Articles

Google has always had Beta projects and this week, Google opened another one to the public.

Known as knol – which they say stands for ‘a unit of knowledge’ – a neat concept. Superficially, knol would look much like a squidoo lens or a hub page. Google’s blog states ‘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’ – which sounds ominously like a knol ought to be at the top of the organic SERPs.

They go on to say that knols can contain ads from which the author will receive a substantial share! They won’t be moderated, only ranked so there is no censoring and marketers will flock to get their affiliate links in this new format.

It certainly seems like it would be worth trying to get in early and write some definitive knols about your pet subjects.

Perhaps this is why squidoo lens fell from favour!

Here is an example knol from the big G – they have a more serious and business-like feel to them than lenses.

While there will no doubt be plenty of rubbish appearing, community tools like ranking will help to make sure the genuinely good ones get to the top.

So go forth and nab your knols.

You can find the service at http://knol.google.com

If you’ve tried Google Adwords then you may have come across the frustration of having one or more of your keywords getting a poor quality score. All Google will tell you is that your landing page should be related to your keywords and your advert.

Well there is a way to make sure that your landing page matches your keywords in Google’s eyes – use the keywords Google thinks are right for your landing page!

After all, if they suggest the keywords for your landing page, they can hardly give those a low quality score, can they? This works really well. Of course the keywords might not include the ones you wanted. So instead of trying to add the keyword you want, try editing the landing page so that Google suggests that keyword. Bingo!

This is not a great secret but a lot of people haven’t been made aware of this really simple and cool way to keep your Adwords campaigns in great shape.

I just received an email from Jonathan Leger and as I’m in content mode at the moment, I went straight and watched the video.

Boy, am I glad I did. This software sets the bar very high indeed. At least based on the video preview – I would love to be reviewing this product for real right now but I guess I’ll have to wait.

There’s a link to the video at the end of this review.

I have never used Instant Article Wizard 1.0 so I don’t know how that performed but it gleaned its content from free articles. Version 2.0 uses the web at large! And the preview shows how to use it to generate really readable articles that look like they were written by one person.

I would like to make a suggestion both to anyone intending to use it and maybe to the great Jon himself: modify every sentence slightly rather than using it verbatim. Maybe the software should only let you retrieve the content after it’s been modified a small amount. Nothing too onerous but change a few nouns, insert superlatives, do something to each sentence.

Why?

Because good as this is, Google could easily detect these articles. Not saying it would now. But if Google didn’t like this concept, it could detect them. I may be wrong but if I’m right, you read it here first.

What are the odds of two people writing the exact same 10 word sentence? OK, if it’s on a specific topic it’s of course feasible. What if 3 or 4 or 5 people have that exact same sentence? Now while the article may well look extremely unique taken as a whole, if (and it is a very presumptive if) Google finds the exact same sentence used in multiple sites, Google can now simply look for that sentence and any site with the exact same sentence will be penalised because it’s a near certainty it was scraped.

Will Google care? Maybe not. There is some value in an article that ’summarises’ lots of other articles. But if the big G does care, I’m guessing it could switch on detection in a heartbeat.

Change a couple of words in each sentence and it would dramatically reduce the chance of big G spotting it.

This is not to knock the product, far from it. It’s great and I would recommend it. But if it’s overused and if people are too lazy, it may lead to lots of sites getting slapped.

So be smart. Like any tool, use it wisely, not lazily – you might thank me one day. Then again, I could be talking rubbish.

What do you think?

Here’s the video

TS25 is a great traffic exchange but one can get even better performance if you use it with with a downline builder. As with many traffic exchanges, there’s a real benefit to you if you can get referrals i.e. introduce other team members into TS25. These members are known as your downline or your team.

TS25 has a really powerful feature that makes it different from many of the other traffic exchanges. In many traffic exchanges you can build a downline to earn ‘referral credits’ i.e. you earn a percentage of the credits earned by those members in your downline. This is great if those members in your downline are somewhat active surfers. Each one that isn’t an active surfer isn’t benefiting you.

This is where TS25 is different. With TS25, there is still some benefit to introducing people and I’ll explain why in a moment. Instead of earning referral traffic credits from your downline, you are going to earn traffic credits from a ’syndicate’ generally (but not necessarily) formed from people that AREN’T in your downline.

Here’s the thing: one can earn the right to be part of a higher (more active) syndicate by doing more personal surfing. surf more sites and your surf points will be compared against all the other members in a ‘points ladder’ to decide which syndicate you will be in. As you keep surfing, you’ll keep popping up to the next higher syndicate (full of similarly active surfers).

By the end of the week, the extra credits you earn will not be those credits from your downline! Your extra credits will be the shared extra credits from the syndicate you worked your way into.

In this unique way, you can leverage your own efforts enormously and you’re not reliant upon the surfing activity (or otherwise) of the people you bring in.

Note there are minor differences depending on whether you’re a paid or free member.

Remember I said that there is some benefit to introducing other members, even though your weekly bonus credits are not worked from them, they’re earned from your syndicate?

When you have a downline, the number of personal referrals you have earns you a ’starting value’ of credits. This means that even before one starts surfing for the week, you have credits. This makes it easier to get in the higher syndicates with less surfing. So the more people you’ve personally introduced to TS25, the higher up the points ladder you start the week. In time one could be in beginning near the top every week. To make this happen, you need to be using a downline builder.

As with using most traffic exchanges, you need to focus on developing a downline and the best way to do that is by utilising a downline builder like VitalViral with your traffic exchanges.