Squidoo + Amazon : Product selection!!

Achu - I love Squidoo and use it regularly to promote Amazon products. You can do a lens on a single product or on a group of products. I do both. I have the best success when I build a group of lenses around a particular niche.

Squidoo benefits - free, easy to use, and strong built in SEO. The module titles are in H2 tags so you want to use your keywords in those titles. Good interlinking strategy on the part of Squidoo can help your lens in Google.

Squidoo's platform shows visitors other lenses related to the lens they are viewing in a sidebar section called Explore Related Pages. This means if you have a lens on toothpicks and someone else has a lens on toothpicks and your tags are similar, someone viewing the other lens on toothpicks might see a link to your lens on the other lens. This can get you referral traffic from other lenses. For the right niche, you can get some great traffic pretty quickly. I have some lenses that get more traffic through referrals than through Google.

Of course, this means that your lens will also show referrals to other lenses. You can control what shows up in that section by building a set of related lenses and linking to those lenses in the Related Lenses tab of the intro module.

Squidoo Cons - You don't own the platform and Squidoo could change their TOS. There may be others but these are the two that come up regularly in any discussion about Squidoo.

I build my own product review sites for Amazon but I STILL build lenses, too. I simply love the platform, I've had great success, and I sometimes need a break from my sites or want to explore a niche for which I don't want to build a full site. Great for holiday items when I get an idea at the last minute.

To do a product review on Amazon, I'd choose the title "such and such product review". Research the product thoroughly and come up with five good subtitles to put in your review. Each of these subtitles should be it's own module and should talk about a specific, important feature of the product. If you were reviewing a vacuum cleaner, one subtitle might be "Hoover 123 Canister Vacuum Filter Strength" (or whatever feature you think is really important to potential buyers). See how the title includes the product name? Making good use of those H2 subtitles in modules.

Add video, make sure your content is really good and provides something more than what people can find on Amazon.

Read the consumer reviews on Amazon and summarize the pros and cons in bullet points in one of your modules.

Check Google Suggest to see if people type in phrases like "Hoover 123 vs....." and see what suggestions come up. Add a module to your lens that uses that comparison phrase as the title and summarize the differences between your product and the other product.

Use text links and image links to Amazon.

Bookmark. Use some of the Squidoo directories to share your lens. Maybe rewrite your review into an article format and distribute through article directories.

Build more reviews around the same niche and link them together. If you decide to build a site about the niche, use those lenses as backlinks for your new site.

To do lenses on a group of products, think of products where people buy more than one at a time so you don't end up selling single $5 items: towels, lawn chairs, bath accessory sets, candles, barstools, etc.

(I don't know what got into me....!)


Squidoo regularly applies noindex to lenses that violate TOS, trigger their spam filter, or slip above the 400,000 lensrank cutoff. Helps keep the site clean and updated.

Fixing the root issue can remove the noindex status. Usually, if its just that the lens slipped above 400,000 and reverted to a WIP status, a simple update of the content will boost the lens out of WIP.

This is a great opportunity to add new content for more traffic. I usually use Google Suggest to find a new phrase about my keyword, use that phrase as a new module in my lens and add a paragraph or two about that phrase. Republish and the lens should update out of WIP within a day or two. I have hundreds of lenses and don't spend much time updating unless a lens slips into WIP or unless I think of something relevant I want to add to a lens.

That was very kind of you! Must have been working on my long missive there when you came along.

lisakleinweber comes to mind and I know there are several others. There are some good Squidoo how-to tips in the main forum and doing a search should bring up some helpful info.

Oh....No I doesnt have any lens till now, But I am going to create some amazon squidoo lens to promote amazon products...

So are you saying that, I cant get it on page 1 nor if I do SEO, it wont move up the SERPS..?

Not a problem.

The bulk of my Squidoo traffic comes from Google. I choose keywords around the 500 exact match range but add long tail variations of those keywords in the module titles so 500 is just the starting point. Then I build a set of lenses around the same niche and link them together.

For example, I have a lens targeting a keyword with about 700 exact monthly searches but the lens gets 4800 visitors a month because it covers a lot of longtail keywords around the main keyword.

Then I backlink those lenses to get them to rank on the first page.

Another source of traffic is the referrals from within Squidoo as I mentioned. Make sure you fill out the tags section of your lens with good, relevant keywords. That will help Squidoo know when to showcase your lens on another lens. This works best if you have a great image in your intro module.

Yes, if I have a site related to the lens topic, I link the lens to the site to drive traffic and to get a backlink to my site AND I link to Amazon. I do make sales directly from the lens and the site. Gives those who want to buy right now a way to do so and also allows those who have more questions to see greater detail about the product, if they want.


AND....I forgot a great resource for Squidoo info - Tiffany Dow. (I've already slapped myself for not thinking to mention her in my earlier post!!)

Looks like I haven't done nearly as much as I could with Squidoo - gotta fix that.

This applies outside Squidoo as well. One good way to find out what's important is to read the reviews and take notes on recurring themes. And don't limit yourself to just the reviews on Amazon.

For example, I just bought a new laser printer for doing drafts and for my wife to use for printing coupons - much cheaper than ink for the color printer. Before I bought, I read the reviews on Amazon, BestBuy, PC Computing, etc.

And I looked for reviews that were by people I felt were similar to me - light business and personal users.

