Importance of Wikipedia in SEO

[jenadams]

We are thinking about authoring a number of articles for several newspapers around the country and hope that they will be published in both print and online editions. The purpose would be to gain a Wikipedia page about our business with established references.  Has anyone seen any positive effects by implementing this type of strategy?

[NakulGoyal]

Yes, you are essentially talking about Brand Building. The kind of efforts and initiatives you are talking about will bring different kinds of links, mentions, citations from all over the web including but not limited to Press Releases, Links to Press Releases, Blog Mentions, Blog Comments, "maybe" a Wikipedia page etc etc. It's very difficult to put a dollar value next to all this work, but if that's not the concerns, by all means go and do it. It does help in Brand Awareness/SEO which are technically directly related in my eyes. Don't try to target too much of "Anchor Text", that's the only caution I would like to recommend.

All in all, you are on the right track. Do stuff that makes people/websites talk about you and link to you.