Archive for the ‘How to Use Squidoo’ Category

Having your Squidoo lens maxed out for the best SEO possibilities ever is important. You want to use every nook and cranny you have to show relevance to your niche. Someone asked me how to make your intro pic in Squidoo a tag, so let me tell you how.

If you go to my lens located here http://www.squidoo.com/policeexam you’ll see my “intro pic” in my bio box is a police badge. Now let’s say I want a tag associated with this image.

Normally, I would just use the upload a picture option and be done with it. If you go to it now and hover you’ll see it’s just hyperlinked to the lens itself.

But there’s another way. If I wanted to, I could host that image elsewhere and upload the code into my Bio instead of the My Picture section. The code you’ll use is this:

[a href="http://www.url.com"][img src="http://www.imageurl.gif" alt="police exam" align="left" hspace="5" /][/a] Note: I have changed the <> to [] so when and if you use this code, change them back!

What this does is it inserts your image into your lens, hyperlinks it to the place you want it to go (in this case it’s a ClickBank product), and it notifies those who search the page for SEO purposes that it’s relevant to police exam.

The alt code allows you to do this.
Tiff

I think I have it easier than many of you when it comes to creating Squidoo lenses and knowing what to write. Not because I know more about lens creation, but because I have a knack for writing off the top of my head. I studied it exclusively in college as a Journalism major and I was always good at it.

On Squidoo, what to write can be the hardest question for many lensmasters who don’t have the same wordsmithing background as I do. Whether you’re writing about Internet marketing or another narrow niche topic like dog health, doll houses, or gardening, you have to map out your vision for delivering great content.

So what to write on Squidoo is the question - how do you find the answer? Here’s the formula I use:

1.) What is my goal? On Squidoo, what to write for me is determined by what I want to achieve with my content. Is it just content to get me to the 50 lens Giant Squid status for one of my accounts? If so, any old topic will do and any modules. I might do a lens on Stephanie Myer books and link it to some Amazon pages. She’s the author of the now famous Twilight phenomenon. When figuring out what to write on a lens like this, I’ll usually do an introduction of the topic (in this case, the author), then add two more narrow modules - in this case, about her top books specifically.

If my goal is to further my career, I will take more effort in what I write on Squidoo. If I want to promote a product that I believe in, like Info Product Killer, I’ll make a lens that tells about it, has a selling aspect to it, and answers questions that come my way. These are the questions people are typing into Google, so I get a good deal of traffic from choosing my content that way.

2.) What are the keyword searches showing? I go into Google’s keyword tool and type in my broad keywords to dig down deeper. Let’s say I wanted to tap into the toddler niche. I type in toddler and from the search results, I get to see that on Squidoo what to write might be best built around toddler furniture - because there’s a lot of searches for toddler beds, toddler bedding, toddler furniture, and toddler room.

3.) How can I monetize my information on Squidoo? When determining what to write on Squidoo, you want to choose information that will somehow help you turn a profit. Someone searching for celebrity news will not likely be in a buying position. Someone searching for celebrity collectibles will have money in hand. So on your lens, you wouldn’t just give news about a celeb, but you’d talk about the investment of collectibles and their future rise in value.

Don’t get too bogged down in the details of what to write on Squidoo. The good thing is - it can be CHANGED! You can watch your stats, see how trends change, and morph your content into something fresh and cutting edge. Your lens on Internet Marketing might go from Squidoo being the next big thing to another web 2.0 site.

Tiff

Thanks for asking, Wendy!

All you do is log into your account and click the QuickBuilder link here:

http://www.squidoo.com/build/quick

Enter your lens Title and URL, pick a category and add one tag. Then enter your captcha code and click Done!

Your lens will be registered for your account and will say Under Construction until you publish it!
You can only do so many of these before the system will tell you to pretty much stop URL squatting and get to work on lens building. lol
tiff

Okay, I admire Squidoo for what they’re trying to do – they’re trying to help a lensmaster out! And I agree, many people need the insight.

But please don’t let the tool rule when you’re making decisions or worrying about how well your lens is. I’ll show you why but first let me direct you to where the Squidoo Health Check is located:

Log into your dashboard and go to the My Lenses tab. When you hover over one of your lenses, you see the links listed directly below – and at the end it’ll say Health. Click that.

I’m going to walk you through the new Squidoo Health check for one of my lenses. This lens is currently #25 on all of Squidoo and #5 in the Shopping Category. I even misspelling the stupid URL when I was creating it but it does so well I didn’t have the heart to fix it once I’d noticed:

http://www.squidoo.com/infanstbabysnailhalloweencostume

Now before we go through the health check let me assure you this lens performs fantastically. I have over 1,200 hits a week, I’ve sold TONS of costumes and other stuff through it using both modules and direct Amazon Associates links, and it has 25 five star ratings!

