Squidoo Lensrank- How Important Is It?

Squidoo is a unique website. It makes use various social interactive tools, for outside visitors and especially for lensmasters within Squidoo.

Squidoo needs a way to measure what is going on within the community, to highlight great stuff, to encourage new content, to reward good lensmasters, and to determine who gets how much of a share of advertising income..

The lower the lensrank number, the better your Squidoo page is doing WITHIN THE COMMUNITY, and with the cooperative income.

LOW is high, high is LOW. It is a topsy turvy world, a wild ride!

There are lots of reasons that people Squidoo, and all of them will reflect in how you perceive lensrank.

IF you are squidooing to support other websites, drive traffic to your blog or advertise your business or service, Squidoo lensrank is of little use to you.

Are you promoting your band, your construction firm, your handmade candles? Are you making money on specific sales, perhaps with affiliate networks, ebooks or other products?

Squidoo lensrank will not bring you enough internal traffic to improve your sales very much, if at all.

Google and other search engine rankings have NOTHING TO DO WITH SQUIDOO LENSRANK. You can rank very high in the search engines and very low in Squidoo, and you will have a VERY SUCCESSFUL PAGE.

Your true standard needs to be: in the way I need it most, is my squidoo page working for me? If yes, don't worry about Squidoo lensrank.

If you are Squidooing to make affiliate sales, either through Amazon or through other affiliate sites, your lensranking isn't what matters most.

Even the volume of traffic doesn't matter.

What DOES MATTER is the QUALITY of your traffic.

It is much better to have 20 involved, interested and purchasing visitors per week or month, than to have 5,000 visitors who aren't interested in what you offer and don't care how you present it.

It is much better to have a couple of good sales per week from committed visitors than high lensrank.

One idea behind Squidoo is to have lots of pages each earning a little money, say, $.05 per month. The more of those you have, the greater your income. Ten pages gets you $.50; 100 gets you $5, and so forth.

Therefore, Squidoo has set up a tiered revenue sharing program. The top tiers, over approximately lensrank 2,000, gets the highest share of revenue, currently about $11 per month. The next tier, to approximately lensrank 10,000 gets you about $1.50 per month each, and lower ranks get about a nickel. There is a point where a lens makes nothing except any sales it might make.

Recently Squidoo has introduced the concept of lensrank 'average' in assessing how much any given lens will receive. The more high ranking lenses you have, the higher your overall average. The more low ranking lenses you have, the lower your average. Both will affect your income.

Therefore, if you are hoping for a cooperative share in the ad revenues of Squidoo, for yourself or for a charity, then lensrank is EXTREMELY important.

Lensrank is just like the ocean, with waves, bobbing up and down. Sometimes you're on top, sometimes on the bottom, and just like the ocean the lensranking algorythms are dynamic.

Lensrank isn't the kind of thing that if you do more of this or that, you'll certainly make it to number one someday, or even hold a position.

Everything that happens to a page contributes to its lensrank.

Everything that happens to other pages contributes to THEIR lensrank.

Your pages will move up and down lensrank not only according to the things that happen with your page, but what happens with other pages in relation to all other pages including yours.

So if you had a surge in traffic during one lensranking cycle that brought you higher, someone else may get a surge of traffic that will make them take your place on another cycle.

A new page may have received Lens of the Day (LOTD) and gotten mountains of visitors from the mass emails sent out from headquarters. Usually always a LOTD at least makes the top 100 list, at least while that first surge of traffic is fresh on its statistics.

Squid angels! If you get a squid angel blessing, your lens gets a small but definite boost in lensrank. It lasts too, for at least a few weeks.

On the other hand, the biggest single DOWNER is a thumbs down from a squid angel. Like a blessing, it lasts a few weeks, and has an immediate effect on your lensrank. In the case of a thumbs down, though, you lose lensranking and sink.

You may or may not know if someone has blessed your lens or given it a 'ding'.

Sometimes squid angels leave a comment that they've been there and blessed your lens. Its one good reason to be sure every lens has a guestbook. Will they also leave a comment if they dinged your lens? I don't know.

Either way, if you go seeking an angel blessing, understand that it could go either way- and it is best to be sure you know the squid angel's individual standards before you ask!

One of the most important aspect of social networking and web 2.0 is to develop an audience, a network of people who like you, read what you write, have something in common. It can be very hard on your own to develop a network, become visible enough to grow an audience, interact with enough people to get known.

Squidoo lensrank is one excellent way to become very visible to LOTS of people, in particular the top 100 list.

Both lensmasters and outside visitors often go directly to the top 100 list to see what, and who, are outstanding at this particular time. If your page is there, on the top 100, you can be sure that you're getting lots of visitors, lots of visibility, and perhaps lots of fans.

For immediate visibility purposes, it is hard to beat Squidoo's top 100 list.

If you've worked your heart out on a fabulous lens, it really is gratifying to see it get acknowledged through the top 100 list, through all the comments, all the star rankings, favorites, and maybe even LOTD if you've gotten it.

Bask in your sunlight! Enjoy it while it is there, because at some point the reranking will find other lenses with high performance that need to be on the list more than yours does.

