Optimise with Wikipedia

Using Wikipedia can help webmasters boost their search engine optimisation (SEO) with a minimum of effort, according to an expert.

Randy Fishkin wanted to provide some Christmas gifts so he wrote on the SEOmoz blog ten SEO tips which - as it’s the festive season - take “relatively little energy”.

One trick he explained is the use of Wikipedia to improve search results.

According to Mr Fishkin, the online encyclopaedia uses nofollows on its external links, but it can have a huge effect for a site which is linked-to by it.

“You can earn a lot of good links and relevant traffic through Wikipedia, so to get around their stingy linking-out policy, don’t embed the link yourself - suggest it,” he recommended.

“Go to the discussion page for the target topic and suggest a couple good links that can back up unsubstantiated points or provide data.”

Earlier in December, the Google blog provided some Christmas tips of its own.

It suggested ensuring that images are labelled correctly, among other things.