Update 7/28/2008:

Per my last comment, Aaron Wall was doing an SEO test to see how well duplicate content will rank and that even while Google knows it is duplicate content, will help it outrank more established sites like Business.com. Since this was done as a test, please note that all opinions below towards this shall be regarded as moot.

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It did not take long for SEO Spam to begin with even Aaron Wall promoting his efforts to optimize Knol.

Look, the guy is brilliant and definitely well-versed and absolutely knowledgeable in SEO (anyone interested in SEO should be following his feed). Yet, when you’re creating an article that is going to be on what is supposedly going to be an authoritative wikipedia, one should not be putting over 50% (18/35 links) of your external links to your own site and tools!

Yes it’s great marketing and yes his site should be referenced in many ways for basic SEO (and beyond), but for any person with little knowledge of SEO they will only see this as spam when it references mainly the author’s content and products. Would you trust an article that references over half its own sites?

To give credit where it’s due, he is asking for help to optimize it. My tip: Don’t be creating content and linking heavily to your own site (eg: don’t just link to your own SEO for Firefox page; link to competing products like SEOQuake [my disclaimer: I use SEOQuake over SEO for Firefox]).

Or, even better, post a disclaimer that you’re linking to your own site! Why? If this is supposed to be authoritative then really this article should be removed for vanity that even “lowly” Wikipedia would remove.

In the end, it’s good marketing for him, but bad PR for the rest of us.

I will not likely win any friends on this post in the SEO world, but I’m not one to shy away from my opinions.

Update:

Final comment–I should have added potential PR damage to SEOs on my Knol SEO blog post.