Online Stores and Lenses - promoting your ecommerce website on Squidoo

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Learn why every online store needs a Squidoo lens!

How Squidoo can help you promote your online store. A quick guide to building a great lens for your store.

Inspired by Blogs and Lenses (together is better).

What are lenses good at? 

  • A lens features your store on a busy and growing community-based site.
  • A lens captures search engine traffic and lets you target particular keyword phrases or thematic content related to your store.
  • A lens can highlight products or organize products in a unique way.
  • You can build a lens quickly.
  • You can build more than one lens.
  • You have the opportunity to establish yourself as an expert in content related to your store.

There are multiple ways to use Squidoo ... 

Be creative! You don't have to restrict yourself to just one lens for your store. There are plenty of ways to use Squidoo to promote or enhance your store.
  • Build a seasonal lens to highlight your store and its products in gift-giving seasons.
  • Use Squidoo to overcome particular limitations of your store software. For example, no easy ways to get feedback on your store? Link from your store to a lens with a poll or guestbook to get specific feedback.
  • Create a lens about complementary products. Link prominently to your store and your products as well as related stores and products. For example, if you sell tennis rackets you could create a lens about great tennis books. This creates a new way for people to find your products.
  • You may not know it but you are probably an expert! Running an online store gives you specific knowledge about products and your customers' needs. Review products, create a guide for buyers with advice and questions for a prospective buyer, or provide advice or a tutorial on how to get the best out of your products.
  • Of course, you should create a lens specifically about your store and your products.

Tip #1: Keep search engine traffic in mind 

Squidoo is all about search engine traffic. As well as being able to leverage off of traffic to other lenses on Squidoo (see Tip #2), you have the opportunity to target specific keyword phrases and themes related to your products and store. In addition, by appropriate linking, you can use your lenses to help the search engine rankings of your store.

The nice thing is that although not every store system produces pages optimized for search engines, Squidoo pages are great. It is hard not to create pages with appropriate titles, headings, meta tags, all packaged into a large site with multiple links into your lens.

If you build a lens in Squidoo you should start to get search engine traffic to it quite quickly. To maximise this:
  1. Create a list of keyword phrases you would like to target.
  2. Create a title for your lens that includes an important keyword phrase.
  3. Write content that is keyword rich.
  4. Write module headings carefully to include keyword phrases.
  5. And most important for your store, when linking to pages in your store use appropriate anchor text.
  6. Provide appropriate tags for your lens.

Remember, if you are targeting specific phrases, check your rankings and come back and tweak your lens.

Extra Tip: Don't forget your "My Squidoo" page (the page that links your lenses and has your profile). This can show up in search engine results, so make sure you consider this when writing your profile.

Extra Extra Tip: Build some links into your lens from your store and blog. You might also want to bookmark your lens with on your favorite social bookmarking site/sites.

Tip #2: Be found on Squidoo 

Squidoo gets traffic. And it is set to get a lot more traffic as lenses continue to be built and search engine traffic grows.

Make the most of traffic to Squidoo by building links to other lenses. Squidoo provides several ways to connect you with other lenses.

Tags

Every lens has tags which are entered when creating the lens and can be edited at any time. Tags link you to other lenses and are taken into account for searches within Squidoo. Be smart about your tags. Look at other lenses that are related to you and examine their tags. This is an opportunity for you to create a connection between your lens and theirs.


Groups

Groups are collections of related lenses, with a groupmaster and a central group page. As well as a list of all lenses in the group, they typically feature good lenses and lensmasters. Search Squidoo for relevant groups to your store and add your lens, or start your own group.

Check out the Examples section below for some Squidoo Groups relevant to store owners.

Comments

Many lenses feature a guestbook that allows other lensmasters to provide feedback, ask questions or participate in the lens. Each time you comment, your username links back to your "My Squidoo" page which links to all your lenses.

Be Smart, Relevant and Respectful

Be smart, respectful and use your discretion, no one appreciates spam, or irrelevant requests or content. Create great lenses and you have the best chance to rise to the top.

