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Wikipedia just entered the top 10 most visited sites on the Internet, largely on the back of a steady flood of Google traffic.
Wikipedia also recently added the
nofollow tag
to their outbound links in order to stem spam on their site. That means
links from Wikipedia no longer directly influence rankings.
Regardless, Wikipedia is still a great place to get a link,
especially if you've got a niche information-style site. That's because a
link from a Wikipedia page can send you a steady stream of targeted
traffic, and that traffic can result in both sales and additional links
from bloggers and website owners who find you through Wikipedia.
Take any niche keyword and chances are good Wikipedia is in the
Google top 10. That page is going to get a nice chunk of that traffic. A
link added to the bottom of that page is going to receive a percentage
of that traffic flow. How much depends on how good the page is.
A Wikipedia page with a lot of useful information and lots of
outbound links is often less likely to send traffic than a page where
the information is lacking and there's few outbound links. If the page
leaves people wanting, they're more likely to click on your link.
Doesn't really apply well to commercial kinds of queries, but if
you've got a good site with a lot of info on a niche topic (monetized
perhaps with contextual ads or affiliate programs), carefully choosing
your Wikipedia pages can provide a nice steam of traffic to supplement
your other traffic building efforts.
