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.
It’s hard to do a Google search for any term that doesn’t list Wikipedia in the top 10.
But are Wikipedia backlinks still as effective in 2024 as they used to be?
Well let me tell you, they sure are!
The site, the traffic and the authority isn’t going anywhere in the near future. So there is a lot to be gained from Wikipedia backlinks.
And in this article I’m going to show you how to build as many Wikipedia backlinks you want, using just a few simple techniques.
As well as another very sneaky link building trick to get links from authority sites.
So if you want to build unlimited links that 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!
A Wikipedia link will actually generate very relevant traffic to your website.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By Wikipedia’s definition a “Dead link” is used to describe a link that is no longer active.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 indicates to Wikipedia moderators that the link needs to be fixed or updated.
And your content could be just the link that they’re looking 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.
However 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.
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.
And that means you have access to creating your own link building opportunities on specific Wikipedia pages.
In theory I could go in and edit this page on keyword research 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!
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 greeting with a lot of pages showing a dead link:
By clicking on one I’m able to use the exact same ctrl+f method to find the dead link. Like so:
This method is just as simple, but you’ll have to do a little more work on finding the relevant pages. But it’s there if you need it.
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.
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.
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!
[your name]
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:
Once you have created your account 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.
First of all 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.
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.
BONUS: Learn how to build powerful edu backlinks & gov backlinks.
Phew! There you have it. Exactly how to build unlimited links with Wikipedia in a small space of time.
But let’s take a minute to recap everything you’ve learned so you can replicate it again, and again, and again in the future:
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 are three types of opportunities you should be looking for:
Finding these links is super easy, you can do it through Google searches looking for dead links.
Having a tool like Ahrefs, SEMRush or SERPed allows you to find the broken links on other sites that were also pointing to that article. You can then contact the webmaster to add your content in its place.
And to create unique links you need to have your own Wikipedia account to add them in. But remember to be a good citizen and not just spam your own links in there. Add one of your own links for every 10 or 12 you include in a page.
Now all that’s left to do is to get high-quality links on Wikipedia for your website!
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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Dear, very helpful article. Thank you!
No worries!
Very informative. Just what i needed, i am trying these steps I hope to get some good results.
Glad to hear that. Please, let us know if you get any results!
Hi Matthew, great update on Wikipedia link building. I keep referring back to the page every now and then.Question for you, you mention about writing a piece for a dead link: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.Do you have a guide to what a Wikipedia page would need please?Keep up the great work!
Hi Simon. Sorry, I don’t have a guide for you, but I would say that Wikipedia expects the same as Google, which means a unique and optimised piece of content.
Nice information Matthew sir very helpful content for make backlinks from Wikipedia dead link stateregy
Glad it was helpful- Are you going to try this strategy?
will definitely try this!
Great! Let me know if it works!
Thank you. Learned a lot.
Glad it was helpful!
Each of your blogs is so informative that I feel like bookmarking all of them, really informative and will help increase my SEO knowledge.
Keep learning- cheers!
Amazing ideas and information.
Thanks! Cheers!
Hello Matthew,That’s an Awesome Strategic and Practical Article.While I was reading this article I was going through the practical steps in another tab.And Boom!! it was just awesome and it’s such an easy article to check and to do it simultaneously on another tab. I have learned a new thing for today in the SEO world as I have just begun my blogging journey.Lots to learn from you!!RegardsJackson Monichan Newbie Blogger at Learn WP Tutorials Blog
Glad you learn something on my blog, Jackson! Cheers!
Haha glad to hear that, thanks!
Great! Thanks for sharing this information I am so very happy to read this content
Glad to hear that!
Thanks for the post
No problem!
Hey Matt,Another amazing piece from you. I am glad that I have subscribed to your newsletter. This content is like a morning treat for me. Thanks for sharing such an amazing link building strategy. Regards,Sayem Ibn Kashem
Your Contribution must be great for Wikipedia. Then see how Your traffic increase.
Hey Matthew, getting backlinks for your website was such a difficult task. But thanks to your article I got a lot to learn about getting a backlink from Wikipedia. thanks for sharing this article.
No problem Priya! Glad you learned something here 🙂
Just about to submit my first citation cleanup link – thanks for the tips on this blog!
No problem, Simon- Let us know how it goes for you!
Backlinks is the strongest way to build your brand on search engine. And Wikipedia is the best platform to get backlinks…Thank You for sharing this helpful information.Thank You!!!
No worries! Hope it works for you. Let us know if you have any questions.
