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Forget linkbait, just copy Wikipedia

Most people mistakenly assume that creating linkbait means building a Top 10 list and getting it onto the front page of a popular social news website.

In actual fact the best linkbait is to create a useful resource that people reference when they are writing about a particular subject. If you can create a few thousand of these resources and each one gets a couple of links per month then that equates to thousands of natural links per month, all with great anchor text % contextual relevance.

For me Wikipedia is just one giant linkbait website, do you know anybody who has managed to get over 135 million links by writing Top 10 articles? 135 million links is a huge amount and all of them are the result of somebody thinking that Wikipedia was a great resource to link at when they were writing an article – in most cases Wikipedia probably wasn’t the best resource possible but it was better than the other resources on a particular subject.

It isn’t going to be easy but if you really want to linkbait in your industry then the path is quite straightforward:

  • Find all pages on Wikipedia that relate to your niche
  • Write more detailed versions with better images
  • Email all the people who link to the Wikipedia pages and gently point them to your new page
  • Find subjects where Wikipedia doesn’t have a page
  • Create a quality page on these new subjects
  • Use your existing link equity to help the new pages rank
  • Wait for people to find and link to these pages

In 18 months this strategy will probably give you enough links to outrank Wikipedia for every term you target.

BY Patrick Altoft AT 9:36am ON Thursday, 28 August 2008

Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Branded3 and has worked in the SEO industry for over 10 years. With experience across some of the worlds largest brands as well as startup businesses Patrick is well known in the industry and speaks regularly at the major SEO conferences and events. Follow Patrick on Twitter or Google+

Comments

  • wesley

    This is the most stupid idea I have ever read. Thanks for the laugh.

  • http://www.blogstorm.co.uk Patrick Altoft

    Care to expand on why this is stupid? Are you seriously saying that creating a useful resource on your website is a bad idea?

  • http://prfire.co.uk mat

    hm this is alot of work!!!!! maybe if you hired hundreds of writers and proof checkers?

  • http://condomunity.com Simon

    I don’t agree this is seriously great advice. Thanks for these insightful thoughts Patrick.

  • http://www.google.co.uk Chris

    He’s not saying rewrite wikipedia – although if you have time go for it! – Patrick is simply saying if you have a nice website on say (eurovision through the 90′s) then you simply check wikipedia for any references, rewrite the majority of content and present it better on your website then mail those who link to the wikipedia versions if they’d also like to checkout your more detailed pages that include, images and videos ect…

    So straight forward and easy to do.

  • http://www.arjunram.com Arjun Ram

    Why do you think Freebase is getting funded with so much money? They want to become the central repository for all semantic applications to link to.

    “In 18 months this strategy will probably give you enough links to outrank Wikipedia for every term you target.”

    - I would like to see if this works… If this could have been done .. wouldnt people already have done this?

  • http://www.a-casual-shop.com Max Motor

    It’s an even greater idea for those of us who are not English speaking. The local versions of Wikipedia are not remotely as good and content filled as the English version. There will be a great chance that your niche is only scarcely covered, so using the English Wikipedia article as base, you will be able to write a much more thorough and high quality article for you own site.

  • http://www.footinmouthdisease.net Foot In Mouth

    What I’m concerned with is people seeing the title of the article and just copying wikipedia onto their site without re-writing it. I know in certain niches, Real estate for example, there are hundreds of amatuer website owners who don’t have the patience to write their own content…and might be encouraged to steal and add duplicate content from Wikipedia.

  • http://www.markrushworth.com mark rushworth

    nice post! compliments my Wiki link bait post (thanks for the sphinn :)

  • http://www.netwriting.co.uk Tejvan Pettinger

    This is an excellent idea. I have done it only half heartedly and it does work over time.

  • http://www.neoscooters.com Tess Braswell

    Hi folks, how do you see who is linking to the Wikipedia site? I understand the concept, just not sure how to get the list of folks to gently persuade to link to my site.

  • http://www.semguide.com Teresha

    People copy Wikipedia content verbatim anyway, this post isn’t going to start that – it started ages ago (probably the day Wikipedia went live).

    As to why this is a good idea – because if you can get a few good links to your info page then you have a chance at being top in serps for the term and if you’re in the top for an information-based search you’ll get more links. The fastest way to get links is to be the “answer” to someone’s query.

  • Morgan Chemij

    Tess,

    To figure out who is linking to a specific page, go to the google search box and type in link:URL

    and make sure there are no spaces, for example to see who links to the article on link bait in wikipedia, you would use this query

    link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_bait

  • http://rankandroll.fr yvonh

    hi,
    sorry my english is not good enough to undeerstand point 6 and 7. Point 6: do you mean pagerank sculpting? Point 7 :do you mean natural inlink?