So let’s see how my lens stacks up and I’ll explain why you shouldn’t worry about their Health check:

Lens Title: “Infant Baby Snail Halloween Costume - Perfect Outfit for a Boy or Girl!”
Needs Work: Whoops. Looks like your title’s got the sniffles. The best title is short and friendly and relevant to your topic. Think of it like a headline on a newspaper. Try a title that is 2-6 words long, and make sure it matches the content of your page.

Tiff’s comments: I beg to disagree. I get searches for baby boy costume and baby girl costume as well as the snail and infant costumes. I got all my keywords in there and it’s a relevant, interesting title that obviously pulls people in!

Lens Intro Title: “Baby Snail Costumes - A New Spin on an Old Trend” Good: Good stuff, Boss.

Tiff’s comments: Why thank you, Squidoo – I knew it was good

Lens intro: 91 words Good: The first impression is important. So your lens introduction is key. Nice work.

Tiff’s comments: To be honest, I was short on content here – how much can you say about an infant baby snail costume? So I normally use 250 words.

Intro photo: “pumpkinspaint” Good: The first good thing is that you have an intro photo uploaded. The next good thing is that the photo file successfully matches your lens title or one of your tags. Nicely done.

Tiff’s comments: I first assumed that the system read the file name to determine if it was relevant, but it must not, because many of my lenses have random file names for the image and it still says good job for relevancy. Anyway, make sure you have an intro image.

Primary Tag: “Baby Halloweeen Costume” Needs Work: Your Primary Tag doesn’t appear to be related to your lens. Either your Primary Tag does not match the content of your lens, or you need to add some more secondary tags to it. This helps people find your lens outside of Squidoo, as well as within Squidoo search. It also helps us find more relevant ads to run on your lens.

Tiff’s comments: Look what I did there: I misspelled Halloween! I used 3 Es – oops! This was a good catch Squidoo. HOWEVER – even AFTER I fixed it, Squidoo still said the same thing! So tell me the infant snail baby Halloween costume is not relevant to Baby Halloween Costume and I’ll eat a worm.

Last Published: 2008-09-16 17:12:31 Needs Work: Your lens hasn’t been updated in over a month. Remember: An fresh lens is a healthy lens. People (search engines too) like to know that they content they find is up to date.

Tiff’s comments: Yeah I know but I’m doing just dandy without it being freshened up.

Star Rating: by 25 people A-OK: Your lens has lots of very good star ratings. Rock-star.

Tiff’s comments: I agree.

Number of Tags: 27 Warning: Your tags need some work. Here’s the tricky part: Too MANY tags, and irrelevant tags, is no good. But only having 1 tag is also no good. Try this: Think of the 5 or 6 best keywords or keyphrases for this lens, and add them to your tag list. Delete the rest. We’re betting that will help.

Tiff’s comments: Talk about confusing! Poor lensmasters see 40 available spots and don’t know what to do. I did about half. Don’t sweat it. Forget tags altogether. I did mine way early on – this was not after I discovered tag pages were nofollow since January 2008.

Traffic (from the last 7 days): LOTS - WOOT! Your lens is on fire. Lots of traffic. Nice work.

Tiff’s comments: Yep!

Backlinks: Okay: - A few other sites (but less than 10) are linking to your lens.

Tiff’s comments: I could probably use this to build more backlinks but I don’t have any off-Squidoo Halloween pages. I could do some article marketing or something.

Module Titles: SquidHealth can’t check your modules automatically right now, but here’s an important tip: Do a quick scan of all your module titles, and make sure you don’t have any with the default text in them, like “New Amazon” or “New Guestbook.” The more you personalize your modules, the better.

Tiff’s comments: I agree with this! I HATE to see a module with the default text in the title. It bugs me. Lol

Point is – I have a nice, thriving lens that’s doing SANfranTASTIC and I got several shoddy health reviews as you can see. So don’t freak out if yours doesn’t show a green light for all of the Squidoo Health elements.

Tiff

The temptation to get some “help” with your Squidoo lens can be overwhelming. After all, you’re working on the lens, or lenses, not to mention your other online entrepreneurial projects.

You only have so much time and creativity after all! Some people have used Squidoo software automation tools to help them build lenses and some say that this is a good way to build lenses quickly and easily.

But there’s a problem with doing this – lenses that are being built this way on Squidoo are being banned! That’s not your goal, right?

Squidoo software tools aren’t provided to you by Squidoo - that’s important to know. You have to pay for them and what they do is this: they look at your keyword and they search the Internet and scrape content from other sites to put onto your lens!

This is really unethical not to mention you wind up with a hot mess on your hands. One customer I know used a keyword “pumpkin” thinking she’d get great Halloween or fall décor items, but she wound up with Pumpkin colored shoes!