Seasonal things and current events can very much affect whether a page is on the top 100 or not. You will see some pages rise again and again, and you know that those lenses have some real staying power.

Having a top 100 lens is a terrific reason to visit SquidU and share your excitement with other lensmasters.

A very small percentage of lensmasters actually visit SquidU, and an even small number actually post there, and a smaller number still actually visit regularly and post often.

Those are the lensmasters that have invested the most time, energy and effort into Squidoo. Most of the real stars you'll run into there.

You can take a look at the number of posts under a lensmaster's name to get the idea about how much they participate at SquidU and most likely how committed they are. People with over 1000 posts are the ones you want to get to know!

With experience and time, some of us are actually avoiding top 100 lensrank, and we're happier for it. There are, believe it or not, some really excellent reasons for that.

First, there are a lot of people looking to earn a good living on Squidoo and other pages, through niche marketing. If your niche has performed so well that you arrive on the top 100 list, you get THEIR attention just like you have gotten other people's. You may soon discover that your traffic is dropping, that you have new competition for ranking on Google.

Someone has made a competing page and is cutting into your niche, perhaps?

Some of the top lensmasters have pointed out the 'tall poppy syndrome' which evidently means a sort of jealousy. If you have one or more outstanding pages, it seems that jealousy can kick in for some other lensmasters and you might be the target of some pot shots that can just ruin your day.

It is a good idea not to get too attached to high visibility. If you are highly visible that can be great. It can also be not-so-great.

Sometimes high visibility brings with it unexpected problems.

Just keep on making lenses that YOU love, and you'll find your success.

For lensranking purposes, Squidoo counts clicks! It is the new web version of a family dinner. The more the people interact, the better! If a family dinner is always in front of the television, and the family members never interact, that family is nearly dead and won't last long. Your lens is the same way! If a person visits you, they should be able to interact with you and your page. If they DO, by clicking on things, Squidoo counts that as GOOD. If nobody does, Squidoo counts that as BAD and your page will sink in lensrank. It won't last long on Squidoo's radar, and it will become a 'dead' page.

ClickOUTS are things people can click on your page and LEAVE. Ebay and Amazon are two of those. If they click on your links and leave, it means something GOOD happens, and if its a sale, YOU'LL think it is good too!

As much as possible then, whether lensrank is important to you or not, make it easy for your audience to interact with your page, and even to leave it. It is helpful in every way.

Now, many people say "I want to encourage my audience to LEAVE? Don't I want them to leave to ANOTHER of my pages?" and I say YES. When it is appropriate, when you think you have more to say to your audience that they want to hear, YES, by all means make sure they can leave by YOUR intended route.

Either way, INTERACTION COUNTS. It counts for YOU. It counts for LENSRANK. It counts for the HEALTH and WELL-BEING of your work.

There was so much continual anxiety and problems relating to star rankings that Squidoo finally changed it.

Rather than showing one to five stars, now you see a thumbs up.

Thumbs, are a click, and a click is GOOD. It is a very tiny boost to your lensrank, but not more.

These thumbs are NOT the same thumbs that SquidAngels use either.

The clicks on the thumbs raise your ranking, but not by a lot. A good sale will raise it more. Other clickouts will raise it too.

The worst thing anyone can do to your page is visit it and DO NOTHING. No thumbs, no favorites, no lensrolling, digg, facebook, twitter, duel, guestbook, no links, nothing.

The BEST thing that can happen is that somebody that has come to your page clicks something!

The best, most beautiful, most famous pages usually always have had poor star rankings. Someone has come along and given them many one stars, often from multiple accounts, and all they've gotten from all that effort, is to improve your lensrank. In the case of the thumbs up, now you don't need to be anxious if someone doesn't like your page and shows it with a one-star.

The ones who visit and do nothing do more damage to your page than anything else that can happen!

Your overall lensrank position will be dragged down the average by your lowest ranking lens.

Moving your lowest ranked lens into higher levels will automatically boost the lensrank of all of your lenses, at least by a little bit.

If your entire Squidoo maintenance program starts with your lowest ranked lens (providing it is NOT a seasonally performing lens), then overall your program will be generally the best it can be for your lensrank.

Do your best with improvements on your lowest lens. Add the discover this town feature. Add a link list. Add a guest book or a twitter storm. Put your lens into as many relevant groups as possible. Blog about it. Post it on your facebook. Digg it. Write about it in the SquidU Lounge. Eliminate the things that are a dead weight on your page performance, such as irrelevant information or irrelevant links. Do a new keyword search and update the page. Ask for angel blessings or submit it for a purple star rating. Add some new information modules, find new links to add; and seek outside links.

Every one of those things can be a big help to your lensrank!

Freshen up your oldest pages! The information is still relevant, the links are still good, but Squidoo has updated a few times since you've put some together.

Freshen up your older pages with new picture modules, a new video module, or a larger introduction photo.

Have you found a great and relevant blog? Add that. Is your topic suddenly in the news like it never was before? Add a news feed!

A little seasonal information can really make a page soar at the right time for it.

Some new colors, new black boxes in orange or blue, a new personal experience in a text/write module and - voila! It might actually reach some new heights.

It was fabulous when you made your first debut. Now freshen it up!

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If you can Squidoo, you can do this!