Power of internal linking
By Mert on Aug 16, 2007 in General SEO Strategy
In a humorful way, I had written about how to make a wikipedia article #1 in Google for its title as a keyword. Well I decided to test it a few months ago. Wikipedia has a boring article called real estate with minimal external links pointing to it. By the way I refuse to give a link that does not have nofollow tags to wikipedia (full supporter of Andy Beal’s Nofollow me to Wikipedia Campaign). Either way, I spent a few boring nights of (ok call me a nurde) wikilinking (internal linking from other wikipedia pages) the word “real estate” (believe it or not without spamming wikipedia) from a few hundred other wiki articles to the real estate page. The results have come back and Wikipedia’s real estate article jumped from the #18 spot to #10 spot for “real estate” a VERY competitive keyword in Google in a few months of time.
Lessons to be learned???
This is a clear indication of what people can do with proper anchor text internal linking (either through their sidebar or through content linking). Anchor text still rules no matter where the link comes from. And, of course, Wikipedia will rule the SERPs for a long time to come as the nofollow tags seems to make Wikipedia nothing but a PR cookie monster.
9 Comment(s)
By David Mihm on Aug 17, 2007 | Reply
Funny post, Mert. I actually wrote a similarly tongue-in-cheek post this morning about Google’s predilection for Wikipedia.
You’re absolutely right, internal anchor text on a powerful site can make an enormous difference…
By Colin on Aug 17, 2007 | Reply
That’s been my concept since inception on my mortgage blog. Didn’t really think of it as SEO, just felt it would make sense to have posts link to static pages on relevant topics. It’s worked for me.
By paisley on Aug 17, 2007 | Reply
good article, cool experiment.
By Locust on Aug 19, 2007 | Reply
Well you can’t do this for every page of your website, you have to choose the ones you want to ‘help’ . Linking all your pages won’t be an effective seo strategy… Nice article.:-)
By Mert on Aug 19, 2007 | Reply
Hi guys,
Thank you for all the comments.
Locust, I just wanted to tell you that you are dead wrong on this issue. As long as the links are internal, you could put a 1000 links (if you don’t mind Google’s 100 links webmaster guidelines rule and slow load up times) and it still would not hurt your SERPs. Internal links do not hurt SERPs externals do. Honestly I believe that to be the achilles heel of google and the reason 100 links rule exists (as much as people think it is reciprocal link farms or such. If you wish to see a proof contact me and I will show you.
Colin, I have seen what you did and I can see why it is working for you. That is a lot of patience.
David, “It seems to me that if Wikipedia is really interested in the welfare of its community, it could save its users a lot of time and effort by just 301′ing its homepage to google.com.” - Wow the love for wiki - Great quote buddy.
By YouON on Aug 21, 2007 | Reply
i’m really a noob, so be patient.
it is not a suicide technique this?
if wikipedia go at the first in the serp, my site will never bring wiki down.
it’s to easy to beat my competitor than wikipedia.
but pearhaps this is only a test for internal link building.
so sorry for my english (i’ll need to improve it), and thanks for the interesting article.
best regards, alessio
By Mert on Aug 21, 2007 | Reply
Hi Allesio I just wanted to say one man’s suicide is another man’s treasure. Please read my other two blog posts on Wiki-jacking for uses of this tactic and Wiki=dnapping for the cure to Wiki being at the top. And yes you are right if you also rank for that particular keyword you are also hurting yourself.
By Nedim Sabic on Aug 29, 2007 | Reply
Heh, nice point. Especially when we know how much traffic wikipedia passes on some keywords.
By Xocai Chung on Jun 13, 2008 | Reply
Strong internal links are more important than a lot of people realize, especially for weaker keywords. I build a homepage of one site to PR3 in a few months, just through internal links.
Some top sites for smaller keywords get there simply through internal links.