10 ways to promote Squidoo lens

I'm pretty sure you are on Facebook. Even if you are not, 1/6 of all world population is and you should be too. Facebook is a great place to meet and find people with same interest then you. I'm also sure they are interested in what you have to say about that topic. And they will appreciate when you will post links to your lenses on your wall and they will visit them for sure.

Even better way to promote your lenses on Facebook is by creating Facebook pages. Fb pages are indexed by search engines and every time you post a link to your lens on Fb page, you get backlink*. This is one of the reasons why posting link to your lens on Fb pages is better then posting on your wall. Your personal Fb profile and everything you put on your wall is not indexed by search engines. And every time you update your page, everyone that have ever liked your page will get update on there wall. Another cool thing about Fb pages is, that people that are not your friends, can also visit and like your page without becoming one.

If you don't feel comfortable creating Fb pages or posting on wall in your own personal account, simply create another Fb account with your alternative persona. Please note, having 2 or more accounts on Fb is not exactly by the book and your second account might get deleted by Facebook. But this is not very likely if you wont spam other people walls or mass inviting new friends.

*Please, read #10 (search engines) module to see why backlinks are important.

Micro what? Microblogging sites are basically blogging platforms where you typically post much shorter text, video, audio or image posts. I'm sure you heard of Twitter before, right? Microblogging sites like Twitter allow you to post short messages quickly with possibilities to reach a lot of people instantly. If you will post interesting messages, you can get a lot of followers (friends) that will be notified every time you update your status.

But getting follower is not always easy. I usually start to follow people that are interested in things I write about on Squidoo and start following them. If they like what I'm writing about, they start to follow me back. Even if you are not ready to put all the effort in getting followers, you can still benefit from microblogging sites. Every time you post a message with link to your lenses, you get backlinks*. Microblogging websites get indexed by search engines just like any normal sites.

Twitter.com is not the only microblogging site out there. I would also recommend identi.ca, friendfeed.com and plurk.com. On all this sites you can modify your profile where you can list one or more URLs. Put in link to your site, blog or whatever you have and get even more backlinks from this microblogging sites. You can also put link to your Squidoo profile or links to your Squidoo lenses you want to promote.

*Read #10 (search engine) module to see why backlinks are important.

Bookmarking sites are sites where users share they favorite bookmarks or sites with the rest of the world. Some of this bookmarking sites have a lot of visitors and a lot of authority in search engine eyes. And you can take advantage of this opportunity by sharing links of your lenses on this bookmarking sites. Not only you can get some of the traffic to your lenses, you will also get backlinks* to your lenses.

Bookmarking sites are very easy to use. All you have to do is fill out simple form and submit it. Some of the sites have there own add-on for browsers that make it even easier to bookmark your lens. You are able to bookmark your lens while you are viewing you lens without ever leaving your lens. How cool is that?

To get more effect from bookmarking sites, I would recommend you to register with 5-10 bookmarking sites. I know that sharing your lens URL with all this bookmarking sites can take some time and I know just the right solution. You can use some of the free semi-automated software or services like SocialMarker.com or SocialMonkee.com. Or you can choose premium fully automated services, but that will cost you some money. No need if you are just starting.

Some of the most popular bookmarking sites are: digg.com, stumbleupon.com, delicious.com, slashdot.org, reddit.com, diigo.com, folkd.com, blinklist.com, kirsty.com and dzone.com.

*Read #10 (search engine) module to see why backlinks are important.

Free blogs are great way to get targeted traffic and very relevant backlinks*. And you need all this to get the best out of your lenses. I know what you are thinking. What do I know about blogging and managing blogs? I know some of you have problem writing content for your Squidoo lenses, let a long writing even more content for blog. Well, I have a solution for this problem, but let's talk about this a little later.

You can use any free blogging service for this. Reasons to use free blog services are: you have no expenses with hosting, buying domain, installing blog script and other technical things. Free blog sites take care of all that for you. You just need to add a little bit of content, picture or two and link to your lenses. While running one free blog is not that time consuming, running multiple free blogs is. To get most out of this method, you will need 5 or more free blogs.

