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By Wikipedia’s definition a “Dead link” is used to describe a link that is no longer active.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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Press ctrl+f to open up a find box and type in either citation needed or dead link to find where they are.
Great guide for getting some valuable Wikipedia links. I have edited a few articles and it actually has driven me daily traffic :DThanks!
Great to hear!!
Hi.Thanks for a really great post. I though have two points of view on this article.1. is that I am actually really happy about wikipedia. From a personal and ideologic perspective I like the Idea about free flow of information. Though wikipedia is going to get corruptet this way, misused for linkbuilding – not for bringing good sources, but with a second agenda. This will distort the quality of wikipidia2. I’m a professional – I live from SEO, and I can’t give any guarantee I won’t use the above described tactics. Actually – I have allready done it :-)Again – thanks for a great article
Hi,1) Welcome to planet earth – that’s how most things in life work :)2) Case in point ^^
I’ve got 2 wikipedia links on 2 of my sites, they haven’t helped with ranking except I get the odd visitors every now and then. These links were verified by the admin. So I wouldn’t get too excited about this 🙂
Hey Mattew really Great Informative article. Yes No doubt Wikipedia is one the most authoritative site and grabing a backlink for it will boost our ranking to a great extent.I have a small question hope you can awnser I sawed many links in wiki are no-follow so getting a no-follow link from it. Will it helpful much for us ?
I don’t really care about nofollow/dofollow personally
Hi Matthew. This is really interesting, I would never have deemed Wikipedia to be such a sought after link. I guess I have always been led to believe that it is a little unreliable and sketchy! MAybe I need to rethink!
It’s a great link to have 🙂
Great info Matt, just wondering would this work for a link to a youtube video demonstrating eg. “social bookmarking” but the video also promotes an affiliate product?
Give it a try
Good trick! However we need to be more smart and ethical while editing any article on Wikipedia! Great Resource!
Thanks Sagar 🙂
Yeah, pretty much what Matt said. Do/Not Follow used to play a large part in SEO several years ago, but variations work better at this point (along the lines of semantic vs extensional definitions/keywords). It’s all about creating an organic profile… you need to mix it up while still providing real value. (As determined by Google.)Best, Chris.
Great article Matt. I found this especially useful for coming up with content ideas to build for deadlinks.
No worrys 🙂
Hi,this method is explained for English version of wikipedia. Is possible to use it for Italian version? I tried without results.Thanks
I don’t think so right now =/
wow nice article i love it good idea
Hope it helps you get some good linkys!
Exactly – it was all down to your own hard work 🙂
Hi Matthew,What a brilliantly creative article. I love it.Give before you receive. Be patient. Like you said, why go for the Money Shot? You’re bound to fall flat on your face because being greedy or desperate simply repels success.Help out the Wiki Community, do a good turn and you’ll set yourself up to receive a nice, juicy link in through one of the world’s authority sites.Always think about setting the table before you want to feast, right?Excellent Matthew. I hadn’t come across this approach before; super creative link building here.I’ll tweet in a bit.Enjoy your weekend.Ryan
Hi Ryan,Thanks for your kind words – basically don’t try and f*ck on your first date 🙂
Hmm, I think I forgot to comment on this one. See, that’s the downside of poor wi-fi in hotels. x_x I also use an add-on for Chrome and Firefox Mozilla called “Check my links” when I’m investigating the dead (haha) / broken links. That works for BLB in general, but this looks like a great tool for Wikipedia alone. 😀
Hahaha yeah hotel WiFi ALWAYS sucks!
Yeah the blog post look me like 20+ days. Wrote 50% of the content myself and gathered all the images… I did kicked my *** for that Wiki link and there was no way that my post couldn’t get disapproved after all that work…
Makes for a more natural profile
I don’t see the benefit in doing it
Oooh!, Nice find Matt!Nice step by step article too.i need to dig out and update my old wiki video submitter tool and combo with this 🙂
Sounds awesome let me know if you do 🙂
what about no-follow links:)? does these links really do something ? I know another way to get wikipedia backlinks,I did it 10 days ago,It was indexed in 3 days by google ,but today is 11th day still nothing…Link doesn’t appeared in ahrefs or majesticseo,but webmaster tools says that wikipedia links me…
I don’t care about nofollow/dofollow
gee thanks just used it and loved it, very easy
No worrys 🙂
Great post. I’d like to know if WikiGrabber works for italian language.
It doesn’t sorry, but who knows they might expand it in the future!
I have been lucky while getting link and more important traffic from Wikipedia pages. Like for one of my targeted KY a Wikipedia page is at no 3. So I wrote a 2500 quality content and 25 un-indexed images and then submitted that on Wiki and in a week it as approved…Beside nice tool grabber. I edited one more link and chances are that it will be approved after a manual check…Thanks for sharing Wiki Grabber Matthew
I don’t think that has anything to do with luck, it’s all down to the time you took to prepare 🙂
Another nice quality tutorial, well done Matt!I definitely will use this method but need to have quality articles before we do the linking. And I am thinking should we produce content based on the dead link or citation need.
You’ve got it in one 🙂
What is so good about wikipedia links? I mean all you get is a no follow link right? Do follow< no follow from what I've read.Would you care to elaborate on this Matt?Thanks!
