Squidoo lens

[wilsonljx]

I have heard of using squidoo to generate traffic so I created a lens but not really sure what to do next.

Can anyone teach me what must I do next?

[AlexSid]

Treat Squidoo just as you would any other Website. Gone are the days from 2007 - 2008 when you could get a Squidoo lens ranking in under 30 minutes for medium competitive keywords. But Squidoo still is useful and I make a nice earning from over 70 lens I have built over the years.

To get Squidoo ranking and getting traffic you will need to promote it just like you would any other Website by building backlinks. One of the first things I do after building a lens is to submit it to Squidoo directores (google this for a list of Websites), then I will submit a comment to 10 - 20 lens that are listed in the top squidoo 100 lens (usually they have page rank) this will get you a few high authority backlinks as your username will be a backlink (do follow) and even though it won't be keyword anchor text unless you signed up with your keyword as your username, it's still valuable.

Then just start the normal promotional process, ping the lens and then start building backlinks.

Hope that helps

[Winlin]

Originally Posted by wilsonljx

I have heard of using squidoo to generate traffic so I created a lens but not really sure what to do next.

Can anyone teach me what must I do next?

You may find this thread helpful:

Squidoo/Blogger as primary site


Also, I'd get acquainted with the help forums at Squidoo. Although not as active as the Warrior Forum, the Squidoo specific information you will glean is well worth the effort. -winlin

[backendbuddy]

Also, there is Squidcast, you can spread the news about your lens to the Squidoo communities.

Then, you have SquidLike, a by chance element, in this, you would like other lenses, so other people may return you a favor by liking your lenses back.

You can ping it and do the backlinking thing. You can create articles and submit them to directories as well.

And finally, Squidoo is more correct when you use it as backlink for your other sites - it gives some SEO juice. You can even create hubs from hubpages to backlink the Squidoo lens.

And the lens itself should offer some values.
Hope this helps.

[MartinJ]

yeah thats exactly how you do it. Create the lens and then promote it with the exact same techniques as promoting other websites, with social media and backlinks.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by wilsonljx

Can anyone teach me what must I do next?

Two things ...

(i) Read the reply in post #3 above and read the whole of the thread linked to within it slowly and carefully, until you really "get the message", and ...

(ii) Get your own hosting, which you own and control (it doesn't matter much whether it's free hosting or paid-for hosting - so don't listen to people telling you that free hosting "doesn't work", because that's nonsense and it's totally missing the point) and stop depending for your traffic on sites which other people own and control, and to which they constantly apply their own highly changeable, very idiosyncratic terms of service, and which can suddenly disappear in the night taking your business away with them. It costs nothing to be secure and own your own business assets, rather than unnecessarily depending on the continued goodwill, availability and terms of service of others. Squidoo can't give you anything which you can't get for yourself, elsewhere.

[wilsonljx]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Two things ...

(i) Read the reply in post #3 above and read the whole of the thread linked to within it slowly and carefully, until you really "get the message", and ...

(ii) Get your own hosting, which you own and control (it doesn't matter much whether it's free hosting or paid-for hosting - so don't listen to people telling you that free hosting "doesn't work", because that's nonsense and it's totally missing the point) and stop depending for your traffic on sites which other people own and control, and to which they constantly apply their own highly changeable, very idiosyncratic terms of service, and which can suddenly disappear in the night taking your business away with them. It costs nothing to be secure and own your own business assets, rather than unnecessarily depending on the continued goodwill, availability and terms of service of others. Squidoo can't give you anything which you can't get for yourself, elsewhere.

Thanks for your advice,I am not very sure about how to get my own hosting.Would you mind telling me more?

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by wilsonljx

I am not very sure about how to get my own hosting.Would you mind telling me more?

For paid hosting, I recommend HostGator (hundreds of people here recommend HostGator - though there are many similar equivalents ... but have a look at their site, and at what people here say about them).

But I think you may be asking about free hosting?

There are certainly ways you can have your own hosting without paying anything for it ... and countless people have started off that way, avoiding the sometimes-nightmarish problems of using Blogger, Squidoo, HubPages and such places ...

(i) You can have self-hosted Wordpress blogs (or any other sort of site you like and know how to make) on free hosting at byethost.com (long-established, highly reliable, professional hosting - free of charge - no C-Panel, their own equivalent instead);

(ii) You can also have self-hosted Wordpress blogs (or any other sort of site you like and know how to make) on free hosting at 000webhost.com (with C-Panel - easy to install Wordpress there);

(iii) Weebly sites/blogs (two are allowed free of charge - has a free, built-in site-builder which you have to use - it's good, and easy, but you can't have a Wordpress blog there. I recommend Weebly, and have been using them for 3 years now);

(iv) Yola (similar to Weebly);

(v) Blinkweb (again, similar).

