How did I get a Backlink from Wikipedia for a small website? 1 ChatGPT trick, you can use

If you're working as an SEO, you must've thought of getting backlinks from Wikipedia. If you open any of the regular pages, 99% of the citations are for popular & authoritative websites. Earlier, I felt that either you're a big name in your niche or a government body, otherwise, you don't get a backlink. But today I can say, this is not true. I've been working on a website (it's pretty new), and a few months back, I created a Wikipedia backlink.

So turns out you can build backlinks here even as a small or not-so-popular business.

I realize there are plenty of businesses struggling to crack the SEO game, now with the AI Overviews & LLMs. What I've seen is that the fundamentals for ranking in both are the same: E-E-A-T.

• E- Expertise
• E- Experience
• E- Authority
• T- Trust

Getting a backlink from Wikipedia will help you check the last two boxes. And let us not forget that the referral traffic you can get from it is so valuable. So here, I'll be breaking down the exact strategy I used for getting a Wikipedia backlink for my website. And it's a legitimate way. Plus, I'll give you a ChatGPT hack at the end to save you time and increase your efficiency.

About my Website

My company, 'Gryffin Capitalist', helps entrepreneurs expand their business beyond their country's borders. Here are some numbers for Gryffin:

• Around 300 pages (including the home, contact, and About Us page)
• The website is less than 5 years old.

It's a small and young website. Talking about the market, it is hyper-competitive. We have competitors with 2 decades of experience, making it tough to get traffic via rankings. Still, we were able to get a citation.

My Observations

As I was browsing through the pages, something interesting caught my eye. Wikipedia is a massive repository of webpages across various topics under the sun. Its pages are often long articles packed with information. But then I found this ↓

This has around 82 words and is still ranking. Then there is the 'Abu Dhabi Global Market' page and a couple of more I came across, showing thin content. (Gryffin is into business setup services, so I was going through pages related to it)

This led me to conclude, it was never about the content length and density. Wikipedia is opensource, it gets information from the contributions of people like you. So pages which already has enough information, there we have higher chances of facing a ban.

But what about the thin content pages like the one you saw in the screenshot? These types of pages are facing content deficiency. So if I can add some content here in a legitimate way while following the guidelines, there is a chance it'll work.

But again, it was a hypothesis. Now it was time to test it.

The Step-by-step process

I started looking for pages with thin content and relevant to Gryffin. And I came across the 'Offshore page'.

So I decided to target it. Here's how I built the backlink:

1. I went through the content on the Wikipedia page. Then, shortlisted the best performing offshore-related pages from the Gryffin Capitalist website. I selected the 'Offshore Asset Management' page.
2. Then I started looking for the content gaps in the Wikipedia page. Gaps that can be filled by Gryffin's content without breaking the flow of the article.
3. Clicked on the Edit page option. Added the content and citation while complying with the guidelines. Hit save.

If you try editing a Wikipedia page's content, your changes will get cancelled within 1 minute. So after saving the edits I made waited for a minute, and the changes were live. Refreshed the page a couple of times, and the changes were still there. Checked after an hour, the changes were there. Then after a day or two, my content was still live. Now it has been over 3 months, and my changes are still there.

Thus, my hypothesis turns out to be correct.

Use this ChatGPT hack to save time

As I promised earlier, I will be giving my GPT trick as a bonus. The process you read earlier, I'll be giving you some prompts which will fast-track it. Feel free to copy-paste it.

Prompt 1:

You are an expert content strategist with 20 years of experience. Assume you have written content for Wikipedia as well. You know how Wikipedia content moderation works.

Do you get this so far? Say "yes"

ChatGPT will answer 'yes'.

Prompt 2:

I have an article on [Paste the topic. For me, it was Offshore Asset Management]. Here is the content, please go through it well (its important).

<Paste your article content>

Prompt 3:

Here is the Wikipedia content on the same topic:

<Paste the content of the Wikipedia page>

In my case, it was the content of the 'Offshore' page.

Prompt 4:

Compare the [Your topic] article on my website and the one on Wikipedia. Identify the content gaps in the Wikipedia page that can be filled by the content from my website.

Tell me what content from my website can be used to fill the content gaps in the Wikipedia page.

Where should it be added to the Wikipedia page?

And make sure you are not breaking the flow of the Wikipedia article. The content from my website should fit in organically.

Take a deep breath and work on this problem step by step.

ChatGPT will do this figuring-out work on your behalf. All you have to do is add it to Wikipedia. Make sure you have gone through the content well before publishing. GPT is a co-pilot, but you're still the captain.

Parting Thoughts

Wikipedia has strict moderation, so it's possible your changes might not get approved. But don't get disheartened and keep trying. It'll give you a far better chance of getting a backlink than the cookie-cutter tricks on the internet.

This is how I got a backlink from Wikipedia, and this is how you can get one as well.