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How to Get Backlinks from Wikipedia (Without Getting Deleted)
How to Get Backlinks from Wikipedia (Without Getting Deleted)
Wikipedia editors deleted my first three attempts. Then I figured out what they actually want. Here's the approach that stuck.
My first Wikipedia edit lasted like four hours. Maybe five.
I'd found this article about some marketing topic - I think it was about attribution modeling? Don't remember exactly. Anyway there was a line in there without a citation. No source. And I had a blog post covering that exact thing. So I added myself as a reference. Proud of myself for maybe three seconds. Next morning I check and it's just... gone. Some Wikipedia volunteer had flagged it as promotional and reverted my edit.
Which okay fine. I was being promotional.
Attempt number two. Picked something way more obscure this time. Buried my link in a footnote that nobody in their right mind would check. Lasted two days before someone tagged it "conflict of interest editing." Still have no idea how they figured that out. Their detection systems are wild.
Then I tried making a new account. Fresh start right? That was actually worse. Got flagged for "single-purpose editing." Apparently that's a thing they track. One editor left this snippy message on my talk page about it too.
So I quit trying the direct approach. Ran into someone at a meetup months later who'd done it properly. Turns out my whole framing was off.
The thing nobody tells you first
Took me embarrassingly long to learn this. Every external link on Wikipedia has rel="nofollow" on it. All of them. Google doesn't count them for ranking purposes. No PageRank passes through.
So then... why do SEO people obsess over them?
The indirect benefits. Wikipedia pulls something like 18 billion pageviews monthly - I had to look that up because I didn't believe it at first. Even if your link is in some random article about HVAC systems or whatever, that sends real visitors. And some percentage of those visitors have their own blogs. Or work for publications. They link to you and THOSE links are dofollow.
There's also the whole AI citation thing now. ChatGPT, Perplexity - they lean on Wikipedia sources when they generate answers. Get cited there and suddenly you're showing up in AI responses. I rambled more about this in the authority guide if you want details.
Here's the catch though. Thinking about it as "how do I get a Wikipedia backlink" is the wrong angle. Editors pick up on that mindset fast. There's like 500,000+ articles needing citations. The volunteers who review stuff all day have seen every attempt at gaming the system.
What Wikipedia editors care about
After bombing out three times I finally sat down and read their actual guidelines. Probably should have started there.
This phrase kept showing up: "contribution over promotion."
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Which like. Yeah. Makes sense if you stop and think for two seconds. It's an encyclopedia. Not a place to put your marketing links. The question isn't "how do I get my URL on there?" It's more like "does adding this link make Wikipedia better at being Wikipedia?"
There's this guideline called WP:ELYES - google it if you want - that says external links need "unique, encyclopedic value." Your resource should provide something a complete article wouldn't already cover. Original data. Primary sources. Expert analysis that's already been cited elsewhere.
Stuff that gets deleted immediately: promotional content (yep, that was me), pages that just repeat what's already in the article (also kind of me), anything that reads like an ad. Plus anything from someone with a conflict of interest. Like adding a citation to your own blog post. Which is exactly what I did.
Stuff that actually works (slowly)
After messing up three times in a row I started figuring out what legitimate approaches look like. None of this is fast. Just want to be clear about that.
Finding dead links to replace
Wikipedia's got a huge problem with link rot. You know how something like two-thirds of all web links are dead now? That stat's from Ahrefs I think. Wikipedia has the same issue - tons of citations pointing at pages that 404.
They've got this bot - InternetArchiveBot - that catches a bunch automatically. Finds archived versions through Wayback Machine and swaps them in. But lots of dead links still slip past.
Here's what you can do: search for articles in your niche that have dead citations. Check Wayback Machine to see what the original source actually said. If you've got something that covers the same ground and qualifies as reliable... you can propose it as a replacement.
Keyword: propose. Not add yourself. If you have ANY connection to the site you're suggesting, you need to use the talk page and let some neutral editor make the actual edit. You don't get to do it yourself.
Also careful - if a dead link cited some specific stat, your replacement needs that exact stat. Can't just swap in "something sorta related."
Citation needed tags
Last I checked there were like 560,000 articles with statements that need sources. Half a million uncited claims just sitting there.
There's a tool called Citation Hunt - it surfaces random snippets tagged as needing citations. You can filter by topic so you're seeing stuff in areas you know.
The process: find something that needs a citation. Go find a reliable source that backs up that exact claim. Add the citation properly. Not a bare URL - actual cited text with a proper reference.
Now. If your content really is the best available source for some random obscure fact... sure, use it. But like. Be honest with yourself. Most of the time you're going to cite someone else's stuff. That's totally fine. You're building a track record as a real editor who actually helps. That pays off later.
