Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How to beat Wikipedia article from the top spot on SERPS?
-
Hi Guys,
One of our clients has a good web site with lots of content that is ranked already on #2 for the top keyword (singular and plural) on Google UK. The keyword itself is a competitive one. The top spot is occupied by a wikipedia article that doesn't have much content in general. Can anyone come up with an advice what strategy we have to apply to outplace that article? Thanks!
-
Thank you guys!
-
Wikipedia can be really really really hard to beat.... did I say really really really really hard to beat?
Just keep working on your site like wikipedia was any other competitor. Build great content that gets liked and tweeted.. .stuff that engages your visitors.
There is no special bullet for killing wikipedia. You simply must overpower them by brute force of a great website.
Good luck.
-
I have seen some results for Wikipedia where you pull your hair out hehe, but the thing is the site is soo high authority and the internal link value it holds.
To be honest I have had experience taking down Wikipedia where you deal with big brand websites and you can highly target the site.
Really do some analysis on the links the wikipedia page has, see what you may be missing if content is not the problem.
Just keep pushing fresh content and social signals too if you can try and implement people to search for your website and drive higher CTR on the serp page.
-
I wouldn't suspect so. Wiki is seen as an incredibly Authoritive site and has many high quality links pointing to it, so it's high rankings are mainly down to the site being so authoritive and huge.
Wiki fulfills many of the factors within the periodic table of SEO ranking factors at http://searchengineland.com/seotable It's a difficult site to beat, though can and is certainly achieved.
Glad you like the suggestions, they will help to get there.
Regards
Simon
-
Thanks Simon, will try those. Do you think that google applies different ranking factors when it comes to Wikipedia in general?
-
Hi Ivaylo
I shall share a few pointers with you here for consideration;
-
Perform an on-page analysis of the website to identify and help resolve any issues that might come up, such as too many on-page links or too many no-followed links pointing in, any issues with titles or descriptions... (The SEOmoz toolset is great at helping with this).
-
Research what valuable links are pointing to the Wiki page and try and get some of the same links pointing to your clients' site (new followed links from different reputable websites will help a lot). Also, identify existing links where the anchor text could be improved.
-
Keep the content fresh, relevant and interesting.
-
Depending on what your clients' site offers, consider if there are any tools/widgets that could be developed to help make the site more useful.
-
Consider building upon the Social aspect, such as engaging with people on Twitter, Forums and Guest Blogging to attract more visitors and more sharing of your content.
Hope that helps,
Regards
Simon
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to get sitelinks in organic SERPs?
When searching for "Madrid hotels" in google I see that the top organic search results have one row of sitelinks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse
What can I do that also my site shows sitelinks if I am among the top organic search results?
Anything onpage that I can do to increase probability that google will show sitelinks? Strangely the text which shows as sitelink for SERPs from booking.com and tripadvisor does actually for most of the sitelinks not appear on the landing page (I also checked the source code).0 -
Should I use **tags or h1/h2 tags for article titles on my homepage**
I recently had an seo consultant recommend using tags instead of h1/h2 tags for article titles on the homepage of my news website and category landing pages. I've only seen this done a handful of times on news/editorial websites. For example: http://www.muscleandfitness.com/ Can anyone weigh in on this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blankslatedumbo0 -
"Null" appearing as top keyword in "Content Keywords" under Google index in Google Search Console
Hi, "Null" is appearing as top keyword in Google search console > Google Index > Content Keywords for our site http://goo.gl/cKaQ4K . We do not use "null" as keyword on site. We are not able to find why Google is treating "null" as a keyword for our site. Is anyone facing such issue. Thanks & Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vivekrathore0 -
No matter what the keyword, only the homepage shows in the SERP
Hi, wondered if someone could help. My clients website shows up well for terms but its always the homepage rather than the targeted landing page. For example, if you search for "teeth whitening anglesey" they appear http://goo.gl/ohJdua however, its the homepage rather than the tooth whitening page http://goo.gl/uVI8gK Thanks Ade
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | popcreativeltd0 -
Article Marketing / Article Posting
I am working on the SEO on a few different websites and I have built out an article marketing campaign so that I can get high quality backlinks for my website. I have been writing the content myself and I have been manually building out the top Web 2.0, Article Directory, and Doc Sharing sites. today I was creating an account on squidoo and I wondered if it mattered if I had the username be one of two things: my keyword as a user name, like: [keyword+geotag] example: roofinghouston just my first and last name as the username (or just a username I always use) (The reason behind #1 would be to have the optimized keyword and location I am trying to rank for, inside of the username. The reason for #2 would be that I don't want to get into trouble by having "too much" optimization.) I know a bit about optimization and that getting your keyword out there is great in a lot of areas, but I am not sure if it looks "suspicious" if I have my username be the keyword+geotag. I am just worried that all of this hard work will be torn down if I look like I'm trying too hard to be optimized, etc etc. There is no one answer, I am mainly looking for shared experiences. If you do have a definite answer, then I would like that too 🙂 Thanks SEOMoz!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOWizards0 -
Should pages of old news articles be indexed?
My website published about 3 news articles a day and is set up so that old news articles can be accessed through a "back" button with articles going to page 2 then page 3 then page 4, etc... as new articles push them down. The pages include a link to the article and a short snippet. I was thinking I would want Google to index the first 3 pages of articles, but after that the pages are not worthwhile. Could these pages harm me and should they be noindexed and/or added as a canonical URL to the main news page - or is leaving them as is fine because they are so deep into the site that Google won't see them, but I also won't be penalized for having week content? Thanks for the help!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter0 -
What should be done with old news articles?
Hello, We have a portal website that gives information about the industry we work in. This website includes various articles, tips, info, reviews and more about the industry.We also have a news section that was previously indexed in Google news but is not for the past few month.The site was hit by Panda over a year ago and one of the things we have been thinking of doing is removing pages that are irrelavant/do not provide added value to the site.Some of these pages are old news articles posted over 3-4 years ago and that have had hardly any traffic to.All the news articles on the site are under a /archive/ folder sorted by month and year, so for example a url for a news item from April 2010 would be /archive/042010/article-nameMy question is do you think removing such news articles would benefit the site helping it get out of Panda (many other things have been done in the site as well), if not what is the best suggested way to keep these articles on the site in a way which Google indexes them and treats them well.thx
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tit0 -
Old Redirecting Website Still Showing In SERPs
I have a client, a plumber, who bought another plumbing company (and that company's domain) at one point. This other company was very old and has a lot of name recognition so they created a dedicated page to this other company within their main website, and redirected the other company's old domain to that page. This has worked fine, in that this page on the main site is now #1 when you search for the other old company's name. But for some reason the old domain comes up #2 (despite the fact that it's redirecting). Now, I could understand if the redirect had only been set up recently, but I'm reasonably sure this happened about a year ago. Could it be due to the fact that there are many sites out there still linking to that old domain? Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VTDesignWorks1