Extra Tip: Check out the top lenses and lensmasters. As well as seeing what works well on Squidoo, you may get ideas on how you can attract some of the traffic they are already getting.

Tip #3: Feed your Lens! 

Squidoo features a module called "RSS: Add Your Own Feed". Most store software systems allow syndication of products, store news or content updates as RSS (or it can be added or built in). Use the RSS module to push content about your store and products into your lens. As well as latest news about your store, feed in your bestsellers, featured products, items on special, or the latest additions to your store.

The RSS Feed module allows HTML, so if your feed includes images of products you can make these appear in your Squidoo lens.

Tip #4: Track visitors from Squidoo and treat them nice! 

Your web analytics software (e.g. Google Analytics) will allow you to track your visitors from Squidoo. Analyzing your stats will help you see if your effort is paying off and whether changes might be required.

Treat them nice?

Welcome your visitors from Squidoo.
  • Make sure you link from Squidoo to the specific pages in your store that have content relevant to your lens.
  • How about providing a special offer just for Squidoo visitors using a coupon code or tagged link?
  • If you want to go further, and if traffic you are receiving from Squidoo warrants it, consider creating tailored landing pages specifically for Squidoo visitors to welcome them into your store and target the message.

Tip #5: Make the most of modules 

Squidoo offers a number of modules for adding content to your lens. Think about the modules you could use.

A couple that I think have great possibilities for store owners are the Flickr and YouTube modules. Find and feature people using your products on Flickr or YouTube. Another approach is to add your own content to YouTube and Flickr and feature it on your lens. As well as enhancing your lens, you have the opportunity for exposure on these huge sites. Remember people can comment on your videos and images.

Examples 

Two Squidoo Groups featuring shopping-related lenses. Have a great store-related lens on Squidoo? Suggest it below!
The Mall Headquarters
Features a variety of stores and shopping-related lenses on Squidoo.
The Shopping Group Headquarters
Another popular shopping-related lenses.
Beading basics and buying beads and findings.
Lens about beading from New Zealand bead store Beadaholic.

More on how to build your lens 

How to Make Your First Lens
Screenshots and step-by-step instructions on building your first lens.
The Write Module for Anything!
How to make the most of Squidoo's Write Module.
How to Squidoo
"making the most of the Squidoo publishing platform and other related internet technologies."
KimberlyDawnWells
Kimberly's lenses are some of the best on Squidoo. Spend some time browsing her lenses and the lenses of other top lensmasters.

The Anatomy of a Store Lens 

Build a lens for your store quickly by following this example format ...

I will assume you have already secured a lens name and have created a title for your lens. Follow the suggestions below and you will have a lens for your store up in no time. There are no rules of course. So be creative and leave some feedback below on how you created a great lens for your online store!
  1. The introduction is the first impression visitors will get (it also appears in search listings). Remember to choose an eye-catching image, there is plenty of room for your logo down the page.
  2. Highlight a product or category straight away with a Write module. You have the reader's attention, so direct them to something interesting or exciting you sell.
  3. Make a site tour using a link list - highlight the important parts of your store.
  4. Does your store support RSS feeds of products? Now would be a good time to use an RSS feed to list your top sellers or latest products or current specials. No RSS feeds? Use the Write module to feature several products.
  5. Use the Write or RSS module to add some current news about your store.
  6. Publish it! Remember - it doesn't have to be static. Come back when you have some more time to flesh out your lens or add a new lens related to your store.

Your say ... 

Created a great lens for your store? Have your own tip? How can I improve this lens?

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Final Word: Give 

You have created a lens for your store. Hopefully your store is going to benefit from it so be generous with your Squidoo lenses. You have the option to give any earnings through Squidoo to charity. I am a big fan of Kiva. You can give to Kiva and many other charities through Squidoo. It is your chance to give a little (hopefully alot!).

Thanks for reading and good luck!

by attitudenz

NZ based Web Developer
(more)

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