Using talk pages (when you're conflicted)
If you work for a company, own the website, have clients - whatever - you can't just edit articles yourself. That's Wikipedia's rule, not mine.
What they want you to do instead: go to the article's talk page. Write out your suggestion. Say explicitly that you're connected to the thing you're proposing. Then wait for someone neutral to look at it and decide.
Mine looked kind of like:
Hey - I work at [Company]. This article says [claim] but there's no source. We published research covering this at [URL]. It has [the specific data point]. Curious if neutral editors think this meets RS guidelines or not.
That's the template basically. You're saying "I'm biased, here's my suggestion, someone else decide."
Does it work? Eh. Sometimes. The odds are worse than random broken link fixing. But when it sticks, it really sticks. Other editors already bought in. They'll defend it.
The long game: actually becoming an editor
I met a few people who got real Wikipedia links legitimately. Same pattern every time. They'd all become genuine Wikipedia editors first. Not for SEO. Just... editors.
Hundreds of edits on stuff that had zero to do with their businesses. Grammar fixes. Citation additions for random articles. Structural improvements. Getting into arguments on talk pages about whether some phrase violates NPOV. The whole nerdy thing.
Months of this. Then when they proposed something touching their actual work, their edit history backed them up. "Oh this person has 400 constructive edits, probably not a spam account."
Worth it for one backlink? If I'm honest... probably not. That's a lot of volunteer hours. But if you legitimately care about your topic area and find the editing weirdly satisfying, the SEO angle becomes a bonus thing.
The reliability bar is brutal
I really wish someone had told me this earlier. "Reliable source" on Wikipedia doesn't mean what I thought it meant.
What actually counts: peer-reviewed stuff. Academic press books. Newspapers with proper editorial processes. New York Times, sure. Your industry trade publication? Maybe. Depends.
What doesn't count: self-published anything. Blogs. Press releases. Your company's website. Podcasts. That Medium piece you spent all weekend on. None of that.
Startup blog about industry trends? Nope. Whitepaper on your product? Nope. Interview you did on someone's YouTube channel? Also nope.
What does work: original research that got published somewhere real. Government datasets. Academic studies. Journalism from legit outlets. If you've been cited by those kinds of sources, that helps sometimes. But then Wikipedia would cite the source that cited you. Not you directly.
You hear advice like "create content worth citing on Wikipedia." Sounds doable. In practice though? Most business content doesn't come close. I'm not being pessimistic here. Just realistic.
What I'd actually do now
I'm not gonna pretend any of the above is realistic for most people building backlinks. Becoming a proper Wikipedia editor? Months of volunteer time. Getting a link through legit channels? Your content needs to pass academic standards. That's a high bar.
But here's what I find interesting. Thousands of Wikipedia links already point at dead domains. Sites that were reliable sources back in 2018 or 2015 or whenever, but the domain expired. Owner stopped paying for hosting. Business shut down. Whatever.
That's what Revised does. We track down expired domains that still have contextual backlinks from Wikipedia, Reddit, Hacker News, sites like that. When we acquire those domains and set up redirects properly, you inherit links that editors vetted and approved years ago.
Not sneaking anything new in. Just... the links already exist? We point them somewhere useful instead of a dead page.
Basically link reclamation at bigger scale. Instead of emailing webmasters one by one begging them to update broken links, you buy the domain itself.
Tools if you're gonna try anyway
For finding dead links on Wikipedia:
Special:LinkSearch - built-in tool showing all pages linking to a domain
Wayback Machine - see what dead sources originally said
Citation Hunt - find unsourced statements in your topic area
For tracking edits:
Make a real Wikipedia account, not a throwaway. Looks sketchy otherwise.
Disclose affiliations on your user page
Watch articles you've edited so you know when stuff changes
The rules you need to know:
WP:RS - what counts as a reliable source
WP:EL - what's acceptable for external links
WP:COI - conflict of interest requirements
WP:ELBURDEN - who has to justify keeping a link when challenged
So where does this leave you
Look. Wikipedia backlinks are valuable. Just not why most people think. The nofollow thing means no direct ranking juice. But traffic from Wikipedia is real. The AI citation stuff is real. And being cited there makes you look more legitimate in ways that are hard to quantify.
If you're gonna do the editing route properly:
Become a real contributor first. Like months of edits on random stuff that has nothing to do with your business. Never touch articles about yourself, your company, clients, anything like that. Use talk pages for work-related suggestions. Focus on useful edits - dead links, gaps in citations - not finding excuses to mention yourself.
And honestly? Accept that most business content won't meet their reliability bar.
Or skip all that and see how we approach it. Links are already out there pointing at expired domains. We just redirect them somewhere useful.
