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Uh, Google, I think you might need an SEO consultant for Knol...

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Google DunceSo I heard you just launched your user-generated content site, knol.  The first thing I did was type “google knol” into the search bar in my browser.  I first checked out the organic results, but I didn’t see you there.  “Hhhmmmm”, I said to myself, “this is strange”.  So then I looked at the sponsored (PPC) results.  “Ah, there you are… what a perfect opportunity, maybe they need (me) an SEO consultant!”, I then said to myself.  Ok, so here’s my pitch…

#1 – You really need to get some inbound links.

I check out your site using HubSpot's Link Grader and I see that you have less than a dozen inbound links.  How on earth do you expect people looking for a “unit of knowledge” (your page title) to find you without getting some links first?  A fellow by the name of Matt Cutts who works for Google might be able to tell you a little more about why inbound links are important.  The bottom line is that you need to get more than the current dozen you have.

#2 – Have you heard of the META Description tag?

You must have, since I noticed that you have some nice Title tags already.  We typically use META Description to help search engines understand what a page is about.  It’s important that these are unique for each page on your website and that they make sense based on the content for the page.

#3 – I noticed you have some great images on the site, I really liked this, but they need some ALT text.

Especially on the page you have about Toilet Clogs.  Usually, when we put images on a webpage we specify this attribute for the image, ALT, better known as Image Alt(alternative) Text.  This “Alt” text, is great for accessibility and also helps search engines (like Google) figure out what the image is about.  It’s always a good idea to fill these out.

#4 – If you’re up for some more advanced SEO techniques...

Here’s one I learned from your SEO guy (Matt Cutts) about the nofollow attribute when placed on links.  You see, it’s really powerful if you use it properly… it gives you the ability to channel authority (or PageRank, this thing created by Google) around your site.  For example, your homepage is usually your most powerful page.  Therefore, if I were you, I might take some of the insignificant links on your homepage and add the nofollow attribute to them… the Sign-In, Write a Knol, Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, etc. links are all great examples of links where you could add the nofollow attribute so that you would save some of your authority for the more important links on the homepage.  Just an idea.  Something we can look into once we take care of some of the other issues.

Besides some of these trivial on-page SEO issues I see with your site, I am a bit concerned about the content.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure this information is very valuable, but I definitely wasn’t expecting to learn about some of this stuff on your homepage: Genital Warts, Nasal Fractures, Vertigo, Hepatitis C, Toilet clogs, GONORRHEA… as opposed to what I see on Wikipedia’s homepage: New Zealand, NCAA college football, Czechoslovak Republic.  Maybe the logic you use to display content on the homepage is off or something, who knows.

Google Knol

If you’d like to learn more about how you can leverage inbound marketing to get found online (in search engines like Google), we have a series of great help articles, training videos, and also inbound marketing software that can help you get up to speed on these types of modern marketing techniques.  For new customers we also suggest that you sign-up for 4 hours of consulting with one of our internet marketing consultants.  These guys are really good, and can tell you a lot about SEO, blogging, social media strategies, etc.  Pretty much everything you would need so that you can get found on popular search engines (like Google) without having to pay for that #1 listing ;)

As always, I’m happy to help, there is some more info on your WebsiteGrader.com report.  Please feel free to ask any questions.

Cheers,
Todd Garland

 

SEO Kit


Posted by Todd Garland on Thu, Jul 24, 2008 @ 09:48 AM

COMMENTS

lol, this is a real hoot . one of those little ironies in life.  
 
 
 
If google doesn't, maybe I shouldn't obsess over title tags, meta tags, inbound links and alt tags!!

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 11:09 AM by Will


I agree with you about the inbound links, since that IS one of Google's top factors. But if they are not promoting the other meta factors, I interpret that as a loud and clear hint from Google on what's not important to their robot/algorithm. So, if they aren't using it, are they telling the SEOs of the world that it's not worth the time and effort?

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 12:27 PM by IdahoSEO


@IdahoSEO... perhaps, definitely a possibility... what is also interesting about Knol is that from a UI perspective is doesn't come close to the standards they set with the UI on other projects. I'm actually surprised that they launched it yesterday, as I don't think it really looks *ready*... they must have gotten Larry & Sergey really drunk one night to sign-off on this one.

