How To Promote Your Squidoo Lens

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Lens Promotion

Now that you have a lens, you want to let people know about it. Getting people to read your lens is harder than writing it! But there are many ways to promote your lens, make it more popular in search engines, and make it a success.

In this lens I'll explore some of the popular ideas I've seen mentioned here on Squidoo, and will add quite a few other promotion ideas that I haven't seen other lensmasters mention.




If you're not a member of Squidoo yet, please join.

Long Term Research 


This lens is turning out to be a long term research project. I'm constantly seeking new ideas and sites for lensmasters to use in their lens promotion activities.

If you find the links in this lens helpful, please bookmark it and come back often.

Search Engine Optimization 


I've read this book cover-to-cover and recommend it highly for anyone needing to learn the rules and tricks of search engine optimization (SEO). Believe it or not, this "for dummies" book is one of the most highly recommended SEO books available.

Search Engine Optimization For Dummies, Second Edition (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

Search Engine Optimization For Dummies, Second Edition (For Dummies (Computer/Tech))

by: Peter Kent

Amazon Price: (as of 12/07/2009) Buy Now

Tags . . . And Keyword Use, In General 

...why they are important, and how to choose them.

Choose tags wisely. You get only forty tags here at Squidoo so you will want to make the best use of them.

When people use the Squidoo search box to find lenses on topics they want to know about, the tags you use may help determine whether or not your lens will appear in search results. So make sure the tags accurately describe your lens so that the people who want your information can find you.

The tags also show up in the keyword meta tag for each page, but it is unknown whether this is used by search engines. Keyword meta tags at one time were used by them, but because keywords were abused by webmasters seeking an unfair advantage, search engines found ways to get needed information elsewhere.

The tags, especially the first one, also determine what other lens links might be displayed on your page in the discovery tool blue-box, if you have that enabled.

This is something you can work on and tweak each time you update your lens. Try to update at least once weekly. Believe me, this WORKS. I have brought sites up from many pages down in the Google search results, to page one, just by updating often and adjusting my keyword usage to reach for the best results.

To get ideas for tags and keywords to use in your Squidoo lens, go to the Google Keyword Tool. Use these keywords to attract visitors from search engine traffic.

Get a book on SEO - Search Engine Optimization, such as the one I recommended above. It will give you comprehensive information on bringing search engine traffic to your Squidoo lens.

At SquidUtils there's an important article on How To Pick Your Primary Tags. You will need this information to submit your lenses to the SquidUtils Squidoo Directory.

Keyword Wisdom 

For more discussion of using keywords on Squidoo, read these:

featured lens The Tao of Keywords: How Ancient Philosophy Can Guide Your SEO Efforts

The Tao Te Ching contains the rational basis for human activities, so it provides outstanding guidance for keyword selection and search engine optimization.

featured lens Squidoo Traffic Tricks: (how to get more visitors and a better search engine ranking for your Squidoo lens)

Do you have some lenses that don't get as many visitors as they deserve? Would you like to learn how to get more people reading your lenses? Wanna know how to make people come back to your lenses again and again? Would you like to rank higher in G...

featured lens The Best Keywords Tools | Keyword Research and Trends

Using trend reports and keyword suggestion tools to find what people are looking for, you can then focus your website content, advertising, and affiliate links to improve your conversion. These are the best free ways to find the most popular keywords...

Backlink Building 

The one most-important thing you can do to promote your site for search engine results is to develop a lot of backlinks. This means that you need a lot of other people's sites linking to you. This used to be easier when people made personal pages with lots of links, or blogs with extensive blogrolls. But now people are choosier about what or who they'll link to, so you need to develop a plan.

I've tried writing personal emails to people owning sites with related content, asking them to exchange links. Sometimes this works. I've also received plenty of requests for links. My number one reason for turning link requests down is the problem of unrelated content. For example, on my blog about starting a web design business I received a request from someone with a spammy-looking commercial site about wrist watches. Why would I want that link on my webdesign blog? The answer was no. If it had been from a fellow webdesigner with a site having information on webdesign business practices, I would have jumped at the opportunity to exchange links.

You can also use a myriad of bookmarking and web 2.0 community sites to place links to your work all over the web. This will require a lot of effort from you, but the results can be powerful.

Below, I list many sites that can be used for backlink building. It will take me months to find and review sites, so I'm going to go ahead and publish this page now, and add to the lists often. I know that if you go the extra mile to promote your lenses on the sites I recommend, you'll find your sites will do better in search engines, and more people will learn about and visit your lenses.

