15 Painless Tips to Get More Traffic

Groups are a great way to get a few of those first views. Groups are great because they not only attract you to other lenses of your interest, but they attract other people of your interest to your lens! They add additional key words when google searches, and can give you some great inspiration for your next piece of writing. Sometimes you might even find a good read when browsing through the groups.

I would initially suggest joining every group that is relevant to your lens. Groups that accept everybody are cool and all, but having them on the side of your lens doesn't really add much to the overall presentation of your lens. As your lens gets more traffic and becomes more self-sufficient, you'll find that you might be able to quit a few of the groups that you don't think add to the overall look of your lens. That's totally optional, I personally don't see any benefit in quitting groups. I do however know that some people really like a small list of groups on their page.

Lenses are also great just to get your lens noticed. If you do a really outstanding job, the lensmaster reviewing your lens might even feature it on the front page of the group. Don't expect this to happen very frequently; there is only so much space on the front page of a group.

This step can get tedious, especially if you have a lens that doesn't quite fit into a specific category. Try your best to stick with it though! This is a great way to set up a fan base, and you have nothing to lose.

This is a great lens that goes in-depth about groups. How to get featured, how to join one, and how to create one. It's a really nifty lens, that provides a lot more detail on the subject.

SquidU is a great forum for squidoo. Here many experts, Giant Squids, and angels will gather to discuss tricks, hints, suggestions, and give feedback.

Start out by introducing yourself if this is your first lens. Be sure to be polite and contribute a bit - SquidU is not free ad space. Rather, put a link to your lens/es in your signature. You can do this by:

1. Login if you aren't already
2. Click the gray profile tab, it should be right by where you hit login.
3. Scroll down past the forum rules and look towards the left. There should be a menu with a few links. Click "Personality".
4. Now, just insert your link and hit submit.
5. Post around and get to know some people. Don't ask people to click on your signature, unless you are asking for critique.

You won't get many hits from SquidU either, but it is a nice start. You can get some really sincere and good feedback, and some great tips as well. I would highly reccomend checking it out.

Del.icio.us is a good site to get some more traffic, and it has several long term benefits.

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. This means that people across the world keep a favorites list on this site, similar to how you would keep a favorites on your browser. The advantage of this though is that you can access it from any computer, as long as it has internet access.

Del.icio.us is also good at getting a few visitors to your lens here and there. When you submit your bookmarks, you can (and should) give it a few tags that will be commonly searched for it. People can, and will, search for stuff on del.icio.us, and if they happen to search for your bookmark, then you've got another hit on your lens all of the sudden! It does add up after a while.

As a nice addition, you are not limited to just your squidoo lenses. Go ahead and show off your blog, or whatever cool website you have!

And that's not all either. You know that RSS feed module that you want to use? Well, del.icio.us allows you to get a RSS Feed for your bookmarks, so you can also show off all of your bookmarks in your lenses too! Too add an RSS feed to your lens, just do the following:

1. Insert a RSS Feed module, and begin to edit it in a lens.
2. Fill out everything how you would like it.
3. Once you come to "What URL would you like to pull RSS from?" type in: del.icio.us/Yourusernamehere
4. Replace your usernamehere with whatever your del.icio.us username is.
5. Now you've got a nice RSS feed on your page!

Neat, huh?

Google searches can be a great way to get traffic for your lens. The problem is that it takes a while for google to find your lens, and it takes a while for your lens to rise through google's ranks as well. This is a quick way to upset google's system (legally), and temporarily rise your lens (or blog/web/whatever) in rank.

I honestly can say I'm not one hundred percent sure how pings work, so here is a quote from pingoat:

"Pingoat is a service that pings or notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publish them. By pinging, you let the services know that your blog has been updated and hence, they crawl and index your site, publishing your blog contents, thus increasing your blog's popularity."

How accurate either of these descriptions are, I don't know. What I do know though, is that both of them are great! Go ahead and ping your lenses; it only takes a moment, and might net you some traffic. Be sure to ping every time you update your site as well!

One of the easiest ways to ping your lenses is at SquidUtils. If you go to the advanced dashboard, they have an option to automatically ping your lenses through a variety of ping services.

Some sites where you can manually ping your lens:

1. Pingoat
2. Technorati

Some sites where you can ping your blogs:

1. Google
2. Weblogs
3. Blo.gs

Also, if you have any sites you want me to add to the list, contact me and I will!

There is currently a question of whether pinging actually benefits Squidoo lenses. Check it out here! I highly reccomend looking at it; it contains some great insights on pinging from experts. (Ironically on SquidU. See, there really are good tips there!)

Digg is easily one of the best sites for getting discovered. The trick is actually getting digged. You see, there are quite a few pages scattered throughout the web that have digg pages.

