In the last post in our series on five ways to improve any AboutUs page, I talked about adding an original descriptive paragraph to replace the bot-created excerpt from your site. Now that you’ve got a custom description, it’s time to add probably the single most important aspect of any wiki page, on AboutUs or elsewhere: WikiLinks.
Part IV: Add WikiLinks
Everyone knows that links are the engine that drives the Web, especially in an SEO sense. The great thing at AboutUs is that there are multiple links directly to your site built in to each and every page. The first is the large title link at the beginning of a Summary, and the second is the thumbnail in the domain box on the right hand side. Since prominent (and permanent) backlinks to your site are a part of an AboutUs page by default, cultivating relevant internal links on AboutUs is necessary to up the ante on your wiki page.
The best part is, adding links in wiki is a snap. In fact, extremely easy linking between pages was intentionally a key design feature of the very first wiki, created by our own Ward Cunningham. (If you’re interested in hearing more about wiki design, Ward will be speaking at CHIFOO in Portland on April 1st.)
So if wiki linking is so easy, how do you do it? Since AboutUs is structured around domain names, all you need to do is add a pair of square brackets around the domain name of a page you want to link to, making sure to not include an “http” or “www” prefix. That’s it! If you want to link to a page, but have the name appear as something other than the linked page, simply add a pipe after the link destination and include the name you want to appear on the page. Additionally, you can even link to a page that doesn’t exist yet.
Adding a few relevant WikiLinks to an AboutUs page is deeply beneficial both inside your description and in the Related Domains section, where linking is even easier (all you have to do is add the name inside the WikiPages tag). Cross-linking related wiki pages on AboutUs serves both readers and SEO purposes, building a web of relevant links that makes browsing wiki pages both addicting and informative.
The rule of thumb in what to WikiLink is to be prolific! Anything connected to a domain in your AboutUs page should probably be linked. For more about what we consider to be beneficial links in an AboutUs page, read our Internal Linking Guide.
Now that you’ve got strong, well-linked content on your AboutUs page, that last step in a simple improvement is to add some unique, interesting formatting. AboutUs has a great set of templates for doing this (without complex markup) that we’ll outline in our fifth and final post in the series.
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Damn. Linking was going to be my 4th simple tip on RichmondWiki. Now I have to think of a different topic or risk being upstaged by your superior post.
Wiki links are pretty important, whatever community you’re talking about. I’d say you should definitely take a whack at upstaging me! (It’s not hard to do…)
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