Give Your Business Credibility with Google Knol

Google Knol has been available now for over a year and since that time they have passed well over 100,000 Knols that users have created for themselves and for their businesses.

At first, many thought it was a direct competitor to Wikipedia, however, the more you get to know knol (say THAT ten times fast), the more you begin to realize that it leans to more the side of a Squidoo or Hubpage.

That said, here’s some quick and easy tips to creating your own free Knol and what it can do for you.

A “Knol” is a “unit of knowledge”.  And you can create a Knol on any topic you can come up with.  Unlike Wikipedia however, where anyone can add to the content, with a Google Knol,  people can still add to your content but you have to approve it first…needless to say this will cut down on the amount of spammy content you might otherwise receive.

Here’s how it can help your business get better rankings.

One of the benefits to having a Knol is that you can, without regard, actually use it to promote your own products and websites.  If you’ve ever used Hubpages before, you know that they’re sticklers when it comes to linking up your content…even if it promotes your own site and Squidoo isn’t much better although it does allow for a lot more wiggle room.

Google Knol even states in their policy “You may use Knol to create articles for your business or to promote your lawful products or services that are not otherwise prohibited by our Content Policy or Terms of Service, unless you are in Cuba, Iran, Burma (Myanmar), North Korea, Syria, or Sudan.  There are some commercial uses we don’t allow.  We don’t allow pages that have the primary purpose of redirecting visitors, acting as a bridge page, or driving traffic to another website.  We also don’t allow Knol pages that have the primary purpose of profiting from displaying ads from any publisher network, such as pages created with little or no unique content that exist only to display ads.”

And if you wanted another reason to start a Knol of your own, consider this.  When Google first opened up Knol it said that it would no follow the links on the Knol pages…however, this is no longer the case.

But don’t think that all of your links will automatically be followed by Google.  You now have to earn “trust” with Google in order to get your links followed.  They state that “they are now at a point where we “trust” a certain fraction of authors and a certain proportion of user contributed links, and so we now use a “follow” directive for links within such Knols.”

Some links however, will permanently remain no follow including:

• Links within comments
• Our [Google's] automatically generated links to “similar content on the web”.
• Brand new pages and recently-added authors are liable to remain “nofollow” for a period of time.

Although they don’t state what that period of time is.

Here’s how to start your own Knol…

Sign in using your Google account (or get one if you don’t already have one) and simply follow along with the instructions.  It’s a very easy-to-use interface that anyone can follow.

When you’re ready to start writing, you’ll want to use some general SEO techniques such as:

• Title – Like a web page on your site, use a keyword here.
• Sub-title – Like a sub-heading on your web pages.  Use additional complimentary keywords here.
• Summary – This is where a little bit of copywriting experience comes in.  You’ll want to entice anyone finding your Knol to read further…so make it appealing.
• Publishing Mode – your Knol will not be published until you actually tell Google to publish it.  On the right hand side of the page is a section that says “Author controls” where you can click a button to publish your Knol.
• If you don’t want to moderate comments on the Knol, change this under “permissions” on the right hand side.
• The default setting for a Google Knol is to give the Knol a Creative Commons Attribution license.  I talked about this at the very beginning of the newsletter.  You can change this to the other methods you’re given.

Now, in addition to the basic steps outlined above, here are a few more ideas that will move you ahead of the pack.

Google gives high quality Knols badges and awards.  Items such as “Top Viewed Knol Award”, “Top Viewed Author Award”, “Top Pick Knol Award”, and “Top Pick Author Award”.  But in order to get these badges, you need to keep your Knol “better than the rest”.

Here’s how to do that:

• Keyword optimize your title – discussed above.
• Optimize your content – just like your web pages use the keywords you want to rank well for at the beginning of your Knol.  Use keywords throughout your content and work in related words and phrases centered around that topic. When you link out to your own site, be sure that you use those keywords in your anchor text.
• Don’t try to fake your way through a Knol.  If you know about your topic, you’ll have a much better chance of getting seen.  If you don’t, I suggest you beef up on the topic you’ll be writing about.
• Use engaging elements in your Knol.  Use things like videos, images, audios, documents, spreadsheets, calendars and more.
• A Knol is NOT a blog!  A Knol provides high-quality information presented from all sides of the issue. It is not the place to blatantly promote your own products (although you can link to them), but rather it’s a professional resource that covers all facets of the information you’re presenting.  If you aren’t sure how to write your Knol in a professional manner, visit the Knol’s that have already earned badges and see how they spoke about their content, what they added, how they presented their information.  And then use that framework to speak on your own topic.
• Keep it updated!!!  Fresh content is a plus when it comes to a Knol.

Lastly read http://knol.google.com/k/peter-baskerville/how-to-write-knols-that-rank-top-10/14j3i4hyjvi88/19# which explains to you how to write a Knol that ranks in the top 10.

Additionally, here’s another top Knol tip for you that a lot of people aren’t currently aware of.  Google is currently experimenting with Text to speech on their Knols.  What this means is that right now, only a handful of high-quality Knols have the “listen” option which will read the Knol to the visitor.

Since Google is only choosing a small number of Knols to experiment with at this time, there are some tips you can follow to be sure that if and when this becomes an option for you that it reads well for your audience.

1. Don’t use contractions in your Knol.  Use “we are” instead of “we’re”, “you are” instead of “you’re”, cannot instead of “can’t”, etc.
2. If your Knol has some kind of image or chart this cannot be translated into audio.  So when using visual aids, be sure that a full explanation of that visual aid is available for those who cannot actual view it but rather are listening or have downloaded the Knol audio into an MP3 format.

Related posts:

1. How to Get into Google
2. Guaranteed Top Ten Listings at Google!
3. Getting a Handle on Your Canonicals
4. How do you get those extra links in Google?
5. Google’s Link Operator – What’s it REALLY Holding Back?

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