  • Pingback: How to Get 135 million Relevant Links | Constant Click, Website Analysis and SEO Tips

  • Pingback: Link Building this Week (35.2008) | Wiep.net

  • http://www.thewwwblog.com/ Chetan

    I have been doing this from a small time but still this kinda things to beat wikipedia can take years! Emailing is not fun right?

  • http://www.sugarrae.com Rae

    It amazes me how many people don’t “get it” as evidenced by some of the comments here. FANTASTIC post. I’m only annoyed that you gave more people an advantage I’d have been happy to see left in the closet ;-)

  • http://blog.styleapple.com/styleapple-creative-design-blog---the-place-where-creative-pros-flex-their-muscles/bid/5070/How-To-Launch-A-New-Website-To-Maximize-Your-Site-Visitors Calvin Cox

    After reading a few articles I had to subscribe to your blog; you’ve got some really interesting things to say about building and launching a successful website… and oh yeah. Your site is definitely primed for linkbaiting (I already see a few I’ll be linking to :-) Awesome post

  • http://www.majesticseo.com alexc

    Wikipedia has got more backlinks then this: http://www.majesticseo.com/search.php?q=wikipedia.org – 670,224,111 external backlinks from 1.3 mln external domains, and this is before we do major index update next month…

    I am not sure the suggested strategy will work however for 2 big reasons:
    1) you will be competing with Wikipedia articles that you know have very good backliks, including internal from other pages that are heavily backlinked – it is very hard to compete with those topical backlinks
    2) if you just take Wikipedia content you are opening yourself for dup content penalty – if search engines detect that your page is similar to existing authority pages then your dup page has no chance really.

    18 months might pass and you may find that trying to outrank established Wikipedia articles is pretty difficult…

  • http://www.inkode.co.nz Aidan Rogers

    Some of the comments are quite amusing.

    This was a another excellent post Patrick, it must get on your nerves when you share a great piece of info, to have some morons leave smart ass comments.

    I have a question for you. Any tips on encouraging/persuading people to update the links on their sites?

    Often I find people are willing to link out, but don’t actually update the site themselves. They pay a designer (by the hour) to do so.

    Which means missing out on some juicy links.

    I would be happy to it (update the link) for free, but how many people would trust a complete stranger with their ftp details? (pretty much zero)

    Do you have any suggestions?

  • http://www.blogstorm.co.uk Patrick Altoft

    Aidan this is a common issue. I have better success with blogs and sites that have a CMS.

  • http://www.traditionalirishgifts.com/ Irish fella

    Hi there Patrick – good Irish name there :) – thanks for this excellent suggestion. Someone made the point above that you’d need to be a good writer and that this might be very time consuming. I’d have to agree with those sentiments but it does strike me as a very sensible long term strategy.

    If google loves the information givers then this certainly is going to be a good technique. Although I’m not sure about being able to get more links than the wiki pages though. People just trust wiki and it gets links without trying because people know about it. That just isn’t going to happen for joe bloggs….

  • http://www.skirting-and-bellows.com Davey

    Aidan,

    This is for sure a common issue as I have always had the best success with blogs and other CMS setups.

  • http://www.myredshoes.org.uk/ Red

    Copying wikipedia would take years!!!

  • http://www.pc-registrycleaner.com Karsten@Best Registry Cleaner

    LOL great idea – I am going to start writing – ask me in say 1000 years how that went…

    seriously providing good content should be the goal but there is already a lot of good content out there – sadly enough the top 10 pages will soon only be dominated by big companies..

  • Michael Moore

    This is one of the worst things you could possibly do. It will also effect your PR. Avoid this method at all costs.

  • http://www.registry-fix-center.com/ Registry Clean

    Hey, thank you a lot for making this. Google has you at number 1 and I must admit I’m extremely impressed by this website.

  • http://www.seo-translator.com WebsiteTranslation

    As MaxMotor points out, this is a great idea for non-English sites, because Wikipedia is very often quite bad in other languages – simply use the English Wikipedia text, translate it and you will beat them hands off…

  • http://askwomendatingadvice.com/ Ask Women Dating Advice

    youre right- its about creating VALUABLE content that people want to link to. Seems to be forgotten…

  • http://www.irishgiftstall.com/ Irish Gifts

    Linkbait is great to get natural links all over the web only if you can write well. Seomoz.com is a great example of linkbait.

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