All this sound like lot of work, right? What if I told you that is as simple as writing an email? You could do that, right? Of course you can. Meet Posterous.com. Posterous.com is my favorite free blog service. They made it possible to update your blog on Posterous by sending them email. That's right, by email. All you have to do is to send email to Posterous (you'll get details when you register with them) with post title in email subject line and post content in text box and press send. That's all you need to do and your new post will be published in a matter of seconds. If you want to add pictures or video to you post, simply add them as an attachments to your email. Want to add YouTube video to post? No problem, just add video's URL where you want it and video will be published.

This is not where Posterous magic stops. Posterous also have autopost feature where you can add all free blogs, microblogging sites, bookmarking sites, video sites, picture hosting sites,... that you have and Posterous will publish the same post on all this sites. If you are scared about duplicated content, don't be. Maybe this post wont rank high because of that, but you will stil get a lot of backlinks*.

Let's talk about content for a second. You don't have to write a lot, 5 -10 sentences will be enough. You don't need to think hard what to write, just write summary of you lens and that will do just ok. Just don't forget to link to your lens. Without link visitors can't go to your site. And don't forget to use keyword that are important to you lens as anchor text for the links.

*Read #10 (search engine) module to see why backlinks are important.

Article directories are types of sites where you can publish articles for free. All of this article directories allow you to place link(s) in your article, which can point to just anywhere, even to your lenses. Some of this directories are huge sites that get a lot of traffic. You can catch some of that traffic and send it to you lenses.

Getting some traffic from article directories is not the only benefit you can get. By placing link in to your articles you will also get a bunch of very relevant backlinks*, that can help you rank well in search engines. If topic of your article is the same as topic of your lens, your links should be very relevant and relevant backlinks* count much more then any others.

When you write article you should follow a few basic guidelines. Most of this directories have rules on how long article must be. 400 words is usually the minimum. The other common rule is that article have to be unique. Take your unique angle on topic and you should do fine.

This are some of my favorite article directories: ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, buzzle.com, articledashboard.com, articlecity.com, articlet.com, easyarticles.com, articlesfactory.com, articler.com, articleblast.com,...

*Read #10 (search engine) module to see why backlinks are important.

Everyone is familiar with forums. There is a big chance that you are member of at least one forum. If you like forums, why don't you use them to promote your lenses. Forums are usually narrow oriented, which is good. This is good because most of forum members have same interests, like the same things and are hungry for more. And this is where you come in.

Find forums where they talk about same things as you are writing about on your lenses. This way you can participate in conversation and contribute some useful information and occasionally leave a link to your lenses where they can read more about topic they like that much. Please, don't spam on forums, that won't get you anywhere.

There are two ways that you can choose to promote your lenses on forums. First one is by leaving link to your lenses in your replays. Post them there only if that will add value to the conversation, otherwise this is spam. The other way to promote your lenses on forums is by putting links to your lenses in your signature. This way you will show your links every time you post something on forum. Even if no one click on your links, you will still get a lot of backlinks*.

*Read #10 (search engine) module to see why backlinks are important.

Web 2.0 sites are online properties where users can add content, share pictures, videos, share interests, participate and many other things. This is very general description of what web 2.0 sites are. You don't have to know what they, you just have to know how to use them. If you still don't know what a typical web 2.0 is, just look around you. Yes, Squidoo is typical web 2.0 site. And there is many other sites that share some similar characteristics with Squidoo.

On many of this sites you can build you own content and get a lot of very relevant backlinks*. Getting backlinks is important, but this is not the only thing web 2.0 sites can offer you. As first, you can build your own followers, who will read everything you have to offer to them. If they'll find your content interesting, they will come and visit your lenses too. All this sites also allow you to keep in touch with your readers.

Some of this sites will also share revenue with you, just like Squidoo does. You can actually make some extra money by just promoting your lenses on this sites. How cool is that? Working with this sites is not hard. There are some basic guidelines that you should follow. Don't spam. Give some real value to your content and you will build loyal followers. Don't try to invent wheel, write about same topics as you did on lenses. This way you will build followers that are interested in same things you are writing on your lenses. And once again you will get a lot of very relevant backlinks*.

Some of my favorite web 2.0 sites I like to use: Hubpages.com, redgage.com, gather.com, multiply.com, devhub.com, jimdo.com, pnn.com, quizilla.teennick.com, yuwie.com, yola.com and zimbio.com. Have fun.

*Read #10 (search engine) module to see why backlinks are important.

