Google Knol Getting Preferential Treatment With Regards to SEO

For those of you out there familiar with SEO, this may not be surprising news. For those unfamiliar with Search Engine Optimization, here is a valuable tip to help get your site ranked well. Knol, Google's answer to Wikipedia, apparently awards a few points in their algorithm to sites related to Google. Aaron Wall, best known for SEO Book, did a little experiment, creating a Knol on SEO Basics which is identical to his Work.com Guide to Learning SEO and a piece that he did for Business.com.

Google cited the Knol as being similar to the Work.com and Business.com pieces, which isn't a surprise. The shocking part was when Wall searched for a string of text from the article, and found that the Knol was ranked above the syndicated and much older piece on Business.com. There have been many theories about Google's bias towards sites related to them, and I think this experiment just might give those conspiracies some credibility.

Bottom line: Whether you are familiar with SEO or not, creating a Knol about your field of expertise looks to be big help in getting your site to the top of the search mountain. Better hurry though - everyone witnessed how quick Wikipedia filled up once it became known as an authority site.

Free Resources That You May (or May Not) Know About

While it is easy to assume that most people know about the endless amount of free resources on the internet, I think all of us have suggested a site or tool thinking it is known to everyone, only to find that the person has never heard of it. Over the years, I have found several free resources that have saved me from pulling that last hair out of my head. Here is the short list of some of my favorites:

• Cooltext - One of the best (if not the best) logo and button creating tools on the 'net. Hundreds of fonts, huge selection of colors and button shapes, and extremely easy to use.
• Google AdWords Keyword Tool - Now that they finally decided to include search figures instead of that lame bar graph, this tool becomes one of the best free keyword research tools on the internet.
• Craigslist - Whether you have a new or existing online business, you always want to get the most bang for your advertising buck. While Craigslist's strict set of posting rules makes it difficult to market your business nationally, it is possible with a little creativity...or the help of one of the many posting services out there.
• Google Analytics (included with Adwords account) - The statistics this program puts out are crucial for increasing your conversion rate. Check out your site's bounce rate, where your traffic is coming from, your most popular pages, and much more. Start tracking your site with Google Analytics and you'll never stop.
• Imageshack - I am sure that there are many free image hosting companies out there, but this was the first one that I ran into where there wasn't any catches, and once I started using them, I stopped my search.
• W3 Schools - I am far from an expert, but most of the HTML, CSS and little bit of everything else that I know I learned from this site. Excellent tutorials that are written with the beginning coder in mind. Still hard to believe that it is free...

Obviously, there are tons of them out there...hopefully one of these will be new to you, and help relieve some stress in time to stop you from putting your foot through your tower.