Would This Wikipedia Trick Work on Other Sites?

Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

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Would This Wikipedia Trick Work on Other Sites?

aristotle

12:06 am on Nov 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

I've noticed several cases in which a re-direct enables a single Wikipedia page to rank number 1 in the SERPs for two different search terms. As a hypothetical example, suppose Wikipedia has a page with the title "Used Widgets", plus another page named "Second-hand Widgets" which re-directs to the "Used Widgets" page. I've recently noticed several cases in which the single page ranks number 1 in Google for searches on both titles.

I've never used many re-directs on my own sites, and never for this purpose. So I'm wondering if anyone else has done it, and how well did it work.

tedster

4:08 am on Nov 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

I do know of one case where they tried it (about 3 years ago) and got penalized on both terms - big money terms that are synonyms like "laptop" and "notebook", or "car" and "auto".

It might be something that gets a pass for informational sites but not for ecommerce - just a guess.

Planet13

5:37 am on Nov 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

...plus another page named "Second-hand Widgets" which re-directs to the "Used Widgets" page.

Out of curiosity, how is the "re-direct" done?

Is it an actual 301 / 302 redirect?

Is it a meta redirect?

How exactly is it done?

indyank

6:38 am on Nov 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

It is better off to have related pages with unique content, than redrecting them all to one page.

goodroi

10:26 am on Nov 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

remember not all websites are equal. wikipedia has a huge volume of pages and very high link popularity with almost none of the link popularity flowing out. that allows them to do some things normal websites cant.

internetheaven

10:44 am on Nov 13, 2010 (gmt 0)

I tested this once. A very small test. I did link building (e.g. Keyphrase 2) to a page on one site:

e.g. example.com/folder/page.php

and noindex/nofollowed it. Then, after it had about 3 months and 200 links I 301 redirected to a page on a different site:

e.g. anothersite.com/page.php

that was already ranking for another term. The page ranked for both Keyphrase1 and Keyphrase2 pretty much instantly.

I think there might be an issue with diagnosing Wikipedia's success with this. Chances are that "Second-hand Widgets" used to be a page in it's own right with thousands of external backlinks and now all those backlinks and anchor text point to the "Used Widgets" which also has thousands of anchor text backlinks. That is probably why it's ranking for both. It has thousands of backlinks for both.