Why Wikipedia?

Michael Buczek - September 24, 2010

Wikipedia.org, the free online encyclopedia, is a force on the Internet and in the world of social media. This wholly interactive way of sharing and retrieving information has over 13 million articles. According to their website, the word Wikipedia means a technology for creating collaborative websites, from the Hawaiian word wiki, meaning “quick”) and encyclopedia.

Having an article about your business in Wikipedia is beneficial for the simple fact that it can drive great quality traffic to your website: 

For instance, when a business (such as IBM) appears prominently in the search results pages of Google, the Wikipedia entry is considered to be such an authority, that it will rank very prominently in the search results. This results in more traffic to your site because of the valuable real estate that it takes up in the SERPs.

Links coming from Wikipedia to your site do not have any value in terms of “Link Juice”, but, again, will drive traffic to your site and will give your business credibility in the industry.

Wikipedia is human edited, so any Wikipedia editor can delete your article if they feel that it is merely a “commercial” for your business and/or it doesn’t have any cultural significance. This means, obviously, that not all websites will be successful at submitting an article to Wikipedia and keeping it there. Articles on people or businesses should read like biographies, in that they are written from a neutral point of view. So, has your business made any industry innovations? Is it notable and culturally significant? If so, you may have a shot at gaining a presence on one of the largest sites on the web.