Hey everyone, I'm certainly no SEO, but I think I understand the basics! Basically, ever since i've started creating content based websites (information websites about people, objects, ideas etc.) I've never been able to top wikipedia in the search engines. This, no matter how well I built links and optimised my pages. I was wondering, does everyone have this problem, I feel if I can get my sites above wikipedia I'll get A LOT more traffic, do any of you have a solution or a method of getting above them? Is there something I'm missing? Cheers. Sammy
I would focus more on your site, give it all you got with good link building. anchor the text good, directory submissions, article submissions, Social bookmarking, press releases and adds on other sites with good traffic and look more at the content you have. just focus on your site
You need to build up the overall authority of your website and get plenty of good links with good anchor text. In some niches it may be difficult to beat an established wikipedia page, but it should be beatable through hard work. Diversify where you get your backlinks. Perhaps the backlinks that you are currently getting are not high quality.
Build "follow" links and write new content for your website. Make sure you have a good internal link structure. Be patient and invest SEO effort for the long term.
It's not easy to take over a position if wikipedia is there. Wikipedia has a ton of authority with Google. To move on top of them your content has to be second to none, very on topic and Google needs to have a lot of trust in your website. Best thing you can do if your content is good is build backlinks from trusted authority websites which isn't easy.
I would definitely agree but I would not worry about Wiki being ahead of you as they are not your direct competitors.
Thanks for all you're replies guys! I don't think I've done anything WRONG - but I could probably try and get some higher aurthority backlinks from a few sites and see what happens
If your links appear spammy, it will be removed immediately. If you are successful in retaining the links you can get good traffic, although the links come with rel:no follow attribute. You won't get any PR juice, BTW...
How about writing some articles in wikipedia on your topic(s). You can also insert links to your site(s) in wikipedia if your content is relevant to the article.
It's not always possible, but sometimes you can optimize a page for a keyword or keyphrase that Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for, or else the corresponding Wikipedia article doesn't rank well for that keyword or phrase.