Category: Squidoo

Using Squidoo as a First Tier Backlink

Squidoo is one of those secret weapons that at one time was a huge SEO favorite. A backlink from Squidoo used to carry a lot of weight by itself due to the high page rank of the site.

This is less true today, as is the case with many SEO favorites. The value of the Squidoo link faded as people abused the process and Google has changed its algorithm multiple times since Squidoo’s heyday.

It still has a role to play though, together with Hub Pages, blogger and similar sites. It is a great place to establish a link to your “money site” and then build backlinks to the Squidoo lens using various bulk linking strategies.

I used to use SE Nuke to build bulk backlinks. but now pretty much rely on fiverr to create them. However, instead of sending these backlinks to my target sites I send them to the Squidoo lens.

By backlinking my backlinks sources, especially higher page rank ones like Squidoo, I get my individual lens the attention from Google I need to transfer that link juice to my money site.

My most recent example is a lens on Unclogging drains.

My linking to the Squidoo page, I hope to transfer Google juice ultimately to my target web site for a Minneapolis drain cleaning service.

 

 

How To Make Your Squidoo Webpages Easier To Find For Long Term Traffic

This is an article written by Bob the Teacher, one of my mentors. Since I’ve written recently about Squidoo and in fact put out a new Squidoo lens just this week http://Squidoo.com/ArticleMarketingHints I thought it appropriate to share. It appears I should have read this article before I named my lens.

How To Make Your Squidoo Webpages Easier To Find For Long Term Traffic
By Bob Jenkins

You may create the best, most useful content on your Squidoo lens, but if no one can find it, it is useless. To increase the chance that your lens will be found, here are several strategies.

Write An Effective And Compelling Lens Title

One of the most important things to do when you first create your lens is to take the time to create an effective and compelling title. You must consider two points of view here: what the search engines see and what your visitors will see.

You need to remember that Squidoo embeds tags around the title that makes it a powerful magnet. So when the search engines index your lens, this is the first thing they look at. If you do your keyword research and use keywords that your audience is using to search for your topic, then you will score better search engine rankings.

Let’s look at two possible titles for a lens..

  • Title 1: All About Beef Jerky – way too general
  • Title 2: The best beef jerky for healthy diets and delicious snacks – very specific with lots of keywords for “long tail” searches.

The point is to use the specific keywords that your audience is using in searches.

You also must keep in mind that your title must create reader interest. If you have a catchy title loaded with appropriate keywords, your readers will be more likely to want to dive right into your lens.

The title you use for your lens will appear at the top of your lens and in the title bar of the browser window. This same title will also appear in the search engine results, too, so they must attract the reader’s eye right away.

Ditto For The Module Titles

While you are working researching keywords for the title, repeat the process for the module titles. Modules are the building blocks for your lens. Almost every module has both a title and subtitle, which you can turn into the Sub headings of your new webpage on Squidoo. For maximum effect, use your power keywords here as well because these phrases are marked with tags and can also influence search results.

Your lens and module titles can be changed at any time. However, the sooner you implement better keywords, the quicker your traffic will increase.

Load Your Lens With Relevant Tags

Another area to consider in making your lens easy to find are your lens tags. In addition to all the titles, you can add up to 40 additional keywords to your lens. So it really pays to do your keyword research.

Each tag can be a single word or a complete phrase. Make sure to select your very best keyword for the primary tag, and then up to 39 other phrases that are likely to attract very targeted traffic.

Okay, But How Do You Find The Keywords In The First Place?

Keyword research is one of the most essential skills in internet marketing, and Squidoo is no exception. Probably the best way to start doing research is using the Google keyword tool, which is supposed to be used with Adwords, but you can use it with Squidoo just as easily.

Simply type in the phrase Google Keyword Tool into Google, and it’s the first result. Once inside the dashboard, simply type in the phrase you believe is the best phrase for your topic and you will quickly see how your phrase compares in search volume and advertiser competition to similar phrases.

Whatever keyword phrases have the best volume/advertiser competition combination are your winners. Use them in your lens and module titles, and again in your tags.

Find Out What’s Popular With The Squidoo Tag Clouds

One of the hidden sources for keyword ideas is the Squidoo tag cloud. You’ll find the link to this at the bottom of every page, labeled as Tag Clouds.

Tag clouds are graphical representations of the most popular and most relevant topics on Squidoo. In the tag cloud the larger sized words indicate a more popular term. If your lens is related to these topics, be sure to include them in your keyword tags so you will be more easily found by Squidoo users.

These tags may also appear sooner in Google search results than your lens. However, by including the tags in your lens, you’re just one more click away for your next customer.

Link To Your Lens Wherever You Can

The final piece of this Squidoo Secret is to post a link to your lens wherever you can. There are many different ways to do this.

Blog Comments

Any time that you post a comment on a blog, be sure to include your lens URL in the comment form. Make sure you include the http:// in order for it to become an active link. You may also want to include a link at the bottom of your comment using a standard HTML linking code. However, be careful with this as some blog owners will flag your comment as spam if they believe your post is simply being used to get a link.

The rule of thumb for any blog comment is to make sure you are adding productively to the conversation. Leaving great comments will result in better traffic.

Forum Posts

Be sure to follow the rules of the site that you are posting to. Some forums for example will not let you include a website address in your post. Also make sure that your post is relevant and adds to the quality of the forum thread.

