7 tips for beginner squids

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This complete step by step guide will get you started with squidoo. It has everything from setting up your first account to marketing your lens to get it ranking. What are you waiting for? Go get your copy now...read it then come back here...I'll wait for you

You may love looking at grasshoppers though a microscope, well probably so do a lot of other people! Okay, well maybe not a lot of other people but I am sure there are a group of people that find that fascinating.

The trick is to find out how the other people that are interested in the same thing or things that your are interested in are searching for that subject. This is a tip we will cover next.

No worries you can find this information out for FREE.

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The way to figure out how to tell Google to tell others about what you have written is pretty simple. I could give you a bunch of fancy search engine keyword optimization tools here, but really the down and dirty way to see if people are looking for what you are writing about is free.

Google Adwords Keyword tool
go here put in the title of the thing you really like, push the search key. Once your keyword ideas pop up, click the competition button until you see "low" competition words up at the top. You then start looking down the search column until you find around 1,000 to 5,000 searches per day. What you are looking for here are called long tail key words. This lens by GreekGeek was way helpful

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in helping to understand what to aim for in keyword research and why: New Long Tail Seo

Once you get your group of words, open another tab, and make sure you are on google's search engine. Then type the following
intitle:"your key word group here" inanchor:"your key word group here"
then press enter. You will see how many webpages are optimized for what ever your key word groups is. If there are only a few, somewhere less than 100 if you are new to this, obviously there fewer you have to work against the better, than that might be your keyword group to start with. Another thing you might want to do is to just enter your key words group in the search bar without the "'s to see what type of websites are on the title page.

Google has another tool that is pretty nifty called a google page ranker toolbar - it lets you see on a scale of 0-10 the page rank of what ever page your are on. If you find mostly 0-2 page rankings for a particular key word group, and some articles on the first page, then you are good to go.

Ready, set, write...

If you are reading this lens, chances are you are trying to figure out how to eek out some sort of living from writing. You have probably looked at other lenses and articles, even other webpages around the net and been tempted to "lift" their photos...just say no (as Nancy Regan used to say).

I am going to send you to three other lenses here where Very Giant Squid JeffreyV explains how to get totally free commercial use images and Not so Giant by comparison, but still Giant enslavedbyfaeries, and SquidTeam (the final authority) will show you how to legally add copyrighted material to your site and make some loot on the side.

This link will take you to allposters to get your affiliate link to put enslavedbyfaeries strategies to work for you:

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Step One: Sign up here

Step two: read enslavedbyfaeries how to add pictures to your lens
Step Three: read Jeffreyv on totally free commercial use images
Step Four: read what the SquidTeam has to say about photos and intros..while you are there you might want to read around on the other lenses they have put up. Great resource for beginners and not so beginners alike.

If you are anything like I was in the beginning, I had no clue what a module was or did...do you find yourself there too? GreeKGeek to the rescue AGAIN, she is such a gem. She has put together a lens that tells what every module does - she calls it the: Module Index I call it magic.

I want to point out Four modules that I have found particularly helpful starting out.

the Table of Contents - best used at the top of your list. Helps people navigate around your lens easier. When you get a few lenses behind you, you might find that they start to grow

Love this Lens - I like to use this near the comments section at the bottom of the lens -

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it reminds other squids to like your lens if they've a mind to now that they are so overwhelmed by your content, they might forget

Bookmark this Lens - is helpful in getting others to spread the word about your subject. It is the power of multiplication. By bookmarking it all of their circles of friends will get to see what you've got. Be kind and bookmark others lenses too.

The Comment Box - this allows feed back on your lens from others visiting, use it to ask questions, engage your reader.

Perhaps you are saying to yourself about this point, okay, so now that I have all of these tools and ideas how do I figure out how to get it into a squidoo lens? Have no clue about HTML, CSS, back doors, front doors (well I'm not too sure about front doors either). To be honest I am not a programmer, but what little html I know I will gladly share with you. My biggest secret is to refer to the masters when I need information I don't know off the top of my head. Here are a few masters that you can begin your journey with.

Arperinos Shows us how to have fancy formatting without html!

Vallain has a wonderful lens about what to do and not to do on Squidoo. Check out her other

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lenses too, lots of great (yes, really, great) information and tips..

Beeobrien has a cool lens that gives you the total skinny on html and photos cool Squidoo tricks

N376 don't you just love helpful Giant Squids? has a lens that covers

The basic html you need for every day stuff on squidoo.

JeffryV has more tricks for dressing up your lens Lensmasters will have your lens looking professional in no time!

Thefluffanutta has a lens that will show you how to incorporate clickbank right into your lens that is totally amazing Clickbank Module

Headlines To Get Clicks you might find helpful as well as the importance of lens tagging

These should get you going in the right (or should I say write) direction.

If you have followed along all of these tips so far you might be overwhelmed, don't panic, I am going to give you my strategy for putting a lens together. You can go with my way or wing it on your own, or you can try doing it this way first and then go with what ever feels best for you.

1. Find what you are going to write about - know what your keywords are going to be - use them in the title and anchor text

2. Use your keywords to make the name of your lense

3. Have some idea how many text modules you want to include

4. Go module shopping - I like to have all of my modules lined up in kind of the order I think I want them in to begin

5. Go to work - one module at a time, fill it up

6. Insert pictures where appropriate

7. Check over your work for spelling, grammar, etc errors


Publish!

You have some anchor text (those words in between the >< in html code) with key words sprinkled through your lens. You have remembered to put those keywords in the tags section. Now you are ready to fix your biography and let the world know.

People love pictures, (you like seeing who you're talking to don't you?). Put your picture up there for the world to see. (we promise to love it) Introduce

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yourself. People like to read action words, let them know who you are by what you do. You can also use html in your bio section take advantage of that. Give others lots of ways to interact with you. More than anything else I believe squidoo is a community - not too unlike a small city. Some people are the movers and shakers, others are happy to live on the outskirts of town. You don't have to decide where you want to be and then never move from there. Most of us start out as strangers and lurk around the edges. As we get more comfortable we start to look at real estate further in towards the center of town. The important part of this analogy is that you can move.

There are two resources that I like to use when I get ready to announce my latest lens:

1. Squid Utils From this site you can do all kinds of useful things like
   "ping" your changes or announce your new lens or just find diagnostic tools for tracking how your lens performs


2. Lensroll This directory is listed on Squid Util, but it is such a fun community that I just had to list it here on its own so you would be sure not to miss it. Be sure to read the rules before you get lens posting happy.


3. Write some articles with links back to your lens and publish them on:

Street Articles
Ezine
Wizzley

These should at least get you going.