The Knol edge

This is not a piece about what it takes to become a black cab driver in London. For that you need something like taxiknowledge.

Instead this is about Google's new authoring tool Knol - half way between a blog and a wiki with ultimate control of the content held by the author initiating the piece. It's causing something of a stir in SEO circles as there appears to be some evidence that Google is favouring Knol pages over more established web pages offering the same content. Whether this is just a short term setting of the algorithms to give their fledgling service the best launch, or whether it is a longer term bias on Google's part, one thing is clear - a little bit of Knol edge could go a long way.

You say potato...

... and I say... Maris Piper... spud... mash... yam. On the web, more than anywhere, it's a case of 'one man's meat is another man's offal'; or words to that effect.

Chances are that many of the words your prospects are using to find your product or service are not the same as the ones you use on your web site to describe your business. And if the search engines don't recognise your site for the phrase being searched, then you won't be returned in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS). Consequently a percentage of your potential traffic will pass you by.

You will of course get some traffic. Everyone does. But are the words and phrases you've chosen the one's that are going to deliver lots of relevant traffic. And if they are terms that people are searching on in abundance, are you going to be fighting your way to the top of the search engine listings in the face of an impossible number of competing sites.

In an ideal world you would want to focus your attention on just those phrases that are searched on in volume and yet provide little in the way of competition from other sites.

Finding the right words to express yourself.

Google Adwords Suggestion Tool is free and a useful starting point for finding alternatives to phrases that naturally spring to mind. And it will give you approximate averages for the previous month as well as longer-term average search volumes. It also gives an indication of 'adword' competition. But this doesn't really help that much in determining keyword targeting for the organic search listings.

For this you'd be better off using something like Wordtracker. It's one of the many tools we use in helping our clients arrive at a useful pool of phrases to build their content around.

The benefit of a service like Wordtracker is that it allows you to measure search volume and organic competition for phrases across a number of search engines so that you can end up with a cluster of phrases for which you will have a good chance of ranking well in the SERPS.

What you do with the words once you have them is another story.

How do you rank highly without sacrificing the design of your site?

There is a widely held fear that in order to be visible to search engines you also have to be pretty unappealing to the average human visitor.

Content filled with keyword saturated copy and link text may leave you feeling that the site won't be worth the visit after a Search Engine Optimiser has had his way with it.

But, if you're not in the first three pages of results offered up by a search engine, you're not being seen by many visitors.

Assuming you want visitors to your site and you don't have money to promote your web site through mainstream advertising channels such as television, radio, press and poster campaigns - then Search Engine Optimisation is going to be an issue.

It's been said that a good web site needs to be visually arresting and capture the viewers imagination within 5 seconds or less. And for it to rank well in Search Engine Optimisation terms it has to have the level of content and supporting text of a fairly weighty brochure. Potentially uneasy bedfellows.

Compromise is inevitable but there are many things you can do to minimise any negative effects.

At one level, what it boils down to is less code and more content. Use CSS rather than tables and avoid the exclusively Flash-based homepage.