Pre Publish SEO Tips for Squidoo

1.While I'll use Google as the example throughout this lens, all search engines are similar in nature. They each scour the web, indexing material that they can present to searchers who type in words, phrases, or questions in order to find information.

But these search engines can't call you up and ask you what your lens is about. All they have to go by is the entire set of code that makes up your lens - including your content.

Google, for instance, takes all of that code and assigns some meaning to the various elements - giving you points, in a way, for certain information and code on your lens.

Having your keyword in your URL is a strong indicator to Google about the topic of the lens and, therefore, gives you a better chance of being matched to search terms including your keyword or phrase.

Photo by: f_fuentes CC BY-SA 2.0

3.Always try to put your keyword phrase, in bold, in the first or second sentence of your intro and make it an attention-getting sentence. This is often the site description that shows up in Google when visitors are looking at search results.

Having your keyword in the first few sentences also clues Google in to the fact that this really is what your lens is all about. See a pattern? URL has keyword, titles have keywords, intro sentence has keywords...keywords. :)

4.Keywords, again? YES! Keywords and SEO - you can't really do any search optimization without them!

I don't know why, exactly, but Web CEO, a tool that assists with SEO tips, often reminds me to place my keyword in bold at the end of my page, too. I use the free version of this tool.

I've begun using my keyword in my Guest Book module and I put it in bold. You could also add a text module as the last module of your lens and put a little closing summary with your keyword in bold right at the bottom of your lens.

5.Google does see your image file names, even for images loaded through the intro and text module. When you load an image into the module, Squidoo has to store it on their server and gives it a name which includes the name you gave the file. If you want to see what that looks like, just highlight the intro module of this lens, right click and select 'View Selection Source" to see the name Squidoo has given my Intro image.

For Intro images, I always use "keyword phrase intro" as the name of my image. For all other images, loaded into the module through Squidoo or hosted elsewhere and inserted into my module through a link, I try to use file names for images that are keyword rich.

Adding your keywords to images can also bring you more traffic. Google indexes images! I have several lenses that get traffic through the listing of my image which comes up before the listing of my lens. Now, that's pretty slick!

6.Alt tags are the alternative options browsers use to display images in cases where the image itself can't or won't be displayed. These tags make the page more user-friendly and Google likes pages that are user-friendly. You get brownie points for alt tags.

Always give your own images alt tags when you can. You can't do so when you load an image through the text modules, however, if you link to an image of your own, you can.

If I insert this scroll into my lens on how to use a scroll image:



I would add an alt tag that says "scroll image" into the code for that image. The code would look like this:

<img src="http://i598.photobucket.com/ albums/tt63/ericastonesojourn/ scrollimage.jpg" style="width: 500px; height: 50px" alt="scroll image" />

The trick is to make sure the alt tag actually describes your image AND includes your keywords without being misleading to viewers or Google.

Always make sure you're affiliate links have alt tags, too. Some affiliate links come with the alt tag code included. Some don't. If the code you pasted for a product image doesn't have an alt tag, add one. Copy and paste in your affiliate link and within the <img src="..."> code, insert the alt tag. As long as you don't accidentally erase any of the affiliate code, you will still receive credit for any resulting sale. It does not break or change the link to your affiliate ID.

Photo by: 19122329@N06/ CC BY-SA 2.0

7.Every link listed on your page - either those Squidoo placed for ads, links to other modules, buttons that take you to other lenses - can leak Google power. Squidoo has taken care of that for most of the links they've built or added around a lens. You can do the same with the links you insert on your own in text modules. You can stop those leaks by using the "nofollow" attribute on any link you put in your own text modules.

Images you insert into the text portion of your modules, hyperlinks, or affiliate links all default to "follow" links. For every link you add to your own lens, you should think about whether or not you want to give away some Google rank credit to that link. If not, add the rel="nofollow" tag to the image.

To add "nofollow", just add the rel="nofollow" text within your code right after the quotes that close off the URL to which you're linking.

Back to my scroll image example:



I don't want to share my Google rank with my Photobucket link, so my code for the image looks like this:

<img src="http://i598.photobucket.com/ albums/tt63/ericastonesojourn/ scrollimage.jpg" rel="nofollow" style="width: 500px; height: 50px" alt="scroll image" />

This SEO tip especially applies to affiliate links. When you copy the code for an affiliate link, it often does not have a no follow tag. Therefore, it defaults to being a follow link in your text.

