How To Leverage Squidoo Effectively?

[loybond]

I've made a few Squidoo lenses, but they don't appear in Google searches, and they've gotten no views! One, for example, has a pictures RSS feed from Flickr about the topic, and ten unique articles. What am I missing here? Everyone says Google loves Squidoo, but I'd love some tips on how to leverage it properly.

[Lunatic]

Well, it's basically the same as with every webpage out there. For it to rank (especially for competitive terms) you have to promote it to some extend by placing links to it etc.

[loybond]

How much backlinking is necessary? If it's much the same as any other page, why do people say "Google loves Squidoo?"

[CurtisN]

Try taking the content that you have on your Squidoo lens, reword it a bit (add a title and bio box), and stick them up on EzineArticles. In your bio box, point your articles to your Squidoo lens. That'll help drive traffic and give you some high powered links.

Then, make your articles into video articles and submit them to video sharing sites like Youtube. Again, point those to your Squidoo lens as well.

Using Angela and PJ's links wouldn't hurt either. Nor would writing more articles for EZA and your lens

Good luck,
Curtis

[paulgl]

Forget rss and flikr and stuff like that. Useless.
You need to choose a topic and run with it.
Make the title and intro good.
Then do separate text areas for each subtopic.
Put some unique spin in it. Make a text areas for
a few of your links. Photos in each, with names
that match your content.
Go to your dashboard, click on lenses.
Run your cursor over the lens title, and click on health.
Do anything and everything it says to improve the health.
The title, subdomain, and intro are paramount in squidoo.
Doing a lens right takes all day. But the rewards are great!
DOn't be afraid to make a lens on a popular topic, not just
on your niche.

Paul

[loybond]

PaulGL and CurtisN, those are great tips - thanks. Do you guys think that investing that kind of time is going to pay off for a Squidoo lens, or is it better to use that time to build backlinks to my site?

[Natheen2000]

I think you have to have some more backlinks for that inorder to list in google.
What I do is, Create a Squidoo and then get backlinks from 10-15 PR3+ web pages to my squidoo. Within few days, Google used to list me on the searc

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by loybond

PaulGL and CurtisN, those are great tips - thanks. Do you guys think that investing that kind of time is going to pay off for a Squidoo lens, or is it better to use that time to build backlinks to my site?

You will not get instant gratification.
But if you do a lens (and do it well) on a popular subject or a subject
you think will be popular, it will pay off. Our 2 biggest ones are
on Sarah Palin and Lauren Conrad. Some will laugh. These are 2
huge search terms. And Palin is rocking at the moment.
We just got a Ricky Rubio lens up. If you have no idea who he is,
that's why we quickly snatched it up. That is a lens for the future.
Course I enjoy squidoo. If you enjoy it, it makes it easier.

If you have a good lens, on a popular topic, it will get picked up
real quick, whether you promote it or not. We have never promoted
our Lauren Conrad lens and it rocks. Again, we had no idea who
Lauren Conrad was until we saw it was a top search term. Course
we have lensrolled it and spotlighted it across squidoo on our lenses.

My advice is to make a lens on a popular topic that is somewhat
related to a dot com you are promoting. Then link up.

Course the few dollars a month from squidoo aint bad either.

If you have the time, make as many lenses as you can. And link
them all up.

There are people who do not like squidoo. I will never argue that
squidoo is the best, it's just one tool of many that one can do.

Paul

[subhub-mark]

In the past i've used cheap (but targeted) paid-for StumbleUpon ads to drive traffic to my Squidoo lens. Once you've got it to the point where it's in the top 10 of your chosen Squidoo category you can turn off the StumbleUpon traffic, as organic Squidoo traffic should be doing the job of keeping the lens highly ranked (if you have a quality lens).

It's worked for me numerous times

[wahgypsy]

This is what I do to get my squidoo lenses picked up and it usually works within a day or two. I write the lens, submit the rss url to feedage.com and feedest.com, I rewrite the lens and submit to hubpages. I also post a link of my lens on twitter (and I can't verify that this helps at all, just letting you know what I do, but I have over 1000 followers and by doing this, the lens get viewed and rated, so that may or may not factor in it) My lenses always get picked up quickly and I'm usually right on the first page of google for the long-tailed keyword phrase of the lens and sometimes, the hubpages article is right there on the first page as well.

[thefluffanutta]

You can also use sites like feedage.com to syndicate your lensmaster feed, which will create fresh backlinks every time you create a new lens.

I also use social bookmarking sites like Delicious.com and OnlyWire.com.

It might also help to ping your lens, though there's no proof that this really helps or not.

[AnneE]

Originally Posted by wahgypsy

This is what I do to get my squidoo lenses picked up and it usually works within a day or two. I write the lens, submit the rss url to feedage.com and feedest.com,

When you submit the feeds, do you just submit them, or add relevant tags?

Also, in terms of my own tips.

1) Use your keyword phrase that you are hoping the lens will be found for in both the URL and as many of the module titles as you can.

2) Add a table of contents... this will repeat all those module titles which have your keyword phrase.

3) Join groups. When logged into Squidoo, go to: Squidoo : Browse Groups

and browse and find groups relevant to your lens. When you are logged in, you will see a link that says Add existing lens to this group.

Squidoo used to emphasize to add your lens to a group, but it's downplaying groups. I think they found too many people were creating groups filled 90% with their own lenses and for their own purposes and so they put a freeze on creating groups and really stopped emphasizing it. But I believe each group that you are in is another link to your lens and you will often have lens owners come and visit your lens.

Finally... don't give up on a lens with low traffic (I've got a couple right now). Instead if you have ANY traffic... from your Dashboard -- Click on the Stats for that Lens, now click on the Traffic tab. Scroll down and see on the right, there is a "Keyword" section and in tiny print, it says These tags, or keyword phrases, delivered your lens to searchers. See one you haven't used? Add it to your lens (+)

I think this is a REALLY underused function. This tells you what search terms brought people to your lens. If the search term listed applies to your lens than definitely click the + next to it to add it as a tag. Now, also consider these are areas to grow your lens in. If you have one sentence that includes this term, maybe you want to expand your coverage and write more. After all if someone found your lens for that search term and it was not really the focus of your lens, how many more people will find your lens for that search term if you have more content related to that search term.

I've had pretty good luck with Squidoo, mostly through affiliate sales, not so much from Squidoo directly. But some lenses of mine have been really slow to take off. In fact, I also currently have a 0 views in last week one. But I just submitted the feed as recommended above, we'll see!