Archive for November, 2008

I’m a firm believer in making your Squidoo lens pretty. You want people to land on it and feel like they’re in the right spot for professional information. Think about if you were handed a plain old flyer someone printed out with nothing more than text on it versus a nice colorful brochure with text wrapped around relevant images.

Which would you consider the authority on the subject matter?

The same goes for all of your web 2.0 pages - Squidoo, Google Knol, Hub Pages. You need formatting and images that make it pop.

Let me show you a comparison right now. Which one would you rather visit and buy from:

This lens: http://www.squidoo.com/glasschristmasornament

or

This one: http://www.squidoo.com/toptoddlertoys

The images alone make a world of difference in the experience your visitor has on your lens (or Knol or Hub).

But there’s also some cool formatting you can do, too! You can bold and italicize words. I bold links and italicize to make words pop. This is done with simple HTML code like this: [b] and [i] (replace the brackets [] with arrows <>).

Here’s how to put a color box around a text module and enlarge your text (again, replace brackets [] with arrows <>):

[b][p style="border: 3px solid #069; padding: 14px; text-align: center"][a href='http://www.plrminimart.com/blog' target='_blank'][b style='color: blue; font-size: x-large; font-weight: bold']PLR articles[/b][/a][/p][/b]

Using that code, you can change the color, the font-size, and the border color. I’ve hyperlinked my text, too! Here’s the result you’ll get:

To simply change some text to a different color (and bold it), use this code - again, change brackets [] to arrows <>:

[b style="color: green; font-weight: bold;"]green with envy[/b]

This would make green with envy turn to a bold green color!

To wrap text around an image that you host on your server and hyperlink the image, Which is what I love to do, use this code (arrows, not brackets):

[a href="http://www.URLYouWanttoLinkto.com"][img src="http://www.ImageURL.JPG" alt="relevant keyword" align="right" hspace="5" /][/a]

Now you can change the right to left or center and the spacing makes sure the text isn’t sitting right on the border of the image. It’s nice to have a bit of space separating the image and the text.

Where to get images?

IStockPhoto is my top choice. I buy $60 here and there and use them up as I go, keeping the images for later use. They’re $1 per small image, and small is kind of large for the ‘net.

Also, remember to break up your text modules with some Amazon or polls or something else of your choosing.

Hope this helps!
Tiff

I get asked this question quite often - “would I be a good fit?” People want to know if they’ll be accepted and if their efforts will pay off if they join Squidoo. Since Lewis Smile and I launched Build My Lens to build professional lenses for clients, we’ve seen many niche marketers come through, so I feel qualified to let you know who is on Squidoo - and who should be!

Here’s a sampling of who we see buying a Squidoo lens:

Multi Level Marketers - Men and women who promote such companies as CarbonCopyPro and Business in a Box, The Reverse Funnel System, Shaklee, Magnetic Sponsoring, and many more!

Niche Internet Marketers - People who want to cash in on their niche - from dog training to law of attraction and more.

Authors - Not just eBook authors, but print book authors. Lewis and I have created lenses for some very big names, but we can’t tell you who because the PR firm outsources the work to us. Drat! However, I will tell you that you’ve seen some of them on TV.

Real Estate Professionals - This is becoming a biggie! Real Estate pros are now hiring us to create lenses for them to showcase their business (it’s like a virtual business card!) and also to even showcase houses they’re promoting for sale.

Hobbyists - Not everyone wants a lens for money. Many want a professional lens just for something they’re passionate about. We’ve created lenses on tons of topics, including spirituality, pets, doll house building, and more!

Who is on Squidoo?

Who isn’t - that may be a better question!

Tiff

So you know I’m doing this thing where I set up my dot info domains along with my Squidoo lenses to see how they compete with one another in the SERPs, right? Well my Elmo Live lens? Nowhere on Google’s radar yet. And my lenses normally get gobbled up fast!

