How I leveraged Wikipedia’s high page rank to drive 31,000 registered users and $1,000+ incremental ad revenue in 85 days

1. Growth Hacking
How I leveraged Wikipedia’s high page rank to
drive 31,000 registered users and $1,000+
incremental ad revenue in 85 days
Wikipedia & Google ‘Panda’
search algorithm
Masibu Manima
Co-founder & Head of Growth
@ Mixtape Madness

2. Challenge
Become the first destination
for the most anticipated UK
mixtape of the year; with £0
marketing budget in 3
months.

3. Problem
The first UK mixtape
anticipated in the US
Three months before the
launch of London Boy,
Mixtape Madness faced the
unprecedented challenge of
competing with Dat Piff - a
website with reach of over 1
million monthly unique
visitors.
Mixtape Madness was
ranked 17th on Search
Rank
Closer to home, competing
UK urban website had taken
advantage of the news
since May with blog
content, building stronger
search engine presence.
Strong Competition Poor Google Rank
Planned release on
artist website
Artist Own
Distribution
To add to the competition,
Chip also too the decision
to release the mixtape on
his official artist website.
Naturally this is where fans
would look, as well as
having a strong legacy of
anchored links helped
rank higher his page as #1
for keywords related to the
mixtape.

4. Solution
Hack Google’s SEO algorithm ‘biases’,
whilst leveraging Wikipedia’s
crowdsourcing platform to speed up the
process of climbing the search page
rank.

5. Hack Hypothesis #1: Google ‘Panda’ protects Google’s
interest
What we Knew:
“...Google searches priority is the user’s
experience and loyalty to the search
engine…Panda (2011) algorithm was released
to crack down on spammy websites, thus
rewarding websites with low bounce rates.. ”
“...Google also happens to own the second
biggest search engine, in YouTube…”

6. Hack Hypothesis #1: Google ‘Panda’ protects Google’s
interest
What we Did as a result:
1. Create content rich copy with creative
use of keywords - to avoid spam flag
2. Create related mixtapes section to
increase visitor page depth - decrease
bounce rate
3. Insert YouTube videos with related
titles - earning digital brownie points with
Panda

7. Hack Hypothesis #1: Changes to the Website
1. Sensical copy with creative use of the related keyword identified on
Google Webmaster
2. Use of related ‘YouTube’ video and mixtapes,
to increase user depth and decrease bounce rate

8. Hack Hypothesis #2: Leverage Wikipedia’s page rank
What we Knew:
We noticed earlier in the year that 5% of our
referral traffic was coming from Wikipedia.
The process of getting backlinks on highly
ranked websites can be costly in money (we
didn’t have) and weeks of negotiations.
Meanwhile updating Wikipedia pages takes
minutes and is FREE.

9. Hack Hypothesis #2: Leverage Wikipedia’s page rank
What we Did as Result:
We started linking Chip and other artists
mixtapes to our website.
To our benefit, Google had integrated the
Knowledge Graph in its latest search
algorithm.
This was a semantic search which gathered
information from a variety of sources -
Wikipedia being one of it main reference
points.

10. Quick Wins #1: Increase Impressions and page Rank
1. Increased impressions and clickthrough from related searches in Sept vs. Aug 2012
2. Climbed from 17th to 11 in a space of 1 month, but still on page 2
Google Analytics, December ‘12.

11. Quick Wins #2: Number 2 Rank behind Chip page
Showing up as number 2 for the most
searched keywords combination - Even
higher than Wikipedia
Google Analytics, Dec ‘12.

12. The Legacy & Numbers that Matter
Google Analytics, Jan ‘13.

13. Summary
In the space of 85 days:
1. Number 2 on Google for related ‘London Boy Chip searches’ -
higher than Wikipedia, Datpiff and our Competitors
2. 250K Unique visitors coming via ‘London Boy’ related search or
referral
3. 31,000 new registered users initial entry attributed to ‘London Boy’
Google search
4. $1,029 Ad revenue generated from new traffic impressions
5. The campaign increased the overall profile of Mixtape Madness as
a big player in the UK urban scene.