind…sorry to be so narrow minded. :)Yeah, one could totally apply this to any language version that Wikipedia has. There could be even more opportunities in other languages.
Ahhh thats a sweet extra tip!
Thanks for the share and additional tips mate!
All good dude!more than happy to!~ PD
Hello :I Thank u so much for This good manner to get backlinks, and really u r genisu andnothing to say about that, and I wihs for u goo success in the future , plz one question for the last section to send an emai l to the webmaster “Here is an example email you could send”,,U mean to send an emai l to the webmaster of the website , or to contact Wikipedia!
To the webmasters of the websites you found with ahrefs and majestic seo
Another awesome and brilliant piece of tutorial :). Cheers mate.
Nice article..veey useful
What a great idea this is. Nice way to find out broken links on Wikipedia and use it to your advantage. Links from authoritative website! Lovely, thank you very much for this.
Enjoy =D
Great article. I’ve been grabbing dead links from Wikipedia but didn’t think of the whole ahrefs and other linking sites. This will greatly help me rank my sites. :’) Thanks Matt
There’s always an extra twist to find!
Another great post Matt… Ive been using this method since finding a post on Brian Deans blog a while back. An extra spin is to use the footprint with Scrapebox to find hundreds at a time and pull in various metrics to use along side so you can order by importance. An issue I found though is that a lot of moderators say that linking to waybackmachine is the correct/preffered method. Any tips to get round this?
Just make your content so awesome they can’t refuse!
There is an article / debate on this at Link Assistant – and how you can use their powersuite tools to automate it – it does seem a very time consuming process – even when using tools to make it easier – and you are still reliant on the wiki author being kind enough to use your link rather than the dead one – anyone using powersuite tools can see how to use them for this purpose here – http://www.link-assistant.co.uk/news/broken-links/
Thanks for pointing that out!
Awesome article, I’m thinking about creating content in wikipedia with reference to tourist places which are not published on wikipedia.
Well creating content directly on Wikipedia has its own benefits =D
Now I think I’ll have to try this. Actually I have also read this on Brain’s blog but thought that it’d be much more time consuming. Will post here how effectively it works for me.Thanks and Regards.
Got a link for that?
Nice out of the box thinking! The biggest problem are the Wikipedia moderators. Some of those guys are out of their mind and even delete valid changes.
Build up your account first/make great contributions and it will be harder for them to say no!
Wikipedia links can be great for sending quality traffic like you say. Some years ago I managed to get several links to an authority site I was building and the traffic was golden. That said, it’s important to appreciate that by it’s very definition Wikipedia is a constantly evolving site and links can come and go like the wind so just be aware of this before you invest too much time in the concept.
Thats very true! Just make sure your content is awesome!
REALLY, really good stuff here. I had read an article about this a while ago but it wasn’t as detailed so there were a few steps I hadn’t figured out. This is perfect!! Really excited to finally give this a try now— thanks!
Let us know how you get on!
Excellent, informative article – thanks!One question, does it not matter to you that wikipedia links are ‘nofollow’?
Its nice to have a good mix – personally I disregarded follow/nofollow 2-3 years back
It’s a little disappointing, but in saying that 1 wikipedia nofollow link can put a low to mid range term at #1, I do it for most my clients.I did it for my first ever client, I did zero link building as I had no money upfront from the client and broke myself. They shot up to page 1-2 from nowhere (3 year old site) for some highly competitive local terms.So while it is nofollow, it’s generally best to disregard nofollow/dofollow I try to keep “dofollow” around 50-75% of all links, but it doesn’t matter too much and that’s just personal preference. I have no concrete proof that’s a good ratio or anything.Look at it from Google’s eyes. Every social network and high authority on the web uses nofollow. If they really did disregard nofollow links then nobody would rank for anything. You would only have monster authority sites in every search.
The proof is in the pudding ^^