Being a blogger is not only about writing quality content anymore; it’s also about implementing the best SEO practices, adding more value and social touch, and doing many more tasks. As all the bloggers have realized recently after the Google Penguin update. The importance of SEO has itself increased.
There is an obvious need to change our view of SEO. And why not learn from the only website that ranks #1 for almost 99% of queries? Yes, you guessed it. It is Wikipedia, the largest online encyclopedia. Whenever you want to learn some new words, Wikipedia is the place.
There is no doubt that Wiki SEO is out of the box, and they take care of each part of the site’s SEO structure carefully. For us (bloggers and SEOs), Wikipedia is a good case study to learn and understand what an effective SEO is.
There are a lot of ways in which Wikipedia retains its online quality. But it doesn’t even use so many ‘secret’ SEO tips that you cannot figure them out.
Here, I have listed the SEO tricks used by WikiPedia that help it rank higher.
These tips, when used properly on your site, also increase your rankings in search engine results.
Factors that contribute to Wikipedia’s ranking
- One thing that you need to keep in mind before we get into the secret behind Wikipedia’s ranking is their content quality. Many sites in the past tried to copy their strategy, but high-quality content from Wiki pages always outranked the competitor.
- Along with high-quality content, other factors like site SEO, speed, and on-page SEO also contributed to the outstanding ranking of Wikipedia.
If you are fond of Wikipedia, then you might know that Wikipedia is the largest linker of its content. It links to around 500–600 other Wikipedia articles from its own page. So that none of its articles ever get dumped. You know that Wikipedia links to its category pages and its tags. - It also links to its Wikipedia files about images and other stuff. That is why Wikipedia never gets ranked third or fourth in any of its articles.
- It lives on the idea that if you want others to promote your content, you should promote it first. This also has a direct impact on the low bounce rate of Wiki and a better user experience. Don’t you think so?
- If you are using WordPress, you can use WordPress Smart Link for automatic internal linking. Link as much as you can, but make sure it is relevant and meaningful.
- Also keep user experience in mind while doing internal linking, as lots of irrelevant linking may give a bad user experience.
You will see all the sidebars, footer, and header of the page. That is quite a good deed. After observing for a while, you can also conclude that 98% of its content changes over time. - In terms of copyright text, Wikipedia contains just a line, and the plain HTML code contains a link to its copyright documents. Isn’t that just another vote for the cleanliness of a site?
- It says itself in the Webmaster Guidelines that the same words or content should be used at a minimum on different pages, and it will be better if the content changes a lot across the different pages of the site.
Wikipedia has many different pages, and it also does not use English as the preferred language. So, how does it protect itself from duplicate pages? By using Canonical settings and making language markup for these different pages.
Different Subdomains
One more thing that you will notice is that Wikipedia has different subdomains for different languages, which create different virtual sites containing the whole page in a specific language.
This also tells us how we can use multiple subdomains for multiple languages and save ourselves from those cruel updates.
Wikipedia is an online example of how a site can stay big while not being spammed. Also, Wikipedia offers its users the ability to edit any content on its page. But it never allows the spam content to stay on its pages. It keeps a record of each of the edits that are made and lets them stay on the page only after reviewing them completely.
For Bloggers
You are responsible for any links on your webpage. That could be in the form of guest posting or via commenting.
Since irrelevant links are considered bad SEO examples, before adding any link to your page (comment, guest post, or any other way), make sure it’s useful and adds value.
The primary motive of Wikipedia is to stay informational and provide content that is true and useful. All the other sites and blogs on the net that think the same way will always succeed the same way.
Don’t you think that happy readers are much more useful than unhappy advertisers? Yes, they are, because when people are happy, they share the same things that they discovered with their friends.
The art of pillar articles: how to create them
My suggestion here is to not only work on developing new content but also keep updating the old content to make it more useful and relevant.
Bottom Line
You can get more traffic and have more money in your pockets if you do it all for a good cause, i.e., by providing your readers with the best information that you can provide.
These are some of the factors that contribute to Wikipedia’s great ranking in SERPs. Now, you can either just read this article and read some other SEO tips, or you can start working on implementing some of the above tips on your site and improving your site’s ranking.