However, my dot info domain is bringing in some GOOD targeted traffic. I even updated my page to put some extra links because one of my depth pages for this product is #1 in Google for many keywords. It’s awesome! And since they’re typing in product names, they’re looking to buy.

I’m curious as to how the URLs will compete once I have the Squidoo lens indexed.

Tiff

When you think of Squidoo traffic power, you’re thinking of it in two ways - how to get traffic to your website using Squidoo and how to get traffic to Squidoo lenses in the first place! What you need is a Squidoo traffic power plan, and I have one for you.

First things first - let’s figure out the best ways to get your lens tuned up for maximum Squidoo traffic power. Here’s what you have to do to GET the target audience in the door in the first place:

1.) Optimize your lens using tags in the right places. See my other posts here for more on that.

2.) Provide plenty of content using a wide range of broad and narrow keywords.

3.) Now go get ‘em! Get online and bookmark your lenses using StumbleUpon, Digg, Del.icio.us, and every other bookmarking system you can think of.

4.) Tweet your lens creations. If you’re working with Twitter and are developing a decent following, you should have plenty of Twitter Traffic funneling to your lenses.

5.) Put it in your sig file! Created a lens about alternative health? Join a forum on the topic and put the link to your lens in your signature. Then participate in the forum for targeted traffic.

6.) Blog about it. Go ahead and set up a free blog on Blogger.com or WordPress.com if not on your own domain and send people your way! For example, right here inthis post I can blog about a relevant lens I created at http://www.squidoo.com/squidooresidualincome

7.) Email your list about it. You don’t have a list? Uh oh! My list made me over $7,000 last week with an email that took me just 2 minutes to whip up. Lists are vital. Sometimes when I email my list about a tip, I’ll just stick a URL to a lens beneath my name. It gets clicks even though I didn’t point it out and tell them to go there!

8.) Join and start groups on Squidoo to not only provide more eyeballs to your lens URL but to get Googlebots scouring your lens. Group pages, unlike tag pages, still have follow tags in place!

Now you’ve got ‘em there, what do you do to get the Squidoo traffic power momentum continuing so they hit your domain?

Well not everyone wants to send their traffic to another stop. If not, you can sell right there from your lens! Sell tangibles from Amazon, sell your digital downloads, sell affiliate products. But if you’re using Squidoo as a pitstop to warm up your visitors for a conversion into buyer, then here’s how to put your Squidoo traffic power plan into action and keep them clicking through:

Some things are obvious and rehashed, but necessary:

1.) Provide valuable content. If your lens sucks, so will your product. So make it a good one. Impressive, “bookmarkable.”

2.) Give them plenty of content. In addition to quality, make sure you have enough quantity on there. Just enough to whet the appetite, not enough to provide an entire solution so they don’t need you anymore.

Other things aren’t so obvious to the masses:

3.) Add a link to your domain and its DEPTH pages thoroughout every module where it’s possible. This includes text hyperlinks in write/text modules, in the description of guestbooks, polls, and even Amazon modules. Add a link in your bio box on that lens!!

4.) Hyperlink your poll options.

5.) Hyperlink images. Host a picture of your ecover on your server and use normal HTML code to hyperlink it to your domain. Align it next to your text so the words wrap around it.

6.) ASK PEOPLE to click through. You didn’t forget your call to action, did you? Not everyone sees a link and clicks through. Tell them what to do.

7.) Offer incentives. Go ahead and bribe. On my lens at http://www.squidoo.com/InfoProductKillerReview I have a stickynote that declares I have a code that gets them $68 off the public price of the product.

8.) Keep them in your funnel by using the Featured Lens module. This way, if one lens isn’t up to snuff, the others might be able to convert into a click-through for you. And if you see that one lens isn’t converting, roll up your sleeves and put some elbow grease into it to get it working better for you.

Having a Squidoo Traffic Power Plan in place makes it a whole lot easier for you to get visitors to your lens and then off your lens to your domain.
Tiff