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Getting More Out Of Squidcasts

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What Is A Squidcast?

According to the definition of Squidoo a squidcast is a squirted message, sent from a lens.
From the dashboard every lensmaster can send such a squidcast, related to a specific lens, which will be shown within the favorites of anyone in the lensmaster's fanclub and anyone who favorited this specific lens.
So usually a squidcast is used to brag about own lenses, recently published or updated. But stop, there is more, much more! Read on.

Example Of A Basic Squidcast

If you have a look into your Favorites tab you will probably see some squidcasts which you already received from your favorite lenses and/or lensmasters. Most probably most of them will look like this:
Added a new lens about salmon recipes!

Posted 10/19/2008 on Ways To Cook Salmon by pmolinero
Today I finished a new squidoo lens, Ways To Cook Salmon, sharing my favorite salmon recipe, a gratin with potatoes and two kinds of salmon.
But also you will find a lot of other recipes using fresh salmon, smoked salmon.
While this is already a nice way to send notice to your fans about a new lens, the scope of your message is limited to the people who joined your fanclub.

Example Of A Desired Squidcast

After a few changes the squidcast to send looks this way:
Added a new lens about salmon recipes!

Posted 10/19/2008 on Ways To Cook Salmon by pmolinero
Today I finished a new squidoo lens, Ways To Cook Salmon, sharing my favorite salmon recipe, a gratin with potatoes and two kinds of salmon.
But also you will find a lot of other recipes using fresh salmon, smoked salmon.
What is the difference, you might ask, except of additional links to different modules within the same lens?

Quickly answered, the difference is in the amount of backlinks to your squidoo lens you will get to your new lens already now, right after you hit the 'Send' button.

Turn Your Whisper Into A Shout

First Tip About Squidcasting

First you need to know, that whenever you publish a squidcast, it will not just be send to your fans, but also it will be published within your squidcast RSS feed. Here you can see a HTML view of my latest squidcasts. You will find your lensmaster RSS feeds at Squidutils.com.

Second Hint For Squidcasts

Second you need to make sure that the RSS feed of your squidcasts is listed in several RSS directories and other syndication services.
If you are not sure where to start, a good list of syndication services you will find at How To Get Deep Links with RSS Feeds. If you want more information about RSS, read Understanding RSS, by Seth Godin.

Third Trick For A Squidcast

Third make sure to have some links in your squidcasts , although the message will be shorter because of the limited number of characters you are allowed to use. But the gain in backlinks are worth to keep the bragging shorter. With the new squidcasts the title does not get linked to your lens anymore but to the squidcast itself. In order to gain backlinks to your lens you need to create at least one link back to your lens in the squidcast.

Important Note on Squidcast 2.0

Due to some changes in how the squidcasts work some time ago, it is even more important to include links into the text. The title does not get linked anymore to the Squidoo lens, but to the squidcast itself. In order to gain backlinks to your Squidoo lens, adding a backlink is essential.

Linking For Backlinks

Linking For Backlinks

Especially if you knew about the lensmaster feeds and RSS syndication services, you might think that the titles of your squidcasts are linked to your lenses anyway. So why worrying about links within the message itself?

Unfortunately this is just true to some extent. With the new squidcasts in place the title of your suidcast is not linked anymore to your Squidoo lens, but to the squidcast itself. Additionally there are some syndication services linking in a way like http://RSS-Service-URL/clickout.php?LinkURL, which makes the link worthless regarding search engine rankings. But just a few of these syndication services are changing the links within the feed body as well. From all others you will get a backlink with your desired keywords as anchor text.

Some RSS Directories To Get You Started

You will be able to find a lot more RSS directories with the help of various search engines. A few typical foot prints to look for are:
  • inurl:/submitrssfeed.aspx
  • inurl:/feedAdd.cfm
  • inurl:/addfeed.php
  • inurl:/rss-add.html or
  • inurl:/submitfeed
Syndic8.com - Welcome to Syndic8.com - RSS Feeds, Atom Feeds
Welcome to Syndic8.com - RSS Feeds, Atom Feeds
NewsIsFree: Your Personal News Portal
Free personale News Portal. Read and manage headlines as they appear in all the different news sites. The system is multilingual and webmasters can even export news to their own websites! This new kind of news search engine will change the way you read daily news.
Feeds4all - Webfeed Directory
Feeds4all, a web feed repository. Submit your webfeed to this webfeed directory. Author: Xander Zelders and Fred Zelders. Subject: RSS feeds, webfeeds, weblogs and businessblogs.
Feeds2Read.net, RSS Feeds Aggregator, RSS Directory, XML, RDF, Atom, RSS 0.91, RSS 0.92, RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0
Read and Browse RSS Feeds online, RSS feeds aggregator
RSS Network
Easily find topic specific RSS feeds by searching or navigating RSS Network's directory.
Web Feed Finder - FeedSee RSS Feeds Search
Headlines from various sources
RSS feed Directory - Feedage.com
Feedage is a free fully categorized and searchable RSS feed directory. Our mission is to categorize the large number of data feeds available.

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pmolinero

When not being busy with main job I enjoy gardening and giving several Subscribe to my SquidCasts and... more »

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