My last article about Wikipedia—An Untapped SEO Opportunity: Image Link Love From Wikipedia—prompted an Orwellian mantra: instead of "four legs good, two legs bad," people have started saying "images good, text bad" and wondering why the difference.

The short answer is the Wikimedia Foundation created a white hat opportunity for SEO to generate outgoing links via image uploads. The strategy hinges on a copyleft licensing option called CC-by-sa, and the decision isn't accidental. They're glad to trade some link love in return for quality content. Or, as Wikimedia communications committee member David Gerard puts it, "Releasing control over your stuff is hard. But consider the advantage of having a picture that isn't a blurry, red-eyed piece of suck." I chuckled at those words until I viewed the link David supplied as an example. Really, Emmy-winning actor Richard Schiff ought to have a portrait at his biography that looks better than the one on his driver's license.

Click to continue reading...