Learn More About SEO 

For more discussion of SEO and backlink building, check out this outstanding lens:

featured lens SEO for squidoo - getting found in google: search engine optimization

SEO - search engine optimization - has many different facets. This lens goes over the main ones - especially how they effect making successful lenses on squidoo. An elaborate version of this lens, with details about blogging, twitter and more, can...

Networking in Squidoo Communities 

...get to know other lensmasters.

If you care about Squidoo, then show it by participating in online Squidoo communities. Start with Squid U - the Squidoo message board. Put links to your lenses in your signature line and then start posting every day.

Make your name one to remember.

Lensroll and Squidom are Squidoo bookmarking and networking sites. You can add your lens links to the sites and people can vote on them.

Thomas C. started a new forum for Squidoo lensmasters to promote their lenses and Cafe Press sites: Rocking the Squid.

Squid Top is a community blogging site for Squidoo lensmasters. More about that in a minute.

Squidoo link directories - make sure all your lenses are listed on these sites: SquidUtils Directory, Isle of Squid, and Squoogle.

Ning communities have become very popular for lensmaster networking. Two popular Ning groups are Squidoo Marketing and Senior Squids, for lensmasters over age fifty.

For more discussion of Squidoo message board forums, check out this lens: 

featured lens Squidoo Message Board Forums

You have to do it. You have to let people know about your lenses - but HOW? One of the best ways is to network with other Squidoo lensmasters on Squidoo message board forums. There you'll meet lots of other lensmasters who have been where you are now...

Lensmastery by Linda 

... this is my Squidoo blog at SquidTop.Com

My focus in this blog is to publish short articles that will inspire and help other lensmasters.

Loading Fetching RSS feed... please stand by

Comment on Other People's Blogs 

...you CAN get some good link backs.

Most blogs are set not to allow backlinks, because they have that terrible "nofollow" attribute in the link tags, automatically.

A lot of bloggers have installed plugins that remove the 'nofollow' attribute. These are called 'dofollow' blogs. On those blogs you can comment and put in your link, and that will count as a backlink through Google.

All my blogs are set to be 'dofollow' blogs, and I check them every morning to make sure nobody is abusing the privilege by posting spammy looking and off topic comments.



Here's a list of do-follow blogs:

Big Money List: No follow, Do follow, I follow, and No-no follow Blogs
A list of 'dofollow' blogs.

Professional Blogging 


To blog effectively, and to get the attention your blog deserves, study the work of Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett.. the professionals.

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

by: Darren Rowse, Chris Garrett

Amazon Price: $15.74 (as of 12/07/2009) Buy Now

Squidoo Lenses About Blogging 

...improve your blogging skills...

featured lens Expert Blogging Advice Helping Bloggers Succeed

Blogging has evolved to new standards of professionalism, and we must evolve to meet the challenge of competing with the best. I've been blogging since 2001. I've studied the experts extensively and have lots of information and links to share with yo...

Social Bookmarking - Expert Advice! 

featured lens 100 Tagfoot Tips

As I recently became the first member on Tagfoot to reach a Footness of 100,000, I thought I'd share 100 hot Tagfoot tips with you! The most important thing to remember is just to have fun. Tagfoot can be confusing when you're just starting out, but...

featured lens

Articles to help you understand social bookmarking sites 

Need Social Media Success? Don't Start With Digg
Warning: Digg seems to have outgrown itself. This article explains how and why.
The correct way to use Twitter
There are many ways to use Twitter.

More about social bookmarking and the nofollow tag 

Great lenses here... to show you where to place your links.

featured lens 97 Social Bookmarking Sites with Google PageRank

Social bookmarking is a great way to save pages you like and help others find articles, blog posts, lenses and sites you create. But what sites should you use? This list of bookmarking services can help you decide.

featured lens DoFollow: Increase Your Backlinks with DoFollow Sites

The DoFollow revolution embraces the sharing of link juice going out to other sites. Learn more about DoFollow, where you can get listed on DoFollow sites, and what it means to you as a webmaster and link builder!

Social Media Marketing 

Sorry, there are no results available from Amazon.

 


From Gaping Void

Market Your Lens Via Web 2.0 Sites 

Plug Your Business! Marketing on MySpace, YouTube, blogs and podcasts and other Web 2.0 social networks

Plug Your Business! Marketing on MySpace, YouTube, blogs and podcasts and other Web 2.0 social networks

by: Steve Weber

Amazon Price: $17.05 (as of 12/07/2009) Buy Now

Friend Feed 

I'm so enthusiastic about FriendFeed that I've created a lens to show you how to use it for full potential.

featured lens How To Use Friend Feed

Friend Feed is a Web 2.0 feed amalgamation site that allows you and others to comment on your online activities. There's an easy registration. You log on, add as many feeds as you'd like, then connect with your friends. With FriendFeed you can find...