This means that unless you add a rel="nofollow" attribute, you're authorizing Google to pass some of your Google rank to the affiliate. Frankly, I'm not willing to part with it so I change all of the affiliate codes by adding a "nofollow" tag.

And think about how many affiliate links we put on some pages! The selling modules of Squidoo are already "nofollow", but I know I've pasted tons of links into the text portions of some lenses.

In addition, I'd read somewhere that Google prefers affiliate links to be tagged as "nofollow" in light of internet marketing guidelines.

8.You've probably heard people say "sprinkle your keyword throughout your content". I can't help but imagine a shaker of chocolate sprinkles in my hand as it hovers over a nice hot fudge sundae. Sprinkle - as a writing term....okay - and, worse, I'm guilty of using the phrase.

What this means is that your keyword should be found throughout your content. Unless you picked the keyword "ceiling fans" and started writing about "strawberries", it's going to be hard NOT to have your keyword in your content. In the next lesson, we'll show you how to check whether or not you've added enough "sprinkles". The good news is, you can always change your content to include more, if necessary. For now, just write about your content and you should be covered.

One thing to watch for, though, is slipping into a comfortable writing pattern and skipping SEO opportunities to use your keyword. Let's say I've chosen the keyword phrase "grooming Goldendoodles" (which I have, by the way) and I'm using my dog, Apollo, in my content. It would be easy to start buzzing along writing like this:

"Apollo loves to get a bath. Water doesn't seem to bother him and, in fact, he'll often hunt down the garden hose hoping for a little extra cool down in the hotter months. If your pet also likes water, don't be afraid to let them get wet in between baths."

The sentence sounds fine, doesn't it? But do you notice I've missed several opportunities for keyword usage? You don't want to go overboard on using your keyword phrase - Google can penalize you for too many instances of your phrase - but I could have written the following for better search engine optimization:

"Apollo loves to get a bath. Water doesn't seem to bother Goldendoodles and, in fact, he'll often hunt down the garden hose hoping for a little extra cool down in the hotter months. If your Goldendoodles also like water, don't be afraid to let them get wet in between grooming sessions."

Photo by: Clairity/ CC BY 2.0

9.You've probably read that Google doesn't use the tags you add to your lens for indexing purposes. However, this changed recently! You can read more about this on Fluffanutta's blog. Plus, some of the other search engines use tags for indexing, too, and you want to capture as much traffic as possible from any search engine you can.


Better yet, the Discovery tool is back on our lenses as a tool for non-Squidoo visitors. Your tags help Squidoo show related lenses to visitors. Maybe your lens isn't the top ranked lens in Google, but another lens is. If you have added all relevant tags, your lens could be displayed and receive traffic from the other lens.

I'd be shocked if your first thought wasn't, "Hey, this goes both ways, right? Visitors can leave my lenses for other lenses?" Why, yes, they can. However, if you have a niche, make sure to add your own lenses to the Discovery tool in the Intro module so that your other lenses show up, too. If a visitor is going to leave, it's because you don't have what they were looking for or the other lens looks like it will better help them.

Use the tag tool in the Squidoo My Workshop tool (to the right) to let you know how popular those keywords are in Google. On a published lens, the keywords will be various shades of green for high popularity or pink for low popularity (or competition).

Photo by: mobileobjective CC BY-SA 2.0

10.I swear Google doesn't know what to do with plural possessives. Without fail, if I attempt to use a keyword with one of these in the phrase, the lens struggles in Google. I don't include the apostrophe in my URL, obviously, but I do in my content but Google doesn't care. Tread carefully.

Need help with SEO? Fellow lensmaster, JeffWend, blogs about SEO on his self-titled blog, Jeff Wendland, and offers his professional services to businesses and website owners who need help with their SEO strategies.

One post with SEO tips from Squidoo lensmasters is a helpful summary of the easiest and most effective things you can do to boost your rankings in the search engines. Visit the post at: SEO Tips from Squidoo Lensmasters.

By the way, Jeff has a mind-boggling 550 lenses of his own. Want to learn how to become a success on Squidoo? Study the lenses of those who have paved the way - like Jeff.