Published:

07/30/2019 10:04am

How to Use Wikipedia to grow your business

Wikipedia pages are a part of a company’s online presence that often flies under the radar. While it’s not allowed for all companies, there are many advantages to having a Wikipedia presence, and many business owners are surprised to learn that it can also be beneficial for SEO.
While it still has its critics, Wikipedia’s reputation for credibility has improved over time. Aside from the company’s own website, Wikipedia is the logical place to look up information on a business or business leader, and of course information from a third-party source is more credible than from the company’s own mouth. While anyone can have a social media presence, and get listed on Yell and Google My Business, a Wikipedia presence suggests that the company is especially important and, by association, trustworthy. In this way a strong Wikipedia presence can be invaluable for brand awareness and perception.
As the fifth-most visited website worldwide, Wikipedia receives an enormous amount of traffic and backlinks and this is reflected in its domain authority score of 100 (the maximum score possible). While links from Wikipedia are likely to be nofollow, they still look impressive in any backlink profile, and more importantly have the ability to drive significant amounts of qualified referral traffic to your website if you are linked from a relevant page.
The information pulled from Wikipedia is displayed in knowledge panels or featured snippets and often includes key company details such as year founded, headquarters and logo, which is taken from the box of details that appears on the right-hand side of Wikipedia pages, known as an Infobox.
There are several methods of creating a presence for your company on Wikipedia, with difficulty and benefits varying accordingly:
Option 1: Creating a page for your business
In order to prove sufficient credibility to deserve its own page, a business must have at least half a dozen independent (third-party) references that discuss the company in detail; fleeting mentions don’t count. A common misconception is that Wikipedia references have to be academic sources – in reality newspaper coverage, industry/trade website articles and magazine features are what you’re looking for. It’s also worth noting that some references can be to the company’s own website – as long as the quota of independent references is still met.
Option 2: Creating a page for a business figure
The criteria for a page for a business owner is arguably harder to satisfy, as the quota of half-a-dozen independent references are more likely to be achievable for businesses that have been around for years than individual people unless they are extremely notable.
Option 3: Improve an existing page
As we established earlier, in the case of a business already having a presence on Wikipedia, it’s important to take ownership of this presence to ensure information pulled through to the SERPs is accurate and as useful as possible. Existing pages are often ‘stubs’, (very short pages with little information) especially in the cases of small or mid-range businesses – and thus have lots of room for improvement. However, even if the page is already well-developed, it’s worth regularly monitoring edits to ensure no outdated or inaccurate information is on the page.
Option 4: Add a reference
Perhaps the least rewarding but the quickest method of obtaining a Wikipedia presence, adding a link to your business’ website as a reference can still drive significant referral traffic. This is also a good way to obtain a presence on Wikipedia if your company is not notable enough to qualify for its own page.
The easiest way to identify areas of a page requiring references is by looking for sentences appended with a ‘citation needed’ tag or an existing reference that is accompanied by a ‘dead link’ tag, as adding references there is most likely to be seen to be adding value to the page and may therefore be subject to less scrutiny.

These are excerpts are taken from a guide written by The SEO Works with permission, found on https://www.seoworks.co.uk/why-your-business-should-have-wikipedia-presence-how-it-helps-seo/