A lot of sites, specially blogs, allow you to post comments on there sites. Most of the sites allow you to enter your name, comment and URL of your choice. Why don't you put URL of one of your lenses there? URL will turn in to link, which others visitors can click and visit your lenses. Even if you don't get visitors with this method, you still get backlink*.

This method is not very popular with most of the site owners, because of huge amount of spam comments. Spamming in comments it totally wrong way to do this. Best practice is to leave meaningful comments, something that will add to the value of the content. Play fair and you will benefit much more then with spamming.

When you will be choosing sites to comment on, search for sites (or posts) with similar or same topic as lens that you are linking at have. In that case you have bigger chance that someone will click on lens and visit your lens. And your backlinks* will also be more relevant this way, which is a big plus.

*Read #10 (search engine) module to see why backlinks are important.

Video sites like YouTube.com are extremely popular and have huge amounts of traffic. Do you know that YouTube.com is the second biggest search engine? You are probably asking yourself what that got to do with your lenses? Well, you can actually promote your lens on YouTube.com and other video sites.

And how do you promote lens on video sites? Easy, you publish videos on this sites that are related to your lenses. You can invite them in videos to come to visit your lens by displaying URL of your lens in the video. But it gets even better. You can put URL of your lens in description of the video. Not only that visitors can click on it and get to your lens, you also get backlink*.

I know what you are thinking. You think that this is not for you, because you don't know anything about how to make video, right? Well, you are wrong. What if I told you you only need a few pictures and you can make amazing slideshow video in just a few minutes? I would like you to meet Animoto.com. Animoto.com is service that allow you to create amazing slideshow videos even if you don't know anything about making videos. But that's not all. With Animoto.com you can publish video that you created on You tube and other websites straight from there interface or download it to your hard drive. I use there free package and is good enough to use it to promote my lenses.

*Read #10 (search engine) module to see why backlinks are important.

Search engines are the biggest source of traffic. Even better, they are the biggest source of targeted traffic. But there is only one big problem at getting traffic from search engines. If you don't rank on the first page of rank engine, you are not likely to get any traffic from them. And ranking on the first page is not that easy. It can be quite difficult and even impossible at times.

But there is a way to get on the first site of search engines. Maybe not for the biggest niches, but big enough niches. Search engines rank sites with more authority (more authority for that specific search term) better then those with less authority. And how do they define how much how big authority your site or lens is for some search term? I'm not getting in to details for this one, but in generally search engines are looking at two main things. First thing is relevance of your lens content to search term. The other thing is number of backlinks pointing to your lenses.

First part is very simple to understand. If your lens is about cats, you can not rank in search engines for math lessons. But this lens is not about picking the right keywords for your lenses and lens optimization, so let's talk about this at some other time. Second important thing that search engines are looking at is the number and quality of backlinks pointing at your lens.

Search engines look at numbers of internal links. Internal links are links that are pointing to another page inside same website. This is simple to do. All you have to do is to link from one of your lens to another one of your lens. Featured lenses module is perfect for this job. Another think you can do is to add as much of relevant tags to your lens. More tags you add, more chances you will have to appear on other lenses under "Explore related pages" in sidebar.

A little more difficult is to get backlinks from other sites. But guess what? If you already applied promotional strategies #1 - #9 in this lens, you already done most of the work. While you promote your lenses on those sites, you also build a large amount of backlinks. Backlinks are the most important think if you want to have a good ranking in search engines. But building backlinks is not always enough. Building them the right way can have much stronger effect. Search engines like backlinks from relevant pages more then backlinks from non-relevant pages.

Getting relevant backlinks is not as hard as it seems. While you will be using different methods that I listed above, you will be creating some content. If you will make content relevant to the lens that you will link to, you will have relevant backlink. Where ever you have possibility to create your own anchor text (this is anchor text), use keywords relevant to your lens. If lens is about "bald eagle", then use keyword "bald eagle" as a anchor text. You can also use other relevant keywords like "american bald eagle", "bald eagle facts", "bald eagle pictures" and so on. This is another way to make your links even more relevant.

If you should do all this, you shouldn't have problems ranking in search engines and getting some traffic. Some people make a mistake and they stop building backlinks for there lenses soon after they publish there lens. If you stop building backlinks after some time, search engines will think that content is not interesting anymore and lens will start slipping down the search engine ranking results. Keep building backlinks periodically and you will keep good ranking for a long time.