Other tools help you find tags for your lens, but as I’ve said before, ever since January 2008, you can forget about using tag pages to rank well in Google – they don’t index the tag pages anymore.

Squidoo software automation tools are most likely not a good investment. You won’t get your money’s worth and you could get your lenses banned, risking your entire Squidoo account – I know I’d be highly irritated if I put in the effort to build a bunch of lenses (Squidoo software of not) and woke up one morning and found them all gone.

A much better alternative is to do your lenses yourself, be creative, use all of the tips and support available to you through Squidoo guides and gain traffic and rank the right way.

If you really need automation – why not try this: Order a lens from myself and Lewis at BuildMyLens.com and then once you take ownership of it, you can mimic what we’ve done as you expand your Squidoo lens empire!

Just say no to Squidoo software!

Tiff

As social networking sites go, Squidoo is one of the coolest and best for getting yourself out there and finding lots of others who are interested in the same things as you, and who like to share stories, information, tips and support.

Besides building your own solitary lenses on Squidoo, which is a good thing to do, you can become a member of a Squidoo group or two. Or better yet, you can start your own group on Squidoo!

Here’s how to start your own group on Squidoo: First, click the Groups drop down menu and click on My Groups. Next, you’ll click the Start a Group button. You’ll then be directed through choosing your group URL, title, description, category, etc.

Now you can set up your group lens. First you’ll make a group header – one that fits the style and theme of your group. You can add modules such as featured lens modules and group your modules.

For example, if your group is for gardeners, then you might group them into sub groups like organic gardening, vegetable gardeners, garden designers, etc. Add additional modules that will add to the groups lens like polls and a group discussion area. Don’t forget to invite other lensmasters to join your group!

Once you’ve learned how to start your own group on Squidoo, you might be tempted to start more. They’re fun and create a great place for lensmasters of similar interests to get together and share.

Oh, and here’s another perk: Groups have replaced tag pages as the best way to garner the power of PageRank. All of those lenses that join your group will be pointing to your group page, which you control. Your group page has the ability to gain massive PageRank. You can link out to your own domain from there.

Ever wonder how to add your blog to a Squidoo lens? It’s really very easy once you know how to master the use of an RSS Feed module. Here are the exact steps to help you add your blog to your own Squidoo lenses and build a following of subscribers.

Step 1:

Log into Squidoo and on your dashboard, click the second tab at the top of the page that says, “My Lenses.” Hover over the title of the lens that you want to place your blog on and click the Edit link.

Step 2:

Once you’re in the edit mode for the lens you want to add your blog to, click the button at the top of the page that says, “Add Modules.”

Step 3:

Immediately, you’ll see the list of Starter Package modules that you can add. You’ll be on page one. There’s a link directly below that list that says “1 2 next.” Click “next” and it will take you to another list of modules. Hover over the one that says, “RSS: Add Your Own Feed.” Click the Add link next to this module.

Step 4:

Click the Preview Lens Layout button on the bottom right side of the page and it will show you a list of all of the modules you currently have on your lens. Drag and drop the RSS module wherever you would like it to be (I personally prefer to have it directly above my guestbook module). Now click Save, which will take you back to edit mode in your lens.

Step 5:

Scroll down to the RSS module and click the Edit button. Give your RSS module a title such as, “News About (and enter your niche topic).” You can also add a subtle if you wish as well as a description.

Step 6:

You’ll see the question, “What URL would you like to pull RSS from?” Here is where you’ll put your blog RSS feed URL. It will look something like this: http://www.YourDomainURL.com/blog/feed/ - highlight and copy this so that you can paste it directly below the question.

Step 7:

Then it will ask, “How many headlines would you like to show?” You can choose any number

Step 8:

Then it will ask, “Would you like to include an excerpt from each link in the feed?” I like to choose to show “excerpt 100 characters,” but you can choose to only show title links or show everything (but be warned that this may be a space hog).

Step 9:

Next, it will need to know, “How frequently should the module be updated?” You can choose many options that range from every 30 minutes (if you’re a frequent blogger) to weekly. I normally choose daily.

Step 10:

The last question will be, “Would you like to display HTML in the excerpt?” You can choose yes or no, depending on your personal preferences.

Step 11:

Last, click the Save button and you’ve just learned how to add your blog to a Squidoo lens! Now don’t forget to republish your lens so that the public will see it.

Guess what other kinds of RSS feeds you can use? You can put an RSS feed to your other lenses to help cross-promote them! Want to learn more than just how to add your blog to a Squidoo lens?

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tiffany_Dow http://EzineArticles.com/?How-to-Add-Your-Blog-to-a-Squidoo-Lens&id=1572769