I don’t care about nofollow or dofollow personally
It’s all good. The algorithm is moving towards a more organic profile (which is what your’re referencing above).Peer groups have been displaced by semantic search…
The dofollow contextual backlinks definitely make the difference between ranking on the 1st page or not – I’ve studied the backlinks of the top ranking sites in my niche and their dofollow links are definitely the reason for them ranking very highly.Something else I’ve observed is that Google seems to treat all comments links as nofollow despite your plugin might show those links as dofollow – I became so disappointed after finding this out because I had spent tonnes of time on writing decent comments on dofollow blogs. So there you have it – it seems lots of bloggers just take each others’ words for it without testing them themselves, no disregard to Matthew btw as his blog is a helpful one overall and his posts are worth reading!
ok, but what if the dead backlink was found is into the References section? just edit/remove it with my own link as you’ve mentioned?
Yup 🙂
Nice context on wikipedia link building. Moreover, this time you have suggested a free tool “Wikigrabber” to use in handy with. Happy for that. 🙂
No worrys hope it helps!
You mention fixing up a few other citations/dead links and pointing to non-owned sites first. Do you think it matters how fast you do that? I.e., should we space it over a few days first before linking to our own site?
Not really I would just spend an hour or so doing it, wait for them approved then do the same again but this time one of them as your links 🙂
lmao
I put my VA on this and will be hammering it! Thank You!
Thats the way to do it =D
This is interesting. I had previously thought Wikipedia links were too hard to get because there are two types of links there, and the ones that pass link juice require your account to be in incredibly good standing, whereas the ones you talked about getting in this article are not really worth it. Seems what I read was wrong?Anyway, wiki grabber looks awesome. If I get the opportunity I’ll swing a link your way and let you know
Every link is worth getting from Wikipedia 🙂 Thanks Dom!
Will it hurt to do it though? Does having random content hurt?
Incredibly good information. Citation or broken link — is one better than the other?Thanks. Your website is golden.
No either will do the trick 🙂
Why did you stop caring about dofollow/nofollow? I was led to believe that means a lot for SEO rankings
That’s an awesome tool! Thanks for posting, going to start using this first thing in the morning :)Also a good way of finding things to write about like you suggested – by searching for things in our niche that need citations/ replaced links.Great stuff as always 🙂
Thanks Catalin!
Extremely valuable advice! I’m just getting started with SEO and your blog has been a tremendous help.
Thanks Danic 🙂
Thanks dude, this is so powerful. I just wish WikiGrabber would also work with other languages.
Send the owner a message 🙂
You are welcome 😀
Another great link building tutorial. Thanks Matthew. You rock 😀
Thanks for your kind words 🙂
Thanks For you best complement 🙂
As i know Wikipedia Backlinks are very powerful. Though I have never try it before but after read your post I am interested to try it for my blog and business site.Thanks for sharing.
Good luck 🙂
As innocent as Snow White in a white hat… :)Anyway, will add WikiGrabber to my arsenal. Thanks, Matt!
Hahaha she isn’t innocent 😛
Very useful, thanks, your tips help out a lot!
No worrys thanks James 🙂
Hey Matt you just made my day,I have no words to offer you. Simply saying thanks a lot. We all know that wiki links are very much valuable for any site. I tried to get wiki links before but failed. I lost all hopes of wiki links. WikiGrabber showed me a new hope. It’s 1:30 AM, so I am going to my bed. Tomorrow I will definitely earn some wiki links using WikiGrabber.
Hahaha get yourself some sleep then attack it tomorrow 🙂
epic! good stuff as usual Matt! For all niche site owners this is key, as getting related backlinks to specific niche sites can be close to impossible, but with wikipedia added to the list, you can now get more specific links than ever before.
No worrys thanks for reading Jake!
No hate, but this method gonna be dead so fast, once you reveal it, there will be tons of SEO’s adding their stuff on Wikipedia and they will begin to fight it. I don’t judge or hate on tutorial, but that’s my prediction what’s gonna happen, based on previous examples of any ‘big method’
Then you better get cracking 🙂
Great tutorial Matt, will do this on a daily basis till it’s ineffective with seo!
I think this will be a golden goose!
I did not know this. Thanks for taking the time Matthew.
No worrys glad to help Rocco 🙂
Another terrific post Matt~Yours is one of the -very- few blogs I read religiously In fact, I’ve added you as one of only 3 links on my IM blog – Kim Roach’s “Buzzblogger” and Stuart Walker’s “NicheHacks” are two others (take a peek if you have a few mins., I try to post only similarly high-quality info).Thanks again – now it’s off to Wikipedia!Robert
Thanks for the link much appreciated 🙂 Good luck with your blog!
Nice article Matt. Having a look at some potential sources now where I can plant some links.What I’m not seeing though is how i find where dead links are on the page?WikiGrabber says ‘dead link’ but when I click on it I just end up on the page with no idea where that dead link is.Thanks for linking to me as well Robert…appreciated!
If we have a site about a lot of different things will it hurt our rank? For example, if we have a blog about movies but then write an article about something completely different(like history or politics or something) just to get a backlink from wikipedia, will it hurt our rank?
I wouldn’t do it just to get a link from wikipedia
But no, it won’t hurt. High PR backlinks always help, especially if you’re pushing them to secondary pages (which Google sees as “more organic”).