My Favorite Squidoo Backlink Sites - Status and Info

Since the advent of sites like Squidoo, article and press release sites, social bookmarking sites, blogs and other powerhouses of storing and distributing content, the content that used to be bound on websites can now be placed elsewhere to generate hits, increase traffic and develop backlinks.

The old strategy was to attach everything relevant to a website and let the good content and SEO bring hits to the domain. By separating articles, case studies, press releases, pictures, histories, product lines and more, and attaching them to Related Alternate Sites with higher Google PRs, Alexa Rankings and more traffic, you spread out a larger net that gets hits more across the Internet than your website could ever get.

Add contact information and readers can contact you or your company.

Add a backlink to your website, and you can get the hit your website was looking for by coming through a more powerful site, and more importantly, you get a backlink from a more powerful website, giving your own website more credibility, and moving your site up in search rankings.

This gives you more hits across multiple sites, and improves the quality of your website over time as backlinks develop.

Squidoo is no different. Your lenses need good content and good SEO to get noticed, read and returned to. Squidoo lenses have a leg up on other sites because of the power of Squidoo itself, working off of it's high Google PR. Experienced lensographers know that this isn't enough, and so linkbuilding by making contact with other sites is necessary to keep moving your lens up through the ranks, both in search engines and in Squidoo Rank.

There are several ways to promote your lenses, and I wanted to put my favorites here so that you can improve your position.

Squidoo-Friendly Sites - There are a lot of squidoodlers, and we form a big community, interested in our own lenses, but also each others'. As a result, many sites have sprung up to give people the best chance to promote their lenses in an environment that supports them. Most of these sites are lens directories, which provide space for a description to attract readers and the all important backlink. Some have Digg-like ranking, but all of them give users a place to promote freely.

Article Sites - People love articles that are relevant to them, and if they like what they see in an article, they will probably read more of your content, or contact you or your business if they need your products/services. Writing a parallel article to the content on your lens pulls people in from busy article sites, without copying or corrupting your lens content. I like to use article sites for case studies as well, which are especially useful to show potential clients your/your company's potential and history of results.

Press Releases - Press release sites tell everyone what you're doing or what you've done and encourages people to come out and see you, or contact you for more information. Everything from companies with new products or events, to bands who are touring or putting out new albums should think long and hard about what they're doing, and what they can put into a press release. The right press release gets a ton of traffic and generates interest in your lens and spurs contact.

Blogs - Blogs give you the ability to write about whatever you want, keep a record of events and generate regular content that can attract readers. Since you can also add a plethora of links, some of which can be made permanent as part of the blog structure, you get backlinks that you and only you can control.

Bookmarking Sites - Once you've developed content, either on your website or on your related alternate sites, you can submit those sites to social bookmarking sites that puts the content in front of readers, and if readers are really interested, might vote it up to keep it relevant on the bookmarking site. The more relevant and interesting, the longer it stays in front of readers, generating more traffic, but if nothing else, you enjoy the backlinks that the site generates.

Other Sites - Some sites defy description, but allow you to create mini-pages, like Launchtags, allowing you to add a lot of related content and backlinks, or Craigslist, which allow you to advertise services, products and communities for free.

All of these sites give you the opportunity to use your content to spread the word on other sites, while giving readers a chance to find your website or to contact you.

Article Troll recently became a Squidoo-Only directory which allows you to submit a Lens, Bio, Group or Lensography and add a second link to a second Lens or other Squidoo content.

The submission page is organized by Squidoo categories so organizing your lenses for submission is easy, and you get 2-for-1 submissions.

No registration required free to use, quick turnover on submissions and no daily limit on submissions.

They have two keen buttons you can put on your blogs, lenses or other pages too -

Article Troll is growing daily and gaining in PR and Alexa Ranking.

It also been upgraded in January 2010.

Status: Up and Running

Not to be confused with the Lensroll function on Squidoo, Lensroll is a great lens directory, and probably the highest ranked in PR and Alexa Rank.

Recently shut down for a brief time, and now back and redesigned, Lensroll allows you to submit up to 2 submissions a day, and is a Digg-clone that relies on karma to get your submissions published.

Requires registration but is free to use.

Status: Up and Running

Kingdom of Squid, or Squidom is a popular lens directory similar to Lensroll with a little less clout PR/Alexa -wise. Another Digg-clone that relies on karma.