Basically, you create an account, and then submit links you like to the general community. If they like what you post, they'll digg it. As you get more diggs, you'll rise up in rank throughout the digging community, resulting in more page views.

Not only do sites that do well on digg tend to get a lot of page views, they also tend to do well on search engines. I would definatly suggest giving digg a shot, and remember to submit every new lense you create.

A great lens that takes you step through step throughout digg can be found here.

Lensroll is like digg except for lenses. It is a really great site for getting discovered! Here's how it works. You post up a link to your lens, and then if people like it, they'll roll it. The more rolls you get, the more noticed you'll get as well.


If you don't have an account, be sure to make one so you can submit lenses. Lenses don't get rolled very often. If you would like, down by the comments section of your lens or something, post something along the lines of "If you liked this lens, be sure to lensroll it!". Be sure to include a link to the page where you can roll it at, and if you roll someone else comment on their page and tell them. Don't spam and say, "I rolled you, please roll me back.", be sure to articule on what you liked and don't promote yourself in their comments. Although if you are lucky, they just might return the favor.

Here's a great lens for some more in-depth explanation of how to use lensroll.

Reddit is also a site with similarites towards Digg, but the largest difference here is that you can down vote stories as well.

Reddit is a little bit more complex than Digg as well. As you submit links (don't feel limited to your lenses) and vote on other links, Reddit begins to personalise a filter catered to your personal tastes. As you submit new links that get voted well, you gain something called Karma. As you gain Karma, you get ranked agaisnt other reddit users, and the higher you are ranked, the generally better your links do.

It's a cool system. For the best effect, try to post a variety of links, not just your own web pages.

Blogs are a great way to get more traffic, and appeal to a larger range of people. At first you won't see much change, especially if you don't have a niche, but it definatly is still worth checking out.

Try your best to blog at regular intervals. My blog generally updates once every week on Friday-Monday.

Even if you don't think anybody will be interested, blogs are still valuable tools. I've only made mine recently, and they've already helped me overcome some writer's block, as well as keep me focused on certain lenses. I have a tendency to write one module on a lens, and then go and write another module on another lens. This really slows me down, especially considering I currently have over 30 lenses in development. Since I'm blogging, I am trying very hard to make at least one new lens per week, preferably more.

You're blog can also help other people overcome writer's block. Seeing other users write about their success or journey on squidoo has really kept me inspired, and so after I saw a few I decided to make my blog on that.

If you have a niche, you might want to consider revolving your blog around your niche. This way you'll get some target audience, as well as fellow squidoo-ers.

Isle of Squidoo is a directory site that accepts quality lenses. They currently are rather small, but as they grow you can expect your number of views to as well.

It's very simple too! Just create an account, click "add a lense" and the rest is simple. So simple in fact that I don't think I need to explain it.

Shortly after you submit your lense, you'll get an email confirming if your lens was accepted or not. If not, keep trying, but with different lenses. Sooner or later you'll get accepted.

Another good directory (or so I've heard) is squoogle. I've tried to sign up, but without much luck. It says I get an invalid turning number, but I've heard such great things about this that I figured I'd mention it.

If you have an email, you probably have at least one contact, right? Heck, you probably have way more than that!

All those are all untapped potential for fans and views. However, you don't want to send a message out to everyone of them for fear of looking rude or spamming their inbox.

There's a simple solution! Just create a link in your signature about your latest lens. Give them the link to your page, and then write a breif and compelling statement on what your lens is on, and why they should visit it.

This won't get you tons of views, but if you are lucky, you just might get access to the most powerful tool for promoting lenses on the whole internet. Word of mouth. If you can get your friends to talk about your lens, then you will find quite a few page views! Let's say one of your contacts really likes you lens, so they share it with 5 of their contacts, and then those 5 contacts share your link with 5 others...

Things can spread really quickly. This is a rare tool that only the best, most useful, and/or most quirky web pages get. Don't ever expect this to occur on any of your pages, but know that there is always a possability.

Likewise, if you are active in any forums, your signature is a great ad space. Add your link there as well, and depending on the size of the forum you might get a handful of views!

Gather is a social site where you can write articles, meet new people, and earn a bit of cash in the process.

I have heard a lot of good things about Gather from Squidoo-ians (I do not currently use Gather, but I may make an account in the future). a/www.squidoo.com/gatherdotcom">This is an amazing lens that really talks about using Gather effectively to promote your lenses. Here's a quick little summary for those who are too lazy to check it out:

Gather is a great site to get some extra cash and get traffic to your lenses. Whenever you make a lens, post a summary of the key points and a little bit more content on Gather, and then towards the bottom of the page, mention your lens for more detail.

Stumpedia is a relatively new, but extremely innovative and useful site. The more it grows, the better it will become.

