You may not have heard yet about Google’s new online publishing service, Knol, which some believe is a direct “slap” to Wikipedia.  Knol (a little literacy license for “knowlege”) is a cool tool which gives you the ability to create content on just about any subject and get it posted.  You can, over time, brand yourself as an expert in any field you want.

From a pure search engine optimization perspective it has some pluses and minuses.  On the plus side, one doesn’t have to think real hard about where Google is going.  Search today on just about any term and you’re likely to see a Wikipedia entry in the top 10 results; since Google was unable to get the Wikipedia purchase consummated, do you think it’s possible that they’re positioning Knol to replace the Wikipedia results?  If so, it won’t happen overnight, but what if you’ve done the work to place a large number of Knol articles (all interlinked) on line and done some inbound linking to boot?  Hmmm….

On the minus side, Knol no-follows all the outbound links on an article page.  So, while you won’t get much link credit with internal links within an article, having a large number of articles can, we suspect, increase the credibility you have.

Some of our initial research shows that there are a number of “amateurs” posting; this is an opportunity for you if you develop and publish valuable content.  Funny how it always gets back to the same thing…it’s always about good, valuable content.

Anyway, take a look and get to work.  See how you can use Know to your advantage.

By the way, here’s an article I placed on Knol 2 days after it went live; it’s probably a little long, but you get the picture.