So scan a lot of reviews, find your five important themes, and dig up your keywords to fit them. If you match the theme to the targeted buyers, your review will resonate with them and you'll be more likely to get the click that rings the register...

Squidoo does have a limit of no more than 9 outbound links per domain IF you are not a Giant Squid. Some domains are whitelisted (like Amazon) so you can have more than 9 links out to amazon.com/xxxxxxx. If that's the merchant you're linking to, then you're fine. If it's a different domain, then you can do it nine times per lens.

Yes, the Squidoo sidebar (the Explore Related Pages section, anyway) is like a website menu where you can list 6 of your other lenses so they'll show up for visitors to see. If you don't fill those 6 spots with your own lenses, Squidoo will automatically populate the empty spots with OTHER lenses created by other lensmasters. That's why I like to fill all those spots.

Sincerely,

Erica

You can have the links on 10, 20, 30 or more lenses. The limit of nine starts over for each new lens.

marco005 - Sorry, not sure how I missed this question!

What Squidoo means is don't do a ton of lenses that are all targeting "red leather jacket for women" when one lens would suffice. Doing a bunch of recipe lenses where each lens has a different recipe is fine.

marco005 - While you can build up a nice portfolio at 6 lenses a month, I'd do more than that if you can. The more lenses you build, the more you'll learn about which niches do best so that you can build even more lenses around that particular niche. Some lenses won't do as well as others so the more you have, the better your chances at building more winners into your portfolio.

Sincerely,

Erica

Yes, as long as each of the lenses has something different to offer, that would be appropriate.

Yes you can even build mini link wheels, where you have your WEB 2.0 <> Youtube <> Squidoo -> affiliate site.

Or different variations of this.

But We have more success by 3 different things.

1) Build backlinks manually, so not to be red flagged by google.

2) Get your backlinks first, then build backlinks to those backlinks.

3) Make sure you have killer content. We have some high ranking lenses and sites, and you do not get up there by using spun articles (this has never worked) and jibbersish. Give google what she wants, hard core quality content to leave your competitors eating dust behind you.

Go take a look at the higher ranking squidoo's and hardly any of them have crappy content. Hint hint.

Hope this helps.

Giant Squid is a program Squidoo uses to grant lensmasters more tools and permissions. You have to make at least 25 quality lenses and then you can apply to be a Giant Squid. A selection of your lenses are then reviewed to see if they meet quality guidelines. If so, you may be approved. Giant Squids can create templates (pre-arranged sets of modules) for use when building new lenses which saves some time. The 9 link limit per domain per lens is removed. You have a different email for support (if I remember correctly) and the "low quality/spam" filters behave a little differently.

You do not get more likes or traffic by being a Giant. The Giant program is a way for Squidoo to say they like what they've seen you build so far and, therefore, you have some additional leniency and efficiency available to you.

New lenses take a day or two to come out of WIP (red) as the Squidoo lensrank only updates once a day. A lens can fall back into WIP if the lensrank climbs higher than 400,000. Several factors go into that lensrank number, although the algorithm is proprietary so no one is 100% sure which factors play a role but it is a safe bet that traffic and clickthroughs have an impact. If you don't have enough of either - along with whatever factors come into play - then a lens can fall into WIP.

Usually, updating the lens and adding a bit more content, saving, and republishing will bring a lens out of WIP at the run of the next lensrank update. If it doesn't, update the lens again and see if that pulls it out. Make sure you're using good tags, too, to drive some referral traffic from other lenses.

Squidoo does have some quality expectations, although you still some bad lenses making it through the system just fine.

I have not had an issue with lensrank and have over 400 lenses. I also don't spend a lot of time updating them. I think if you have all the right pieces in place, you should be able to keep 82 lenses afloat without having to baby them. Good use of module titles for long-tail keywords, good content, good use of tags, adding polls, video, and images - all can help a lens maintain a good lensrank.



I would agree. Working on lenses that are only paying you pennies a month is not a worthwhile exercise. If the lens can't be turned around to generate more, just let it sit.


Absolutely! Squidoo is a great starting and testing ground but expanding to build your own sites is a strong and effective next step. Your lenses can help backlink your sites and drive traffic if used correctly.

Oh, you're too kind. I'm in good company, though. There are a number of great Squidoo lensmasters on this forum.

Tier payouts and commission payouts are separate. Squidoo divvies up the income they receive from image and text ads they put around your lenses and distributes that to lensmasters based on lensrank performance for that month for each of your lenses. Tier 1 lenses get more than Tier 2 lenses which get more than Tier 3 which gets more than Tier 4.

Commissions, on the other hand, do not fall into the Tier payouts but are paid in a separate line item for each lens. For Amazon commission, you'd see an Amazon line in the earnings report for each lens that received commissions for that month.

Payouts take place approximately 60 days after the money was earned. August 2012 earnings were paid on October 11, 2012, for example. The monthly earnings are not spread out over a three month period - just delayed to allow Squidoo to reflect accurate reporting.

marco005 - Not quite right. IF you use your own Amazon links, you'll be paid by Amazon.

If you use the Amazon modules inside Squidoo, you'll get paid by Squidoo but you'll end up splitting the commissions. However, it sounds like you would be paid more quickly than if you used your own Amazon links and had a traditional Amazon.com payment method set up.

I recall Gaz Cooper had shared a way to be paid more quickly by Amazon.com for those who live outside of the States. I have not tried the method, don't know if it still works, and can't vouch for what fees you might run into but you can read more about it here: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post6138540