For example, don’t just reply to a post with “Great Post!”, and then include your link. Express why it is such a great post. If you disagree with the author, tell why. When you take the time to add to the content, it will pay off with increased traffic to your lens.

The best place to link from a forum is in your signature. This is often changed in a tab labeled Settings or Profile. Be sure to make your link active by using the correct forum BB code.

Email Signatures

One often overlooked method of increasing traffic to a website is using an email signature. By including your squidoo lens URL and a short description on every piece of email you send out, you can increase traffic to your lens.

Use this in your personal and business emails as well as at the bottom of your autoresponder newsletters and broadcasts.

Your Blog and Websites

If you have any existing websites be sure to include your lens. If you have a blog, announce your new lens and discuss its purpose. Then encourage your readers to look at it and provide you feedback on a lens guestbook. Use the sidebar of your blog to provide an easy to find link to your lens for every new visitor.

Making Your Lens Easy To Find Will Pay Off With Long Term Traffic

It may seem like a lot of work up-front to do all of the keyword research. But it will pay off dividends in traffic. By using relevant titles and key word tags, along with consistent linking strategies, it will be easier for your audience to find your lens. Thus you will begin to gather your tribe and be well on you way to being a great Squidoo lensmaster.

Bob Jenkins is a globally recognized Web 2.0 expert, specializing in the use of blogs and Squidoo for marketing.
Bob provides comprehensive Squidoo tutorials in video, audio, and print format at http://www.SquidooSecrets.com.

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Create A Website, Follow-up with a Squidoo Lens

I am trying to practice what I preach. And so now that I have my Aroma Therapy Scents blog site up, I am writing an article a day pointing to a different page each day and using the keywords featured on that page. That is actually not to time consuming. I know the topic, I already have material to work with and a clear sense of the keywords I want to use. The article directories have been eating them up, with several already apporved.

The next step was to create a Squidoo Lens. Frankly, I largely cut and pasted articles from the web site into Squidoo, and then hyper linked the key words in each article back to the pages.  I added a lot of Amazon and eBay modules to the Lens, which should generate at least some sales. Time will tell. At the bottom of each text module I added a link to my sales page and to the home page, encouraging people to buy my Aroma Therapy Scents eBook and or sign up for my 10 day ecourse.

My main goal is to get backlinks to the web site. But Squidoo should also send some traffic my way and generate a few sales here and there.

Now I should probably go back and rework some of the text as they may be duplicate content as I just cut and pasted the articles. That will take a bit more time, but otherwise I have less than an hour into the Squidoo Lens, which is a real time bargain.  see: Aromatherapy Scents Squidoo Lens http://www.squidoo.com/AromatherapyScents

I recommend that everyone with a web site, set up a Squidoo page. It may generate some revenues, but more importantly it provides backlinks and traffic.

Squidoo – Rank on Top Twice!

Squidoo – Rank on Top Twice! PodcastSquidoo – Rank on Top Twice!

Getting your web site to be top ranked on Google and the other search engines is a complicated task. Particularly, if you are one of many within a given market area.

A little known tool for many main street businesses is an internet portal called Squidoo.

It’s similar in many ways to sites like Facebook, and Myspace in that it allows people to create a web presence easily, but unlike the aforementioned, it unabashedly permits commercialization.  That means you can put up sites that advertise your business.

The easiest way to do so is to reuse much of the content you have on your web page now.  Just rephrase and reorient it to fit the new medium.

Squidoo calls it’s pages, lens.  There are a group of modules that you can create and edit in minutes once you get the hang of their system.  There are a lot of interesting things you can do with the various modules. The main thing you want to do is use your Squidoo lens as additional advertising tool for your services and as a funnel to send traffic to your main web site.

The most critical point when setting up your first lens is what you call it.

If you are a butcher in Minneapolis, you want to do some keyword research as to the best term to use for your market. It may be “butcher”, it may be “quality meats”, it may be any number of things.  What ever it is, you want your first lens to use the best of the picks and then add the words, “in Minneapolis” or what ever the top geographical term is in your market. Then after you set up a lens,  “Quality Meats in Minneapolis” set up another for “Best Brats in Minneapolis.”   Since Squidoo is free, there is no reason for you to not set up multiple Lens on your best keyword phrases.

If you do, you will often find that your Squidoo len(s) will get higher ranking than your own web page, even if you have optimized your web sites meta tags geographically, as I do for my clients.

That’s because Squidoo itself has a high PR or page rank in the eyes of Google.

Now what you want to do is include links in your Squidoo Lens to your web site’s home page.  This helps raise your web sites ranking in Google’s eyes as well.

It sees Squidoo as an “authority” site and gives more credence to links coming from it.

There is a lot more to internet marketing than just having a web site.  That’s what keeps internet marketing consultants like me in business.

While Squidoo is easy to use, like everything, there is a learning curve.  Once you master the basic mechanics you also need to learn the strategies to make it work for your particular needs.  There are a number of eBooks about Squidoo out there.  I publish one called Squidoo Basics. It is a general introduction to Squidoo.

There are other formats beyond Squidoo, like Hub Pages, but Squidoo is probably the best place to start building a broader internet presence.  To get started all you need do is open an account at www.Squidoo.com

In due course, you will not only get your web site on the top of the Google Rankings in your home town, you will also have a Squidoo page there as well.  When prospects see you listed not once, but twice, in the top of the local listings, they will begin to understand that you are the person to go to locally for home staging services.

And that’s where I intend my clients to be.  On top of their local markets.