Requires registration but is free.

Recently, was down, but now has a new host (Squidutils, so you know it's good) and a new look.

Status: Up and Running

This is an automatic listing of lenses that fit special criteria, particularly, being recognized by matching the most popular tags in every category to your primary tags on each lens. You can't submit lenses to Dir.squidutils, but if your primary tags match up (and they should be relevant) then the site will list your sites automatically.

As part of the massive SquidUtils site that has tons of useful tools and information, this is a good way to get quality backlinks with a fair PR and better than 70,000 Alexa Rank.

Free to use, but requires that your primary tags match up to the most common primary tags in each category. Go to the site, do some research on popular tags in each category, and modify your primary tags to include them WHERE THEY ARE RELEVANT. Don't fudge your tags or you'll shoot yourself in the foot with Google and other search engines.

Requires a Squidoo ID and for you to login, but is free.

Check out Squid Utils for tools, info and Squidoo system updates.

Status: Up and Running

SquidUp! is yet another Digg-clone, and it works well so use it. Rising quickly in Alexa Ranking.

You can even upload a pic while submitting (as opposed to some sites that take a snapshot of the page).

Requires registration but is free to use.

Actually, it would be nice if people made more of this sort of thing. The Digg clones all look different, and great, and the functionality is easy to recognize and use, and Google seems to like them.

Status: Up and Running

I recently have been pointed towards Lenslike, Squidlog and Squidoos.

They work similarly to other Squid friendly sites. You register, you submit your lens, et voila.

Check them out too!

Status: Up and Running

CoRank was a Digg Clone that now lets you create your own Digg clone sites.

One is Squidoo Encyclopedia, which works like any other Digg clone to submit Squidoo-specific lenses, articles and other Squidoo related content.

You can also add a pic to the submission, which is cool.

Requires registration with CoRank.com, which then gives you access to any CoRank page created, including Squidoo Encyclopedia.

Visit CoRank.com to sign up (where you can also create your own pages).

Status: Up and Running

Squoogle is a great Squidoo lens directory that also allows submissions for Hubpages, Associated Content and other sites.

Requires registration but is free!

Squoogle had a message up a while ago that they were down catching up on submissions. Considering it's popularity, this is not surprising. Lately, however, accessing the site has been difficult (the browser won't turn over), and may indicate problems with the host.

Squoogle is still not accepting new submissions as of June 1, 2010.

Update: Squoogle is back!

Status: Seems to be down again

I like Isle of Squid because it has a one page submission process and is quick and easy. It also doesn't require registration and is free.

Squidpedia is attached to Isle of Squid and gives you another opportunity to submit lenses for free and for a small fee can bump the listing to the top for its category. I'd be curious to hear from anyone who has used the fee service and seen increased traffic.

Squidpedia seems to be down, and has been for quite a while now, showing a 500 server error for months.

Status-Isle of Squid: Down

Status-Squidpedia: Down and Questionable

Lensmaster World is a lens directory that uses gives you tons of categories/subcategories for submitting your lenses to.

Requires registration and offers free submissions but also offers other goodies for a fee per submission. Haven't used the fee submissions and would be curious to hear stories of those who have used the fee submissions and enjoyed the benefits.

Status: Up and Running, but not a Lens Directory anymore.

Offered as a combination of Squidoo and Hubpages, Wizzley is a new formatted page site that can be used to make niche pages on just about any topic, and you can monetize the pages in a variety of ways just like Squidoo.

They also offer revenue sharing, and use a slightly different model than Squidoo and Hubpages.

DoFollow backlinks are evident and the pages are easy to make.

Currently in Beta, I expect more improvements and great things from Wizzley.

Status: Up and Running

Not specifically a Squidoo Lens Directory, Bumpzee allowed you to submit any site to their categories, and also had groups and forums. Well respected by Google, a lens submitted to Bumpzee was indexed quickly and made for a valuable backlink.

In the last year, Bumpzee had an Alexa rating of 10-20k which isn't shabby, but has been down for months as they figure out what they're doing with their life. I hope it's a massive cool restructuring.

Keep an eye out for them, because when they're back, they are a tremendous resource.

