Outranking Wikipedia

Whats the point? Why try and outrank Wikipedia?

Most people donot take Wikipedia as a competing portal.i.e. if you are there in sight and wikipedia is there they'll most likely come and check you out unless they are ONLY looking to gain knowledge.

Having said that, i have outranked Wikipedia a couple of times. If the topic is such where Wiki page keeps getting backlinks and content then its hard unless you can cope with that crazy internal linking and quality backlinks that they get. Tough but doable. Most importantly a great lesson in SEO.

It depends on how you want to go about but there are ways. For one thing, Wikipedia's strength comes from internal linking and not very much external links. Most of their links come from other Wikipedia pages. One way is to find all their internal links and remove the non-relevant ones. For example, you'll find a celebrity article linking to "car insurance". It doesn't make sense so try and remove it (it's subject to a review) on the grounds of non-relevant. Of course, you'll want to make other edits on your account that are positive or you'll get ignored.

I'm surprised Wikipedia wasn't hit harder with the latest Google algorithm update because to me personally, it's such a junky site.

Perhaps you don't want to do that. Of course, you can always just build more and more quality relevant backlinks until you pass them. Either way, they're not invincible.

The easiest way to out rank a wiki page in the SERPs is to start from the inside out.

Example, post backlinks on wikipedia to the exact page that your trying to rank + your exact keyword as the wiki backlink anchor-text.

Don't link back to wiki, make it one way to your external site/page.

Just know this, If you don't know your way around wikipedia they will remove everything you edit/post.

The way I start a new wiki account is I actually jump in & provide help to what wiki needs & is looking for. Example, I think I posted/edited something like 18 wiki edits that were all approved long before I ever posted my first external backlink with anchor-text.

I've been planning on (I keep saying this lol ) to create a new pdf on how I work with wiki & get awesome backlinks that have never been rejected. It will happen, I just have to make time to do it.

Build high PR links.....build .edu links and ping them to index faster!

I have one site which competes with and outranked wikipedia with an EMD, but I wouldn't try doing it without an EMD.

Correction - Wikipedia DOES rank high on backlinks - do some SERP mining and you can see this easily. They receive a huge number of in-content anchor text keyword links from relevant pages, as it has become an unconscious habit for writers to link wikipedia in their articles... exactly the kind of links Google loves. Plus they have a high domain authority and strong interlinking within wikipedia.

Of course you want to outrank them. It means more traffic, and enhanced status in the eyes of the visitor - "this site must be more important" is what they may be thinking.

Wikipedia traffic is *not* completely separate from "buyer" traffic: A lot of people go to Wiki to learn more about items they are considering purchasing!

As others have said, anyone who does even a modest amount of SEO is going to run into the problem of outranking wikipedia all the time. It is an SEO goal obviously worth achieving. There are plenty of keywords that have monetization potential that rank high in wikipedia. example: "diamond". This is a super tough keyword, but wiki has been beaten by a couple of sites.

Owing to the difficulty of obtaining this many 'high quality' links, looks as though they are out-muscling Wiki by sheer link volume.

Another classic example for your studies - "mortgage". Note that the site outranking wikipedia does not have the keyword in the domain.

It's difficult, but do-able if you have the time, skills, budget etc.

Oh yeah, and outgoing Wikipedia links are no-follow... plus they usually get pruned unless super relevant.

I'm having an EMD too but the first three results on page one for my main keyword are 1. Medical site 2-3 Wikipedia...still building backlinks...tough job though