Small Business Owners Take Note: Google Knol is Open

Late last year Google announced the Knol Project. Finally, last week they opened it up to the public. It is a user-based article submission site quite similar to Wikipedia. According to the original press release:

“A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions.”

You can go there now, create a profile, then start writing. Once you complete a topic, or knol, you’ll have the opportunity to let others add to your content, and you can choose to moderate this content. Other users can also comment, review, and rate your content.

This speaks opportunity to me, as it should to you. Since it’s brand new, there are still a virtually unlimited number of topics that need content. As a small business owner you should start thinking of your own personal knowledge base and what you can write about.

At the same time you need to be thinking strategically. Think about writing knols with your target keywords in the title and the content. Back when Google first announced the project, Matt McGee from Small Business Search Marketing had some great ideas for the use of knol. The last three ideas may be a little risky (read: unethical), but it might just prompt some good ideas in your mind.

According to some initial tests done by Danny Sullivan of search engine land, it appears knol pages are ranking higher than originally anticipated in Google search results. I doubt this will be the norm, but I think it is important that small businesses recognize the potential here.

Besides using it as a place to post your knowledge, you should also be using it to gain knowledge and share your thoughts. One of my favorite bloggers, John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing recently blogged about the knol he just wrote. He wrote the Definition of Marketing - short, simple, and helpful. Knol could be a great resource for you and your business.

Online social media is (becoming) a very important aspect of business. This is one more notch in the online social media belt that you need to look into.

Dan
I’m off to write my first knol