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 12:36 PM by todd g


btw, all these are incorrect.. you should really figure out how search engines, particularly google actually crawls pages... 
 
inbound links ARE important... 
 
alt text, is not... if you have enough context on your page, and low verb count, alt text will be completely ignored.. .that's right.. IGNORED... forget the fact that if it was still crawled it'd just be a duplicate of what you already have on the page... alt text is for the blind and general dead links to images. 
 
metadata tags... these are the ways of 1990... no one uses these anymore, unless you still use frontpage/dreamweaver.. and even still you usually don't use these. 
 
 
you make a shitty SEO, and hope you go out of business soon.. you make real developers and "SEO consultants" look like idiots... 
 
btw, a person dedicated to SEO is also a moron... SEO is 1/10000000th of building a site, and is so menial and simple that anyone can do it... don't think you're providing any special services that no one else can.. you can barely read.

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 1:38 PM by noneya


#1, Inbound Links - sweet, glad we agree on something! 
 
#2, Alt text - It's a basic semantic piece of any web page that has an image on it. For your viewing pleasure, here's a link to Google's very own Mr. Matt Cutts explaining the importance of Alt text: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NbuDpB_BTc 
 
#3, Meta Description, Google usually includes the contents of your Meta Description when displaying organic search results (right below your page title). Not sure how to argue this one with you... you're just wrong.

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 2:04 PM by todd g


Meta Description is super important - not for gaining rank but for increasing your click through rate. Why would you evenr want software (Google) to decide how to describe your web page when as a marketer you can write your own description? Crazy! Of course I want to do that. Meta Description is important!

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 2:27 PM by Mike Volpe


Very entertaining post! To answer your recommendation about nofollowing links, check out the page source for the Knol pages - They include a meta nofollow for the entire page, so every link is nofollowed. I wonder how many SEOs out there are scrambling to get pages together thinking the links are followed...

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 2:46 PM by Rachael823


In my opinion - worry less about Knol's nofollow attribute and more with the potential to gain relevant traffic from the link(s) associated to it (or lack there of). 
 
Sure the nofollow may be there to discourage would-be-seo-spammers, but if the traffic is there, then there is value beyond direct/indirect SEO benefit.

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 4:42 PM by Derek


I like your SEO strategies...basically tried them on my site and guess what? my site got indexed in less than a week....just a little bit more and I'll be having quality organic search traffic to my site...I base my SEO strategies by offering good quality content to my visitors and not simply basing my content on some keyword that has probably millions of sites using it.....I rank well with definitive search terms....when you do your organic searches, what words or statements do you always type exactly into the search box?? see something? The google index spiders algorithm is smart and reads content on sites...use the same strategies you use when doing an organic search and not simply placing keywords between content on your site....the search engines love that.... Say you want to use a keyword such as SEO...you probably would do a search with terms like SEO tips, free seo tips....or any long definitive sentence search....see the search results and the number of similar websites with similar terms...when you see millions of sites using the same search term from the search results...basically, don't be fooled...you cannot get anywhere near top ten..? Tafuta.tk

posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 at 7:27 PM by bernard


Sorry but this is a poor piece of link bait. Not only is the content inaccurate but its merely being posted to promote internal services. Lame.

posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 5:42 AM by Steve


Looks like we should update this post re: the meta nofollow attribute.  
 
While not really your point, it seems like a valid and interesting point.  
 
I personally wouldn't have thought to look there. Good catch by rachael823. 
 

posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 9:02 AM by peter caputa


yeah, nice catch rachel823... what is going to be more interesting is to see if GoogleBot actually respects the nofollow for all of those links in the page. Something tells me this may be temporary until they figure out a better way to allow authority to flow within their own site. That's what's really cool and powerful about Wikipedia is that they pass authority internally really really well.

posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 10:04 AM by todd g


Thanks guys! Obviously I'm not saying that these links don't provide ANY value. I'm sure we've all noticed that links from Wikipedia, though nofollowed, still do have value while not passing link juice. Curious to see how people start using (abusing?) these pages... and how long until the whole thing shuts down.

posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 at 10:49 AM by Rachael823


The idea I think about the nofollow attribute is the power of your ranking you are giving away. If you 50 links on your page, then each link is worth 1/50th, but if you use nofollows on 35 of them, then the links you want to get more rank will. 
At least, that is what I understand of the process. 
For internal links, you want to use good anchor text. I like to use a css menu on an include file this way my menu will be crawled on each page and have the anchor text that I want.

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