There are many more, too. All of them offer limited free hosting (they won't let you have 100 sites, but you don't need that, right?) and they avoid all the risks of Squidoo (and Blogger and HubPages) and all those other sites which you can never own yourself.

[Steve Faber]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

.............. they avoid all the risks of Squidoo (and Blogger and HubPages) and all those other sites which you can never own yourself.

She's right.

Always remember; with a business you're building an asset. You should be planning a profitable exit strategy from the beginning. That is virtually impossible if you don't own your site. Think of building a thriving store on someone else's land with no long term (or any, for that matter) lease. You could spend years building ab business and customer base, and the land owner could decide one day that they were building condos there.....starting tomorrow. It's the same way with an online asset.

[capitalalchemy]

Although owning your own website is great, it can be a costly mistake before doing some research.

I like to use Squidoo to test the waters. I can use it to test certain products, angles of promotion, information, and even just get a conversation going to see what people think.

You know you can make great use of the poll modules to REALLY see what people think about something.

But here's what I've learned about using Squidoo successfully.

1. ALWAYS start a new campaign for each topic.

2. Create a new target user name with your keyword.

3. Break down your lens content into many lenses, creating a sort of index of lens (pages) just like any other website.

4. Don't be stingy about linking out to other sources or sharing your traffic.

5. Inner-link your lenses as much as possible.

6. Make each lens experience super fun with goofy colors, clipart, etc. People seem to really respond more to a "homemade look" - not sure why.

7. Make sure that each lens is high quality, very well written and FULL of modules. I know that people say commonly "you can throw together a lens in 5 minutes!!", but I will take 1 - 2 days to build each lens.

8. Yes, do submit your lenses to the lens directories first thing. This gets them indexed fast.

9. I personally like to let my lenses age and move on to other things for the time being.

10. Use all of your tag spaces.

There's a lot more, but those are things that I have learned from trial and error/reading and they have really worked for me! best of luck.

[wilsonljx]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

For paid hosting, I recommend HostGator (hundreds of people here recommend HostGator - though there are many similar equivalents ... but have a look at their site, and at what people here say about them).

But I think you may be asking about free hosting?

There are certainly ways you can have your own hosting without paying anything for it ... and countless people have started off that way, avoiding the sometimes-nightmarish problems of using Blogger, Squidoo, HubPages and such places ...

(i) You can have self-hosted Wordpress blogs (or any other sort of site you like and know how to make) on free hosting at byethost.com (long-established, highly reliable, professional hosting - free of charge - no C-Panel, their own equivalent instead);

(ii) You can also have self-hosted Wordpress blogs (or any other sort of site you like and know how to make) on free hosting at 000webhost.com (with C-Panel - easy to install Wordpress there);

(iii) Weebly sites/blogs (two are allowed free of charge - has a free, built-in site-builder which you have to use - it's good, and easy, but you can't have a Wordpress blog there. I recommend Weebly, and have been using them for 3 years now);

(iv) Yola (similar to Weebly);

(v) Blinkweb (again, similar).

There are many more, too. All of them offer limited free hosting (they won't let you have 100 sites, but you don't need that, right?) and they avoid all the risks of Squidoo (and Blogger and HubPages) and all those other sites which you can never own yourself.

So my blog will still be there,just different hosting company?or I have to start the blog all over again?

[bloomingrose]

If you use paid hosting, you can transfer from one company to another. I don't know about the sites like Weebly.

I also wonder why Weebly is better than Squidoo.

I don't know about transferring sites from free hosting, maybe someone could comment.

I always like to think about selling my sites eventually. However, I have heard about selling Squidoo lenses, don't know how this is done.

[bloomingrose]

By the way, you can host an unlimited amount of sites on Hostgator for the same monthly fee.

[kolbywhite28]

Backlink the Squidoo lens to get it ranking for the targeted keywords. After you rank in the first page, you should see some good traffic rolling in.

[absolutelee]

You'll need to backlink the lens just like any other site. It's not going to rank well on it's own. You can find cheap backlinking on places like Fiverr that works well for Squidoo.

[stephenwaldo]

Also, don't forget that one great way to get traffic to your squidoo lens is from within the squidoo community itself. Be friendly to your neighbors! Post comments, vote in contests and polls, rate lenses...Do the kind of things you want people doing on YOUR lenses. It's a good way to get noticed, and many times people will respond in kind.

And as some others have said, the same principals apply to building squidoo lenses as do any other website. Building 'hubs' with lots of links FROM squidoo pointing to your squidoo lens will really boost your SEO results, as well as readership across all your lenses. Do your best to be engaging, and you'll probably want to do some syndication across other platforms to get traffic outside of Google seeing your content.

The thread that was linked earlier in post #3 is extremely helpful as well, as mentioned by Alexa and others.

Kindly,
- Stephen

[creativewebdesign]

squidoo is better than weebly