Stumpedia 

These lenses are about that great new human-powered directory, Stumpedia. It is easy to use - just add your lenses and any other sites you love, then vote sites up or down. Great fun, and a way to connect with other lensmasters.

featured lens Stumpedia - The Search Engine

There's a new kid on the search engine block called Stumpedia. It's unique approach is that it is a human powered search engine which allows users to submit sites along with matching keywords and phrases, which can then be rated and ranked by its own...

featured lens Stumpedia.com

If you haven't heard of human powered search engine, Stumpedia, you might want to give it a whirl. It is essentially a human-powered search engine with a social aspect to it. In other words, Stumpedia allows content producers to submit and profit fro...

Squidoo Lenses to Help You With Web 2.0 Sites 

featured lens Add Your Profile - Make New Friends

Social Bookmarking; Web 2.0; Squidoo - All great new ways to promote your content. Squidoo Lensmasters love to promote their lenses with these sites. Use this site to Add Your Profile address and find other lensmasters profiles on the respective book...

featured lens Social Bookmarking, Networking, News and Content Sites

The arrival of Web 2.0 has transformed the online marketing landscape dramatically. Small and medium sized businesses can now compete on a level playing field with big branded businesses and websites. With Web 2.0 you can market your products on so...

featured lens Top Blogs Following Web 2.0

We spend a lot of time at Viget Labs keeping an eye on new site launches.  People often ask what blogs we follow to keep up, so we put together our list of top 10 blogs following Web 2.0 (in no particular order) in this post on the Four Lab...

featured lens Tagfoot

I'm not sure if it's the bastard child of Digg and HubPages or the lovechild of Del.icio.us and Squidoo. But it's hot, it's happening and it's HERE.

featured lens How To MySpace

MySpace is not just for musicians and teenagers.  Learn how to use MySpace for business or social networking at any age.  Want to know how to use MySpace?  Want to learn how to do something in particular on MySpace?  Find MyS...

Promote your site on Craigslist 

featured lens * How to use Craigslist SEO secrets to promote your website

Join my SEO, health, shopping and finance groups! This lens describes how to increase your website traffic by using Craigslist in search engine optimization and website promotion to boost your website's search engine performance. Posting well-writte...

Use RSS to Send Emails to Lens Visitors 

This is permission marketing. You provide a place for people to sign up for your rss feed. What they'll get are your SquidCasts. These are an option for you to send out each time you update a lens.

featured lens Offer Email Subscriptions to Your SquidCasts

This tutorial shows how to set up a subscription service so your Squidoo lens visitors can receive your SquidCasts in email. If you're not a member of Squidoo yet, please join. Subscribe to get notifications of my lens updates by email. Note: This...

RSS Feeds Provide Automatic Backlinks 

You can use the RSS feed for your lenses to get backlinks on other sites. For more information, read the lenses featured below.

featured lens Understanding RSS

For something as simple and important as RSS, it's incredibly misunderstood. In this very non-technical lens, I'm going to try to show you what you need to know to start using it.

featured lens How To Get Deep Links with RSS Feeds

There are a number of online syndication services that will display an RSS feed as a web page. These will typically contain deep-links to pages on to the originating website, which is a valuable source of backlinks. I originally wrote about thi...

featured lens Seven Of The Best Uses For RSS Feeds

The Best RSS Feeds can be found everywhere. When you see a feed icon on a web page, it means these pages serve their content in syndicated format. Feed icons, or text links, can be found on Blogs, Squidoo Lenses, Social Bookmarking Sites and Social N...

More Great Lenses About SEO 

For more discussion of SEO on Squidoo, check out these outstanding lenses:

featured lens GreekGeek's Squidoo Tips: How to Get Your Lens Found

So, you want to learn how to build successful Squidoo lenses (or any sort of webpage), attract web traffic, and get your Squidoo lens found by Google! This three-part tutorial covers: Part I: Ten Steps to Build an Appealing (and Effective) Lens Part...

featured lens How To Get One-Way Backlinks

When you have just created new website, you will want to attract people to visit it. One of the most important tasks for any webmaster is to build up the number of links to the site from other websites. This can be done manually via reciprocal link e...

featured lens Submit URL: Squidoo Lens Promotion

On this page, you'll find some links to places you can submit your Squidoo lenses to so that you can get more web traffic to your lens. Google is usually the main source of traffic to my lenses, but to rank well in Google takes other websites linkin...

featured lens Do Squidoo: A much requested guide to creating a successful Squidoo lens

Are you seeking information on how to use Squidoo effectively?  Excellent, because this lens is made just for you! Find the answers to:  - How do I do ...? - Why won't ... work? - How can I ...? - Why do you ...? - Where is the ...? Finally d...

featured lens Best Squidoo Tips plus Squiddy!

