SEO Speedwagon

Let’s assume that you have an article that legitimately belongs in Wikipedia, for the remainder of this article is worthless if that is not the case. And as a cautionary note, your article still faces speedy deletion even if it legitimately belongs in Wikipedia and you follow every step of this article. That being said, the following is a set of guidelines that will give you and your articles the best chance of remaining in Wiki.

The Wikipedia culture, dare I say subculture, operates under the suspicion that you are a spammer and that your article is spam. You need to operate within their rules to prove that you and your article are worthwhile, for any action at all arouses suspicion, but any action outside of their rules yields a guilty verdict.

Identify Yourself
Get a Wiki ID. If you edit anonymously, you are a spammer.

Build Wiki Cred
Learn Wiki structure and coding by becoming familiar with the Edit page. Contribute to existing articles. The more good edits you have, the more likely you are to be trusted by Wiki.

Play in the Sandbox, and Preview Everything
As you get more daring, go to the Sandbox to perfect coding. And always preview before saving to make sure your edits looks exactly right. While edits involving code make you one of the gang, edits with invalid code make you the enemy.

Don’t Save a Lot, but Save Lots
When you are ready to upload an article, save the entire article. Your first save creates the article, and an editor will delete it within seconds if he or she does not see the entire article.

You Have to Have Me at Hello
While that editor expects to see an entire article, you have about 3 seconds to explain why your subject matter is so important that it warrants its own Wiki article. If the editor reads the opening description and does not see the importance or significance of its subject, your article will be deleted.

Love at first Cite
Include a reference in your statement of importance. The editor will not believe that your subject matter is important unless somebody important agrees with you.

Be Boring
Anything that sounds like a commercial will be deleted. Wikipedia fancies itself an encyclopedia and must remain as factual (sounding) as possible.

Link out/ Link in
Wiki loves itself. Link to as many other Wiki articles as you can, within reason. Also, search for other articles to find places where it makes sense to link to your article. Your article becomes stickier with each link to and from it.

Categorize your Article
You must place your article into categories, which are shown at the bottom of all articles. Consider these easy links.

Defend your Article
You can follow every word from above, and still have an editor that wants your article removed. Be prepared for debate on the article’s Discussion page or your user Talk page. Reload the History page periodically for a few hours in search of changes, then create a feed for the History page to track change in the future.

Just something to watch for in the future, although I don’t really consider it a guideline for this article: If you start feeling an urge to quell all points of view other than your own while doing God’s work on Wikipedia, take a break from editing.