Status: Bumpzee is Back! You may have to register again to make it work, and their format is different. Check them out.

Zimbio is an online magazine that allows you to post interesting features on a variety of topics. If your lenses are topical and interesting, (and aren't they all?), then you can submit your lenses to Zimbio and take advantage of their growing PR and Alexa Rank (now better than 1000).

Requires registration but is free and is a powerful resource.

Status: Up and Running

Launchtags allows you to create minipages, kind of like Hubpages. Hubpages has much higher respect from Google and Alexa, but Launchtags is up and coming, is faster to use in my opinion and also allows you to include your own affiliate links.

There's also no conflict of interest with Launchtags as there seems to be with the Hubpages community, part of which sees promotion of Squidoo lenses as spam, competition and/or an annoyance. There's nothing wrong with using Hubpages to promote Squidoo lenses (or vice versa), but you should be careful to make your lens or hub with quality content, rather than just as a signpost to another site.

With Launchtags, I like to describe and provide some interesting content for lenses that are all related in some way, and use the Launchtag minipage as a table of contents or header for the resulting lenses which are linked within the content or at the bottom. In this way, the minipage itself is interesting and useful, but also serves its purpose for multiple backlinks.

Status - Launchtags: Down - There's just a squatter page now. Too bad, it was a neat little site. Keep an eye on it in case it comes back.

Status - Hubpages: Up and Running

Bonus Site

Since Launchtags is down :( , check out Jumptags. It's a tag site that gets ranked pretty well and you should see tags coming up in search engine results pretty quickly. A great, quick little site.

As MSE mentioned below, the links from Jumptags are nofollow, and thus not dofollow backlinks. This is true. The value of Jumptags is in the respect that search engines give it. Still worth a look, it's painless and quick.

Status - Jumptags: Up and Running

Squidtop is a Wordpress-platform blog that invites Squidoodlers to blog about their lenses or anything else Squidoo related. Features a nice area to load links for lenses, lensographies, bios, groups and other sites you want to promote.

There's nothing stopping you from making more than one Wordpress blog (for each category, tying multiple lenses together) and getting backlinks from each one.

Another good platform is Google's Blogger. Both have high PR and Alexa ranking and get tons of traffic. What you put on them is up to you.

Status: Up and Running

For two article sites that actually give you dofollow backlinks, try Ideamarketers and Amazines

My two (former) favorite article sites, good for general articles and case studies are Buzzle and Ezineartcles.

all require registration and both are free.

Buzzle requires a kind of interview as they are looking for good writers for the Buzzle community. They will look over your work to see if they want to include you. Come up with good examples because it is worth it. Use your lensography when applying because this will show a good cross section of your work. Once a member, you can publish articles to your heart's content and attach multiple links to each article.

Ezinearticles is a very powerful site, and all you have to do is register. Ezinearticles is also very picky. Adding links can sometimes be a chore because of their many criteria, but if you follow the rules, you can take advantage of their excellent placement on Google and elsewhere and get plenty of hits.

Both sites get great traffic and I've received a lot of hits from them.

Buzzle was my favorite for ease of use, Ezinearticles is a little more influential, and both are great.

Status - Buzzle: Up and Running.

Status - Ezinearticles: Up and Running.

Note: Ezinearticles is now Nofollow except for your profile, so enjoy your one big fat link.
Note: Buzzle is now also Nofollow. Any articles you submitted in the past that contained a backlink have been deleted and are no more.

Press Releases are another great way to drive traffic to your lenses if the topic, or the update to the topic is timely.

PRLog is a great site, easy to use with a high Google PR and Alexa ranking. Gets good traffic and gets picked up pretty quickly (depending on topic) by news sites and by Google.

Requires registration and is free.

Status: Up and running.

Sure! Not just for buying used junk and questionable relationship material, take advantage of Craigslist's Google PR of 7 and top 10 U.S. Alexa ranking to give you a great quality backlink.

Find your local Craigslist and depending on your lens content, post information and a link in services, gigs, resume, community or wherever else it will go. Since Craigslist is community run, your link might be deleted due to wrong placement, but don't be discouraged. The right placement will last forever, and will appear by itself in Google searches within an hour or so.

Even if the listing disappears into the depths over time, the initial Google ranking and traffic accumulated will be worth it. You can always repost the listing that will go to the top and start over. Depending on where you live, your listing will last between 30-45 days.

