When it comes to Search Engine Optimization it only takes a matter of time for you to figure out that you need links. Diversifying links across the web without into context worked darn well back in the day when Google was this lame kid who can be easily swayed for giving away his candy, fast-forward to 2019 Google is like Eddie from Limitless.
Google is constantly learning ways that its potential is being manipulated by spammers. As a means to prevent spammers gaining higher positions Google now validates links from authority sites.
One such authority sites that is never going out of fashion is “Wikipedia” it’s the best Wiki submission sites out there.
As a matter of fact, Google has unconditional love & admiration towards Wikipedia.
In the above two screenshots, you can see how Google represents image carousel and knowledge graph fetched via Wikipedia; these are the spots that your business can gain on Google search platform.
Your business having a dedicated page on Wikipedia qualifies you for Knowledge panel & image carousel ranking above search results.
Everything seems rainbow & sunshine but, yes there is a BUT...
Creating a company page & putting a link on Wikipedia is not a piece of cake.
It is important to understand what Wikipedia is?
What Wikipedia isn’t?
- It isn’t a publisher
- It isn’t a blog
- It isn’t a web directory
- It isn’t a business listing site
- It isn’t an advertising publishing platform
What is Wikipedia then?
To put it in simple terms, Wikipedia is website that disperses information about virtually anything with the intent of merely providing information; the intent isn’t to sell anything. Just provide unbiased information to the internet users.
Who owns Wikipedia?
Pretty much everyone who makes valuable contributions. People don’t need to mail Jimmy Wales (who launched Wikipedia) asking if they can put content on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia is owned by everyone who is putting out relevant content & everyone who is moderating content so as to prevent salespeople from promoting or making a marketplace out of Wikipedia.
How does Wikipedia make money?
Wikipedia while being a non-profit organization broadly makes money with donations and Wikipedia store.
Now that we have got basics out of the way; let’s learn how you can create company page on Wikipedia without getting your account suspended.
Wikipedia page creation guidelines
1. Create a Wikipedia Account:
First one is a no brainer, a word of caution though; Wikipedia doesn’t like it if you create Wikipedia account by the name of your business. Keep it simple, create the account with your name.
2. Start making legitimate edits to the existing pages
You cannot create Wikipedia company page just like that after creating your account. Wikipedia needs to measure your credibility; to measure your credibility they require that you make 10 successful edits, edits that aren’t taken down by bots or moderators. After having successfully made 10 edits you qualify to create Wikipedia company page from scratch.
You can make edits to the Wikipedia page of your hometown, add the missing information & reference every information you add. Reference the information by a credible website preferably by a news portal. Right after the information you can use <ref></ref> to reference.
3. Keep tabs on notifications and notices
Despite doing everything the right way there’s a likely chance that you may have unintentionally erred. Your notification and notices bar will be swarming with updates if you don’t pay attention to it then you won’t know if you are doing the right or wrong thing.
Wikipedia will only tolerate your mistakes for so long, after 4-5 strikes them may suspend your account for good, you are gonna have to start all over again; hence it’s probably better that you make sure that you are operating under best practices.
4. Create your company page
To create your company page search for your company name the search result will show as follows
The page "Company name" does not exist. You can ask for it to be created, but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered.
Click on the “company name you searched for” it will redirect you to a page where you can start putting together your page from scratch. You can create the page using source editor or visual editor, the visual editor is easy to use as it’s front-end.
Follow the ideal Wikipedia company page outline by imitating the company page from your industry within Wikipedia. It can have sections like Introduction, History, Acquisition, Products, Operations, Services, External Links, Controversies, etc.
Note: Add information in a way that it feels that you are adding information do not in any way put it out in a promotional way that’s the quickest way of failing to create a published version of your Wikipedia company page.
The information you add in your Wiki page should be sufficiently referenced by preferably news portals, it adds to the credibility of added information. Every link you add (include yours) should be followed by the web archive link of the same web page.
The link you are supposed to add in references; search that link in web.archive.org in Wayback Machine to be precise. The search result will reveal the fresh version of the page as scraped by the Wayback Machine; copy the link of that page from Wayback Machine and paste that link in Wikipedia followed by the original link.
This exhaustive process is followed for link citation, it’s a prerequisite by Wikipedia.
Finish the remaining sections of Wikipedia page, add categories to your page, it is very important in Wiki page creation to think of it as internal linking. For example, if your business is Textile then you would add categories like
- Textiles in (country/city/state)
- Businesses in (country/city/state)
- Conglomerate companies in (country/city/state)
- Multinational companies in (country/city/state)
- Manufacturing companies established in (year)
- Company based in (country/city/state)
The reason why it’s so important is that now your wiki page will be tagged in all these category pages & every time users search on Google for these categories like “Textile business in city name” your business wiki page may appear in image carousel right above the search results and also in the search results.
5. Hit Publish!
As soon as you hit publish the page will be live for everyone, it won’t start appearing in Google search results for a while it takes time. Having your page live don’t immediately get your hopes high, you may within hours receive notices or notifications if you did something wrong or put wrong information, keep tabs over that.
After a few weeks if everything goes right you will receive a notification saying that your Wiki page has been reviewed.
So, there you have it everything you need to know about creating a Wikipedia page & a step by step guide to do so.
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