Stumpedia is a human powered search engine. That means that it is a search engine, except you don't have to deal with the normal junk. You can submit your web page to it after you make an account, and submit the search terms that go along with it. No links except for submitted links under their search term will show up on stumpedia - therfore encouraging users to submit frequently and often.

However, it also has a system that can help to identitify the good sites from the bad. This too is human powered, and it has a voting system very similar to reddit's system.

It's a great site that is new, so you aren't going to get too many hits. But as it grows, so will your visits!

I highly reccomend checking it out and getting established while it is a new site.

Also, for a lens on stumpedia by a user named stumpedia (the owner I would assume), check it out here

This is not a well known tecnique, and I actually found this on a blog!

The blog explains it better than I could ever hope to, so go ahead and help me save my breath by checking on it here. The part on widgets is towards the bottom of the blog.

I stumbled on this lens while browsing the SquidU forums. JonitasKalimpo posted this, and I'm sure you'll find this blog a very useful tool when promoting your lenses. Some of the very clever ideas this blogger comes up with will just blow you away! I highly reccomend checking this out if you are looking for even more simple ways to promote your lenses. There are also a few helpful comments as well. I highly reccomend checking it out!

The discovery tool is a great tool that squidoo provides all lenses. Basically, it allows you to display a few lenses that are similar to yours, based off of tags. In return for this, a few other lenses will display your lens right on their page!

However, you can also select three lenses you would like to reccomend for other readers of your lens. If you joined groups prior to this, browse through them and find a lens on a similar topic to yours in it. Contact the author of the lens and politely comment on their lens. After you compliment their work, tell them you have a lens on a similar topic, and ask if they would be interested in link exchanging via the discovery tool.

Send this message out to three lenses total. Wait until you recieve a response from one of them, and if they refuse, go and ask another person until you have all three spots filled. Also, if you have a large fan base or a successful lens (or write on a niche topic), you might want to consider putting some of your lenses in the discovery tool.

However, I personally haven't found much success with the discovery tool. I've found it a lot easier just to keep a list of relevant and helpful lenses at the bottom of mine, and allow who ever wants to join the list join as long as thier lens is quality and relevant. If you see any lenses that are similar to yours, or ones that link externally quite a bit, politely email them and alert them of your lens. If they don't get back to you, don't ask again. The best way to have success is to be curteous and have a really good lens.

Another tip I would have is to include a few relevant lenses throughout your lens that add to the overall content of it. If you would like, contact the user and tell them you've linked to their page. People have a tendency to like lenses that give them links or promote something they've made; it's just natural. That doesn't mean you should make every other word a link. However, if they contact you asking you to take it down, you better immediatly. It's rude to deny that request.

Just referance back to some of the above tips, and you'll see how you should implement it. I didn't think about this tip until after I had made this lens; but I still scattered lenses around this page that really helped aid each module, or really benefited the overall content of my lens. Don't include links just for the sake of having links. Also, if you take ideas from something or someone, be sure to reference it! Even if it is just a forum post, it's considered courteous to link to it or the user, and may be considered plagarism if you don't.

Also, if you can, try to incorporate some of your other lenses into your new lenses. This way you'll get some cross traffic. Do not try to force links into your lens. It will look silly and not at all professional.

Not only does this tip help you get the word out about your lens or other people's lenses, it also improves the number of clickouts you get! Google likes sites that get clickouts. Likewise, you might just get some traffic for other people's lenses. They'll appreciate it, and you never know. Sooner or later they might repay you somehow; even if it just rating your lenses.

Lens of the day is a great system that Squidoo uses. Basically, around once every day they honor a lens that really goes above and beyond the typical lens. This can be in personality, design, content, creativety, whatever.

This one is a bit different from the rest on this list. You should not submit every lens you make to lens of the day. Instead, just submit the lenses you feel are your personal best, or that you worked hard on. Look around the lens of the day to get an idea for the quality and standards of the lenses featured there. If you still feel like your lens is up to par, go ahead and sent a short message to lotd@squidoo.com. Even if you don't feel your best lens is totally up to par, go ahead and give it a shot!

Obviously, certain 'styles' will be favored over others. For the purpose of LOTD, generally more informative or creative lenses tend to get chosen, ones that really make squidoo shine. Lenses like this may be good, but they probably aren't cut out for lens of the day. While lenses like this may stand a better chance.

Don't expect any instant results. There are tons of submissions, and it will take them a while to get to yours. Even then, you will have fierce competition for the spot, so don't be upset if you don't make it! That does not mean your lens is bad; it just means there was one that was outstanding amongst the competition.

If you do get LOTD though, congratulations! Enjoy the perks of LOTD via traffic and new fans while it lasts.