...it to your advantage.

Having seen little more than a screen shot its hard to tell exactly whats going to be included or available, but lets assume it will be pretty similar to Google Page Creator and other sites like Wikipedia or Squidoo.

First we need to have a discussion about authority and trust. I know Matt Cutts dances around the trust rank saying its some paper that was written at Yahoo blah blah blah. I know the engineers at Google get a little picky with their nomenclature sometimes such as a data push being entirely different than an update, so if the internal name isnt exactly trust rank the concept of ranking a sites trustworthieness definitely exists in spirit.

IMHO getting trust is the single most important factor you should focus on when you want to get a site to rank. If you combine trust with good site architecture (easy crawlability) and good internal anchor text you can rank for anything. In fact there are hundreds of empty useless pages like this one on Wikipedia which rank #1 for their top term -Joigny- on this combination of factors. But I digress.

Trust is the hard part but heres the key, you really wont have to worry about trust in this case, Google and everyone else is going to take care of that for you. It should take about 6 to 9 months to fully grab hold but after that Knols listings in SERPs will be more common than price inflated Wiis on Ebay.

What you will have to worry about is getting links with good anchor text. Using your own network of sites to link to your Knol pages is dicey. If you run a clean on topic network of sites, not much to worry about, if you take care and dont duplicate yourself into oblivion. Run a shady network Id stay away from this method.

Now an interesting tactic would be to purchase some advertising. Personally Id test the advertising by pointing it at my competitor first to see if it works. If they jump up you know the links are good and you can repoint it at your Knol page, if they tank let your conscience be your guide.

What you wonder hey wont the person Im buying the advertising from wonder why youre making the change and pointing the links at a new URL? Youre still not directly pointing links are you Silly Goose. Dont you know some people point them at intermediate domains for arguments sake lets call them tracking domains. Purchase your advertising, point it at your tracking domain, and 301 it wherever you want. The great part is you can also repoint it wherever you want, no need to involve the person you are buying the advertising from.

Now if you were a person who experimented with IP Delivery you could do conditional 301s. Lets say the Mooklebot comes by you redirect it to the spot you want the link love to flow, normal visitors get directed someplace else. Now of course that behavior is strictly against search engine guidelines, not something I recommend or endorse in any way. In fact I included it only for entertainment and educational purposes really.

Of course some people out there are really wondering about siphoning off link love, will they get a link with the best anchor text they can create to the best page on their site, and will it be nofollowed. Well I havent heard any mention of link condoms yet, but I hope they have thought about. if I were Google I would make the links straight links but give them equivalent of a nofollow in the algo, just because it would screw up the other engines. If they were really clever they would use an internal ranking mechanism to only allow link juice to pass from trusted profiles and ignore the rest. You did notice they slipped in Google profiles last week didnt you?

However I think you really should concentrate on driving traffic to the knol page instead of the links to your page, ultimately you want them to buy something and the more pages you bounce them through the worse it will be.

Of course some truly naive people actually believe that Google is going to be able to police and editorially control Knol pages kicking people out who violate TOS (excuse me while I stop laughing). Have you been to Blogger recently? You do remember that Google owns them dont you? You see how well that flag this button they added in 2005 has stopped the proliferation of blogger spam havent you?

Lets recap Google Knols makes it much harder for the rest of the world to get top listings, since they become Wikipedia II. Google also assumes control of your content and locks you into their monetezation schemes. Lastly Knols provides a fertile stomping ground for spammers to put down roots and abuse Googles over reliance on trust. Any Questions?

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