Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world. In the online encyclopedia, you will find everything that has status and reputation – personalities, places, companies, and products. An entry on Wikipedia, including a backlink to the company website, is rated very positively by Google. In addition, the entry increases trust in your company. With our tips, you will be able to convince the Wikipedia guards of your company presentation.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and, as such, strives to be neutral and factual. Your entry must therefore meet certain criteria and certain formalities in order to be published at all.
5 requirements for your Wikipedia texts
For your texts to find favor in the eyes of Wikipedia guards, you must meet these criteria:
- Neutral and factual: Describe your company objectively. Subjective or advertising representations have no chance.
- Verifiable: Make your knowledge verifiable by citing the sources or evidence.
- Generally understandable and reader-oriented: Formulate from the reader’s point of view and pay attention to relevant content.
- Grammatically correct: write in complete sentences and make sure that there are no grammatical errors.
- Unique: Create new content for Wikipedia. Do not copy any text or text modules from the Internet or other Wikipedia contributions.
Tip: Collect independent and informative publications about your company that can be used as references. These also provide you with orientation in terms of content for the structure of your company portrait.
Is your company relevant to Wikipedia?
Wikipedia has a catalog of the criteria that a company must meet to be listed. This includes, among other things, at least 1,000 full-time employees or an annual turnover of more than 100 million euros or at least 20 production sites.
But you don’t have to meet all the criteria; one is enough. So, the best place to start is with the last but one: You have a dominant position in the market or an innovative, pioneering role (in a relevant product group or service).
In order to prove this, however, you must absolutely cite an independent source. For example, it is not enough to publish a press release on your own homepage where you mention your company’s market dominance. More promising is the publication of specialist texts in an online magazine or interviews in specialist magazines, and opinion polls among customers and the public.
In 3 steps to the Wikipedia entry
Step 1: Register as an author and create a profile
Before you can publish an article on Wikipedia, you need to be registered as an author. An author profile also strengthens Wikipedia’s trust in you and your texts. It shows that you want to contribute to the encyclopedia.
It is important that your IP address is not linked to that of your company. You can prevent this by using your private computer. Alternatively, hire someone else to do your business entry.
Step 2: Write texts according to these guidelines
Every Wikipedia entry is structured according to the same formalities. You should definitely comply with these in order to have a chance of publication:
- Write a short introduction before the table of contents.
- Structure the table of contents sensibly.
- Support your passages with sources; a link alone is not enough.
- Work with tables or info boxes.
- Enrich the writing with relevant images.
You can always save your text in your closed area and continue working on it at a later time.
The good thing about Wikipedia is that the encyclopedia never leaves you alone to publish a relevant article. You will find links to further information for each individual sub-item so that you can definitely master the Wikipedia hurdles.
Step 3: Publish your post
When your text is ready, save it and move it to the next level of the encyclopedia. It is not uncommon for the fight to start now: Wikipedia authors check the entry and can submit a request for deletion if, from their point of view, what has been written is not relevant enough, too one-sided, or too promotional. If one of the authors requests deletion, you can present your arguments and convince the Wikipedia community otherwise. If the deletion request is rejected, your Wikipedia contribution remains in the online encyclopedia. However, if the application is granted, you no longer have a chance to publish this text again on Wikipedia.
Is your contribution online? Even then, be prepared for changes. Because after the publication, competitors and competitors, but also other experts, can speak up and edit it. So be prepared and argue objectively when your account is questioned.
Danger! knowledge gain
Wikipedia lives from the constant growth of knowledge and the continuous updating of published articles. Remember that content that casts a negative light on your business can be added to your business listing if there are sources to back it up. Unfortunately, you are not authorized to delete these additions.
Read also: 9 Essential Marketing Channels for Small Businesses
How to get on Wikipedia without a company entry
Your company does not meet any of the criteria for a company listing? However, you still have the opportunity to contribute to Wikipedia and create a corresponding backlink on your site. You can edit, update and expand a post at any time without an author profile. Find a text that has already been published and add to it.
Check which texts you can link to in this way and show your expertise:
- Industry, Category, Topic
- competitor
- Material/Style/Production Process
- Production chain, location
- distribution channel
- Location question: Where is your headquarters located? Are you one of the big players there?
- Is your company building listed?
You can expand already published articles in 5 ways:
- Add to the text
- Insert relevant image material (photo, infographic, statistics, map),
- expand the web links,
- publish something that you can include under literature,
- contribute relevant content on the topic as “items.”
For example, if you choose a photo, you can refer to your company in the copyright (including a link). Next, you upload the image via Wikimedia. There you enter the source, such as a URL from your own image archive, and receive a link to your website.
If you decide to link because you have a page that provides additional information, make sure your information is relevant enough to the page to allow a link. Overall, however, Wikipedia only allows up to 5 external web links.
Linking via individual references works more easily, i.e., you expand the text and enter the source under references, for example, a published specialist article in your blog. A prerequisite for relevance on Wikipedia is good visitor numbers based on the search results on Google.
Score points with your expert knowledge to convince the guardians of Wikipedia.
Be inspired by these examples.
Example 1: The Hotel Smartino uses the Wikipedia entry on the well-known Kocher-Jagst cycle path for a backlink to its own homepage. The hotel expands the article with an informative overview map with places to stop and stay overnight on the Kocher-Jagst cycle path, which it uploads directly to Wikipedia. The Hotel Smartino is given as the source with a direct link to the homepage.
The overview map is useful for cyclists and relevant because this aspect with places to stop and stay overnight has not yet been shown on Wikipedia.
Example 2: Consultix GmbH has acquired a former bunker in Bremen and is currently converting it into a data center. This is the Zwingli bunker, to which a detailed article on Wikipedia is already devoted.
This aspect of converting former high-rise bunkers into data centers would be a variant in order to expand the text in a relevant manner (economic aspect) and to indicate Consultix GmbH as the source with a specialist article on the conversion. Another possibility is to insert a current photo of the bunker into the text with the note that Consultix will be operating a data center there from spring 2017. The photo source refers to the Consultix homepage.
Conclusion
Wikipedia is trusted by users. That makes an entry attractive. In addition, backlinks from Wikipedia are interesting because they contribute to Google’s ranking. You don’t necessarily have to publish a company profile in the encyclopedia to get these. Topics that have to do with your company, and your expertise on topics can be used to find many opportunities for an attractive backlink that will remain.
Read also: 15 Jobs in Content Marketing
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