How to Get Backlinks from Wikipedia in 2025: A Step-By-Step Guide

How to Get Backlinks from Wikipedia

There are two main ways to get backlinks from Wikipedia:

• You can publish high-quality content that Wikipedia contributors will naturally want to link to. Think research papers, studies, and well-sourced industry reports.  
• Alternatively, you can proactively build backlinks on Wikipedia yourself or pay someone to do it for you. Some people prefer using link building agencies, while others hire VAs for the job.

The first way is ideal, but creating Wikipedia-link-worthy content is hard, and getting someone to naturally link to it is just not that likely. Overall, this method gives you no control over your results and is completely unpredictable. 

That’s why most brands opt for the second method and proactively build links on Wikipedia through their own efforts. You’ll learn how to do the same yourself below.

But first, are Wiki backlinks worth the effort?   

Are Wiki Backlinks Good?

Wikipedia backlinks are nofollow, meaning they don’t directly pass link equity. However, they are valuable for credibility, referral traffic, and attracting backlinks from other sites. Search engines also trust Wikipedia, so links from it can enhance brand authority and visibility, indirectly benefiting SEO.

Let’s explore the benefits and disadvantages in more depth.

Benefits of Wikipedia Backlinks

High-authority backlinks can boost your domain authority and potentially increase your rankings in search engines, and Wikipedia is a highly authoritative site. 

👍 That’s why even Wikipedia backlinks can be beneficial despite not leading to direct SEO benefits. More on that below. 

👍 Additionally, most Wikipedia pages have high rankings and get a lot of organic traffic every month. So, if you build backlinks on Wikipedia, you may get some of that traffic (called referral traffic) to your site. 

👍 Another pro is that Wikipedia backlinks are free. You don’t have to pay for them unless you hire someone to build them for you. Wikipedia itself won’t charge you for them, which isn’t the case with many other high-authority sites. 

👍 Wikipedia backlinks may also help you attract new backlinks from other sites. Many people use Wikipedia to find relevant sources of information, and they often add these sources to their own content. So, you can potentially multiply your backlink opportunities with no additional effort.

👍 Finally, backlinks from Wikipedia can also boost your credibility. Being cited on a trusted site like Wikipedia signals that your content is reliable and authoritative. This can help build trust with readers.

To recap, Wikipedia link building can help you:

• boost your credibility,
• get more referral traffic, and
• gain new, natural backlinks for free.

However, building backlinks on Wikipedia also has some disadvantages. Weigh them against the pros carefully to avoid wasting time.

Disadvantages of Wikipedia Backlinks

👎 Building Wikipedia backlinks can be challenging and time-consuming. It requires you to learn and follow strict Wikipedia guidelines, find relevant and non-obvious link building opportunities, and, often, make several rounds of changes before your edits are approved. 

👎 The fact that Wikipedia edits are actively reviewed by contributors and moderators also makes Wikipedia link building quite unpredictable. Even if your link follows guidelines, other editors may remove it if they don’t see it as sufficiently relevant, credible, or necessary.

👎 Also, Wikipedia backlinks are nofollow, which means they don’t directly pass link equity. In other words, they won’t directly boost your rankings in the SERPs, though they may provide more indirect SEO benefits (for example, by boosting your brand authority). 

The bottom line is, if you’re in a competitive niche, need predictable results, or want direct SEO benefits, you’ll see a better ROI by building links on other, high-authority sites. 

Interested in partnering with a link building agency to build high-quality backlinks at scale? Contact us. 

Otherwise, leveraging Wikipedia can be a good strategy for your site, especially if you’re looking to boost your credibility for free. 

How to Create Wiki Backlinks 

There are two main ways to create Wiki backlinks:

• You can replace existing links with your own, OR
• You can add new links from scratch. 

With either of these methods, you need to know what to look for:  

• If you want to replace existing links with your own, look for dead links.
• If you want to simply add new links, look for missing citations. 

Here’s what that means and how to recognize these opportunities.

