Easy to take over Wikipedia listing?

[GiddyUp]

im curious to know how easy (or difficult) it would be to take away the first rank for a given search topic from wikipedia?

from what i know, a good, custom site dedicated to a specific topic should eventually rank higher than a subpage on wikipedia about the same topic- but i dont have the experience.


can anyone help?

edit: let me add to that other sites such as subpages of about(.)com and infoplease(.)com etc.

 

[Keral_Patel]

If searched from wikipedia wouldn't it show the pages from the wiki itself?

 

[GiddyUp]

i mean in the search engines -

for example, when searching for the term "history of the radio", if a wikipedia page came up first in google, and you made a page dedicated to the history of the radio (backlinks, unique content, etc.) would it be very difficult to overtake them as the #1 listing for such a term? given their high page rank and what not?
or would a unique site prevail (all things being equal)?

 

[Damion]

You could...if other factors then PR from Wikipedia are improved such as anchor backlinks, on page and off page optimization.
Wikipedia may have a high PR but that alone is not sufficient enough to stay ahead of others.

 

[Keral_Patel]

Wikipedia is not so much hard to beat if your SEO is better then the Wikipedia page that you are comparing with.

Damion is right. It might depend on more then one factor when deciding the position of the page.

In most cases if some serious webmaster is involved he can beat the wikipedia easily.

 

[Shorty]

It depends on the particular wikipedia article really. If it's a popular page with a lot of links to it that promote it for your keyword, you probably dont stand a chance. Your only hope there is that the article on wikipedia has been copied so many times by other sites that Google ranks it down a little.

However, if your site targets a particular niche keyword that wikipedia isnt already strong on, you may well beat it in the rankings if you get some incoming links to it, and a page rank wouldnt hurt either.

 

[GiddyUp]

good stuff. thanks everyone for your help

 

[ennui]

I read from the thread yesterday that wiki's ranlkings have gone down.

 

[WhiteWebServices]

Why not search for a few terms in your chosen niche to try to find pages that edge out Wikipedia articles, and then take a look at factors like pagerank, backlinks, and on-page optimisation to see whether you think you could match them.