Squidoo's easy, but some things can be maddenly hard to find. Save time, it's all here for you. How to install Squidoo buttons on your blog, links to all the best how-to on Squidoo that there is. And show your Squidoo-love! I've sought out the best...

Articles and sites that can help you create and promote your Squidoo lens 

Lensmastery by Linda
My Squidoo tips.
bdkz's: Best Squidoo How-To Directory Ever
I'm Lensmaster bdkz and I have been creating lenses on Squidoo Since Feb. 2007.
101 ways to get more traffic
Post from Squid-U.
How To Find Lenses and Groups on Squidoo
Searching for Squidoo lenses on a search engine can be a real pain sometimes, as the results are very often filled with non-content pages like tags. Finding the best groups for your lens to join can also be very tricky.Here I provide two custom searches (by Google) that are optimised to only return
SEO Dictionary
SEO Dictionary offers brief and clear descriptions of all relevant technical terms in the field of Search Engine Marketing & Optimization.
The Squidoo Answer Deck Headquarters
Lots of links to information about how to create better lenses.
How to Promote Your Lenses Without Being Labeled a Spammer | Squidüber
Quality triumphs over outrageous sales tricks.
Relationships and Online Social Networks: The Value of Sites Like Twitter and Plurk
Why are some friendships short and fleeting while others may last for an entire lifetime? Apart from personality differences and many other reasons,
The Lensmaster Lounge / stumbleupon, del.icio.us, rollyo, YouTube, Flickr, etc.
Lens promotion ideas at Squid-U.
20 Hard Core SEO Tips
For those of you loyal readers who wish I would just take a break from the theoretical musings, here is the type of list of SEO tips I rarely give out.
Search Engine Optimization Tutorials - at Spider-Food.net
Forums and Tutorials: search engine optimization - SEO
How I Went From A 50,000 Rank To Under 2000 In 3 Days
In early July 2008 I had taken a brand new lens and brought it from a 50,000 rank to under 2000 in 3 days(It is now a week and a half later and it is ranked 802 of all of Squidoo). I've learned many lessons from many sources mostly on the Squidoo site itself! I've learned a valuable lesson from a ve
Squidoo HQ
Tips for using Squidoo.
How to Get Backlinks | Internet Marketing Techniques and Theories
Getting Backlinks to rank your website....I can't think of anything more time consuming, frustrating, and boring than having to spend the time necessary
SEO Theory and Analysis Blog
Algorithm analysis, Web community relationship analysis, SEO practices and techniques, industry news, etc.
Backlink Strategy
A message board thread at the Lensmaster Lounge.

Thanks for reading this lens... 

I'm glad you came by. If you rated my lens, I thank you for that. I've enjoyed, even loved, working on SEO issues for years now, and am grateful for an opportunity to share my understanding of the SEO process with others.

Remember, as a good web citizen you have a responsibility to give your readers real value, not just spam. Your intention in building backlinks should not be to spam your link all over the internet. People won't respect that. Your goal should be to give yourself fully to the task of giving web surfers something they're going to love reading about.

Your Feedback is WELCOME! 

I'd love it if you would leave a line or two letting me know what you thought of this lens.

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This page created by Linda Jo Martin of:
Perspectives on Writing
Page copy protected against web site content infringement by Copyscape

About the author 

Lensmaster LindaJM has been a member since June 11 2007, has rated 1,575 lenses, favorited 678, and has created 111 lenses from scratch. This member's top-ranked page is "To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee". See all my lenses

My Bio

I live in the Klamath River Valley of Northern California. I share my life with my partner, Bob. We like to watch movies at home on DVD, swim, hike, and prospect for gold in the Siskiyou Mountains.

You can learn more about me by reading my lensography or this page about my novels.

I have two other Squidoo accounts:
1. Politics - AmericanCitizen
2. Spirituality - Geniyyah


Senior Squids
Are you a Squidoo lensmaster over age fifty?
Come join the Senior Squids!





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