Dead Links 

Dead links, also known as broken links, are links that lead to pages that no longer exist or aren’t available for some reason. Instead of opening a page with relevant content, a dead link will open a page with a 404 error message:

You should avoid having dead links on your site as they hurt your SEO. But finding them on other sites? It’s a great way to build links. 

No one wants to send their readers to 404 pages, and Wikipedia is no exception. That’s why Wiki editors won’t mind you replacing dead links with yours as long as they point to relevant and authoritative pages. 

In general, broken link building is considered a white hat link-building tactic, which means it doesn’t violate Google’s guidelines and isn’t considered a link scheme.

To keep it risk-free, though, you should definitely not link to your product pages or sales pages. Opt for linking to relevant reports, case studies, and similar valuable content.

How to Find Dead Links in Wikipedia

One way to find dead links on Wikipedia is to simply open relevant Wiki articles, scroll down to the References or Footnotes section, and check if tany URLs are marked as “permanent dead links:”

Alternatively, you can use specialized tools like SEO Minion or WikiGrabber to find dead links faster.

Missing Citations

Wiki articles may also lack citations, or relevant sources that would support their.

This is problematic, as Wikipedia aims to provide accurate and, more importantly, verifiable information. 

This gives you an opportunity to link to your site and list it as a relevant source. All you need to do is edit the article and add the link. 

How to Find Missing Citations on Wikipedia

Determining if a Wiki page lacks citations can be difficult. It often comes down to your personal judgment:

👉 If you think an article needs a source to support its claims, you can add it. The reviewers will probably agree with you as long as you add a link that’s relevant. 

Easy Way to Find Dead Links and Missing Citations

There are better and faster ways to find link building opportunities on Wikipedia. One way is to use tools that automatically find Wiki pages with dead links or missing citations based on the keywords you enter. 

One such tool is WikiGrabber, which completes this entire process in about a minute.

Just enter your keywords and find relevant opportunities.

Bonus: Create New Content

Another way to get Wikipedia backlinks is to add new content to existing Wikipedia pages. By doing so, you can add context that’s relevant to your target page and create space for your link.

This method, however, is arguably the most time-consuming of all. It’s also not as straightforward as just adding links, and will probably require you to learn how to write Wikipedia articles.

Some of the key guidelines to follow are:

• Adopt and maintain a neutral POV.
• Avoid novel theories or concepts that haven’t been verified.
• Add citations (and not just those that lead to your cite).
• Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism issues.

Adding Backlinks to Wikipedia (3 Steps)

Now that you know what link building opportunities to look for, let’s see how you can actually add your links to Wikipedia pages. 

1. Create a Wikipedia Account

Wikipedia pages can be edited by unregistered users, but we suggest you create an account and log in before making changes. 

If you make edits as an unregistered user, Wikipedia will record and publicly display your IP address. It’s best to avoid this if you can. 

So, if you don’t want Wikipedia to “doxx” you, simply create a free Wikipedia account. 

To do so, go to Wikipedia and click “Create account” in the right-hand corner:

2. Find Relevant Wikipedia Articles 

The next step is finding Wikipedia articles that could host your links. 

As we’ve already mentioned, you can find link building opportunities manually, but it’s way easier to use a tool like WikiGrabber for this purpose. 

You can also find relevant Wikipedia pages by googling the following query string: 

• site:wikipedia.org "target keyword" (e.g., site:wikipedia.org “family law”)

This method is more time-consuming, as it requires you to manually go through each Wikipedia page and check it for broken links or missing citations. WikiGrabber and similar tools do that for you in minutes. 

However, tools aren’t perfect. They may fail to catch some great link building opportunities that you could detect on your own.

👉 That’s why it’s often best to combine tools with manual analysis.

Manually, you can also find Wiki articles you can update with new content to create new link building opportunities. 

Once you find articles that seem like a good fit, you may want to run them through SEO tools like Ubersuggest to determine how much traffic they get.

When you’re sure you found a great match, it’s time to start building links.

