Can I use Wikipedia for Link Building?

Recently, quite a few people have asked me whether they can use Wikipedia to create links to their website that count for SEO.

This is a topic that has been debated a lot, especially in the last few years. In my opinion, you should NOT use Wikipedia to build links to your website for SEO purposes. Here are 3 reasons why:

1. There are some very strict rules about adding content, including that you shouldn’t add content about yourself or for the purpose of self promotion, that the topics need to be of interest to the broader public and that all articles need to be based on third party information (there is usually a long list of references at the bottom of each page).
2. Wikipedia entries continually are continually monitored by volunteer editors which means they can get changed, edited or deleted at any time.
3. Wikipedia includes mainly internal links and only the references at the bottom of each page are external links – often none of the references actually point to the direct website, rather to third party reports about the website. In addition, external Wikipedia links are also “no follow” links which means they do not get counted towards SEO.

So, in short, I don’t see any benefit in using Wikipedia for link building. It can be beneficial as part of a traffic strategy (this is different to link building), however, if you are a beginning internet marketer, your time is much better leveraged using some of the link building strategies outlined in the Missing Chapter Report.