Requires registration but is free.

Note: Their links are nofollow so you aren't necessarily getting backlinks, but you will get your entries ranked in google and with the right niche, you will get hits from outside Craigslist - pretty cool.

Status: Up and Running

I've recently been checking up on some of my favorite article sites, and have found that they are embracing the policy of removing Dofollow links entirely, or at best, throwing writers the bone of including a link on your profile page.

This is unacceptable.

I know, I am a guest and I don't make the rules, and it's a privilege to use the site (and on some of the sites, an honor as well), but these giant, well respected sites forget who butters their bread.

The only reason for these sites to exist, is so that writers are attracted to give them content, for free(!), in the hopes that they have an outlet for their passion, but also to encourage people to travel to where they are writing for or about, and this is not always a single site. More to the point, we're seeking out the valuable link juice from our Dofollow backlink. And it's only fair really - We give you all the content, you give us the credit, in the form of tasty link juice.

The only reason article sites have tens of thousands of articles by thousands of authors, about a staggering variety of topics, more than any single writer could hope to cover on his or her own, is because people are applying their knowledge and wanting to be seen, but also hoping that they can point you to their little corner of the Internet, and nowadays, that isn't always one site. It's rarely EVER one site.

Now, I'm not saying that every article should be a playground for 10 or 20 links, but if I write a high quality, useful and informative article regarding a particular topic or niche, then my reward for providing my content for this site to use, free of charge, is a single and simple Dofollow backlink to more content that I am supporting, promoting or trying to monetize. Is this really so much to ask for?

As a writer on many article sites, my profile backlink is usually my profile here at Squidoo, but if I'm trying to encourage traffic to a particular lens, I'm going to write a useful article about the topic. I expect a Dofollow backlink. I don't demand one, but it is the only thing I'm asking for in exchange for usually exclusive use of my content on a single article site. My only alternative, sadly, is to abandon sites that won't play ball, and frequent those that understand why and how they exist.

Let's take the king for example, Ezinearticles.com.

The big E is a great site, filled with wonderful content from amazing writers. They have the most thorough, comprehensive screening I've ever seen for an article site, and they have zero tolerance for BS - Your article will be original, unused elsewhere, and conform to their many rules or it doesn't get published. Period.

In exchange for their rigorous, multi-step, no-nonsense screening process, you get a single Dofollow backlink, presumably to more content that you are writing about and that is in parallel (but not gleaned from) the article on Ezinearticles.

Seems fair.

Not anymore. Ezinearticles dropped the Nofollow hammer on all of it's article links. So thank you for your well-written, cogent, original article. Other than the exposure you get on the site, which is only gained if people actually find your article amongst the myriad other articles, you get nothing. At least, you get no link juice, which is the the real point of doing article marketing in the first place.

You want it to exist on your site only? Fine.
No link above the fold? Fine.
Only one link? fine.
Numerous edits to satisfy the finicky online editor and human editing team? Fine.

Can I have one Dofollow link? No.

Huh.

It's just not good policy for any article site, let alone a top 100 Alexa site that is being powered completely by the work of everyone else on the Internet.

Oh wait a minute, after hovering around 100 Alexa rank for a long time, they're slowly slipping into the 150-200 range. I wonder why? Could it be that people are catching on, and want a little more bang for their non-existent buck?

Look, I know spam stinks. Hell, someone's going to steal this article and run it all over the place, spinning it into a Pidgin English monstrosity that, ironically, will probably end up on Ezinearticles. Still, they go over every article with a fine-toothed comb. If you don't like an article, can it, but if you do, give what I and every other writer on your site wants - a bloody Dofollow backlink.

I single out Ezinearticles only as an example because they ARE the best, and they shouldn't have to resort to killing Dofollow to get rid of the spammers. Other sites are changing their policy to Nofollow and they share the blame. There are two kinds of article sites - those that promote Dofollow, and those that don't. It's hard to leave good sites that I have shared a mutual relationship with, but we as writers who need backlinks have to do what we have to do.

If you write quality content, and submit articles to article sites, you deserve a Dofollow backlink. Complain to sites if you like, but better yet, go to and use sites that exclusively permit Dofollow links. Reward their generosity with quality content.