3. Add Links to Chosen Wikipedia Pages

We finally get to the juicy part: building Wikipedia backlinks. 

To do so, you’ll need to edit your chosen Wikipedia pages. All you have to do is open the page you want to edit and click the Edit button at the top: 

‍

You can simply click on the part of the article you want to edit and choose different editing options from the top menu: 

⚠️ Some Wikipedia pages can’t be edited by regular users. These pages are marked by a padlock icon that indicates you’re on a (semi-)locked page:

Note also that Wikipedia has strict guidelines for what is and isn't allowed on the site. Familiarize yourself with those guidelines before making any edits.

We suggest reading through these two Wiki pages for more information:

• Wikipedia’s Policies and guidelines 
• Help:Editing

But, for now, let’s proceeding with adding our links to our chosen articles. 

First, we need to select “Cite” from the top menu. This opens a new window that lets you choose between automatic and manual citations. We suggest choosing automatic citations. 

Automatic citations ensure that your references are correct and aligned with Wikipedia’s guidelines. You’ll only need to enter the URL to your chosen page, and Wikipedia will automatically create a citation for you. 

For example, see a citation Wikipedia generated for our page on HARO link building:

From there, click “Insert” to add the link and the reference to the page. 

You should now see your URL under References. Check if it’s correct and, if so, click “Publish changes” in the right-hand corner. 

This will open a new window where you’ll be prompted to write a short summary of the changes you’ve made. This summary helps other editors review (and, hopefully, accept) your changes more quickly, so make sure to add it and make it accurate. 

You’ve Made the Edits. Now What? 

Wikipedia reviewers check all the edits made to Wiki articles. Reviews can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days and can result in your changes being accepted or rejected. 

Edits get rejected if they’re deemed inappropriate or spammy, or otherwise violate Wikipedia’s guidelines. If this happens, you may need to change your link and resubmit it for another review.

Although linking to blog posts is preferable to linking to commercial pages, you should still keep in mind that blogs are generally considered unreliable sources. So, links leading to blog posts may be deemed untrustworthy and get removed. 

That doesn’t always happen, and we’ve managed to get multiple links to our clients’ blogs published in the past ourselves, but it’s something to consider. 

If you can, try linking to other pages on your site instead of your blog. Case studies and research pages, for example, are a much better choice. 

A good rule of thumb is that the more trustworthy your page looks, the higher its chances of getting accepted.

What if I Don’t Have Any Relevant Resources? 

Let’s say you find a few broken links related to your niche, but you don’t have adequate resources to link to. What’s the right course of action here? 

Well, what you should definitely not do is link to irrelevant pages. Irrelevant links will get removed or even get you blocked from Wikipedia. 

In that case, you won’t be able to edit or create new articles in the future. (At least not from the same IP address.)

That’s why we suggest taking the time to create relevant resources that genuinely add value to your chosen Wiki article. It will pay off in the long run, and you’ll have a new page to promote to your readers.

Get High-Impact Backlinks That Move the Needle

Wikipedia backlinks can work well when you have low competition or just need to marginally improve your SEO. But if you want consistent results and exponential growth, you need more high-quality backlinks.

Our link building agency can help, whether you’re building links for yourself or clients. Check out our pages on: 

• Link building for startups 
• White label link building

Or order your backlinks today! Our turnaround time is just up to 10 days and we offer lifetime guarantees on all backlinks we build for you.

FAQ

Are Wikipedia Backlinks Nofollow? 

Wikipedia backlinks are nofollow, which means they may give you less SEO benefits than dofollow links. However, Wikipedia backlinks are still valuable, as the site is highly authoritative and can pass some of that authority onto you. Also, Wikipedia gets a lot of traffic, which may translate to referral traffic for your site.

Is Wikipedia Good for Backlinks?

Yes, Wikipedia is good for backlinks. Despite the links from Wikipedia being no-follow, the site is still highly authoritative. This means that Wikipedia backlinks can very much boost your site's credibility and provide some indirect SEO benefits.