Use Wikipedia to Market your Website

By: David Skul


Without a doubt, one of the biggest Web 2.0 success stories of recent years is Wikipedia. Since it was established in 2001, it has grown into the largest reference website in the world—by far.

At last count, Wikipedia boasted 5,300,000 articles in more than 100 languages. It has about 75,000 contributors but the beauty of this, and any other Wiki, is that anybody can create their own content, including you.

Publishing a page about your business on Wikipedia can be a great way to market your website. If you are a regular web user you will have noticed that keyword searches regularly bring up Wikipedia pages in the top ten of the search engine rankings.

However, any content you submit to Wikipedia will have to be interesting and relevant. While content can be created by anyone, it is thoroughly checked and anything that looks like advertising will be rejected. Write about your business as objectively as possible and as if you are writing about it solely with the purpose of providing information.

If your article is accepted, bear in mind that other web users can edit it and contribute to it, and you might not like what they write.

Another idea is to add a link to your website in a related article’s external links section. Again, the link will have to be relevant and the content of your website will have to contribute something.

You should regularly check for updates to content relating to your business on Wikipedia and try to ensure that it is as positive as possible. Because Wikipedia pages do so well in the various search engines, it is possible that your Wikipedia page will rank above your website itself. Because of this, the content should be tailored to encourage people to visit your site.

A presence on Wikipedia is just one example of how you can use Web 2.0 to market your business at very little cost. There are countless other marketing opportunities available. You should consider building a presence on social networking websites such as MySpace and FaceBook, or starting your own blog and not depending on Wikipedia's magic alone.

You can now use a variety of media to promote yourself. You could post some photos on Flickr or invest in a microphone and audio editing software and produce some podcasts.

However, if you wish to experiment with the marketing possibilities of Web 2.0, Wikipedia is a good place to start.


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