Nice article.. Leant Something.. Love from ifeplay
Thanks!
Thanks matthew! That was Informative! Love reading your blogs.
No worries! Thank you for reading my blog, Praful!
Matthew, thanks a lot for the important Wikipedia knowledge. It is exactly what I was looking for and it seems pretty easy to achieve by myself.
Glad you found what you were looking for! Keep it up!
very nice aricle..i’m bookmark your blogthanks you
Cheers!
Good bro
Thanks!
nice post thxu for good info
No worries!
How to approved my company on Wikipedia.
Hmm sorry, but what do you mean?
Nice information!!But I have a one question that is: What’s the different between Broken link building and Wikipedia broken link building?can you explain me please?
Hey Sohail – There isn’t any difference – The purpose is the same: find broken links and then, try to replace them with your own links. Just Wikipedia works differently than other “traditional” websites this is why you must apply a different strategy. For other websites, you can use this one: https://searchlogistics.com/seo/link-building/broken-link-building/ Hope it helps.
Thank you for the amazing information. Definitely going to try it out soon!
Great news, Mahima! Let us know how it goes!
Thanks for sharing nice post.
No worries! Thank you for reading.
I am really very happy to visit your blog
Glad to hear that, thanks.
After reading your article now i know how to get backlink from Wikipedia. Thanks for this but im block from Wikipedia without any reason? I never try before editing any link there. Can you help me sir?
There is probably a reason. They have ‘restrictions’ about external links so make sure your link fits their policy. Have a look here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:External_links#Restrictions_on_linkingYou'll see which links are allowed and which ones are not. Hope it helps.
Thasnks Matt..was reading your comments..i had doubt about do follow/nofollow links..its been cleared now thanks.
Great content. Found it really informative especially for the beginners. Thanks for sharing.
Cheers!
Thanks for this informative information
You’re welcome, Sadaf! Wish you well!
It was amazing information. I never thought that getting a backlink from Wikipedia would be that much easy through broken and dead link strategiesThanks for sharing this information
Glad you learned something…and good luck with getting your new backlink! 😉
wow greate article
Cheers!
Thank you for sharing the information, whenever I try to edit external link section they do not authorize my link now what can i do for this ?
Hi sahil. Did you make sure that your link respects all Wikipedia external-link guidelines?
Wow Superb article, I’m thinking about creating content in Wikipedia. and I will use your given idea in Wikipedia.
Great news! Try it and let us know how it goes!
What an excellent article. You have got me covered..
Cheers!
Hey Matt, You Share us great tips with us.Thank you so much for sharing it
Always happy to share some tips with my readers!
Today I made my fist post in Wiki. Hope everything is ok 🙂
That’s great! How did it go?
Thank you for sharing the information, whenever I try to edit external link section they do not authorize my link
Have you ensured that your link conforms with the Wikipedia Linking guidelines?
Hey, Matthew! I just love your explanation. I was always looking to get a wiki link. Before I read your blog I thought it is very tough to get a link from Wikipedia. Now I will try to get one and I hope it will help my website in ranking high! Thank you & keep sharing
Thank you, Elena. Let us know how it goes and if you obtain any results applying my tips.
Awesome article i want to create an article on gold
Interesting topic.
Jut put this into practice and landed a good link from a needed citation. thanks for the tips Matt
Happy to help Edward 🙂
i would try this method
Good luck!
Hey Matt,Really, really helpful article!I followed your advice on using Wikigrabber and I see there are few dead links and citations needed Wikipedia pages in my niche. Being linked with Wikipedia would be awesome. Just started working on it.Cheers for this incredible secret!
Hey Mudassir, that’s great news! Let me know how you get on with it.
Thanks, Mathew! That was a nice and informative article regarding link build-up from Wikipedia. I was searching for a while about the Wikipedia link buildup process and go through a number of articles. but this was the most comprehensive and step to step guide for SEO optimization through Wikipedia. Thanks a lot, dear.
No problem – glad you found it so helpful 🙂
Thanks a lot, will definitely try to build a backlink from wikipedia
Good luck Amar!
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!
Hope it works well for you Arshad
thank you for this information …..i really needs backlinks from wiki.
Well now you know how 🙂
Thank you for the information shared!
No worries – hope it’s helpful.
Today I am very happy because you solve my doubts. On 12 March I am trying to create backlinks in Wikipedia but we getting lot of errors. then we search on google and see your very informative post. Thanks a lot.
Glad I could help out Rahul!