Optimizing tags for squidoo

Keyword: a word that people are looking for online. In general it is good to use these words in the copy of your lens.

Keyword phrase: a phrase that people are looking for online. In general it is good to use these phrases in the copy of your lens and in the title.

Primary tag: the first tag you enter. On a published lens it appears right after the category you choose for your lens. If your lens has sufficient lensrank (less than 100,000) and not too many people are using that tag as a primary tag, your lens will appear on the first page of the tag page belonging to that tag.

Tag: a word or phrase you can add into the 'tags' bit on each squidoo lens. Tags can be keywords or keyword phrases.

Tag cloud: on each tag page you will see a tag cloud at the right hand top corner of the page. Click on each of these and you will see another tag page. This is the easiest way to find other tags related to your topic.

Tag page: when you look at the side bar of a published lens it has a phrase: Related Topics. The first link there is a topic link. It's the category you put your lens in. The links that follow that are the tags. Click on them - and the page you end up on is a tag page. For instance, one of the tag pages this lens is on right now is: http://www.squidoo.com/tags/seo

• Use tags in your niche.


• Don't use tags to stuff keywords: no more than 5 tags with the same word in it


• Do use tags for alternative spellings if you can find no way to use those spellings in the body of the lens


• Have one tag you use on all your lenses. This will link your lenses together and help them show up on the 'related lenses' feature on the right of each lens


• Don't use more than 20 tags per lens

Generally orphan tags are tags you just put in without checking the rest of squidoo. You may have added them through the squidoo statistics page for your lens. In that case: shorten them and see if it's still as lonely.

BTW: check how lonely a tag is by installing the workshop add-on by fluffanutta. It works on firefox, which is the browser of choice for lensmasters anyhow. There's also a version for Google Chrome, a very decent Firefox alternative.

Of course another way to avoid orphan tags is simply to add that tag to several of your lenses. This is a great extra way to link your related lenses together.

Your lowest ranking lenses are probably linking to a LOT of tag pages they are not listed on the first page for. Squidoo tag pages contain (Nov. 2009) 20 lenses. If your lens doesn't make the top 20 for that tag it is because of one of these reasons:

1. There are 20 or more lenses using that tag as a primary tag: those get listed first: best lensrank highest


2. The lensrank of your lens is over 100.000: this means it will not be listed for the primary tag. In this case you should make sure the tag is also listed as an ordinary tag. That way the lens will at least be listed on one of the tag pages for that tag.


3. You have that tag as an ordinary tag and other lenses just have a better (lower) lensrank than your lens does. Either delete the tag or promote the lens so well the lensrank will go up.

Each of our tags links to a tag page. If your lens is not listed on the first page there, you're helping other lenses rank. This may be OK: if some of your highest earning lenses are on the first page of that tag list, you're helping them and yourself. But it could be you're in fact helping a load of spammy lenses rank. In that case: delete that tag.

What I do is this: I keep a list of tags in a text-file. These are tags that are used by lenses in my niche, but less than 20 of them. That means I can use them on any of my lenses. On my lower ranking lenses especially this is great: they are interlinked with lenses in their niche. Usually my own because I use those tags a lot on my own lenses.

Find appropriate tags by studying the tag pages related lenses are linking to. Have several tabs open: one for each tag. Don't use the tag pages that have only one lens listed. Depending on how hard it is to find appropriate tags, you may want to use tags that 2 or 3 other lenses are using. Ideally about 10 to 15 lenses are using that tag. In that case your lens is getting on a tag page that has links from 11 to 16 lenses and no chance of it being pushed down to the second page any time soon.

You can just do things with them as with your lowest ranking lenses - except... The higher the rank of your lens, the better the chance of it getting on the first tag page for a tag. There's some research involved in figuring this out:

1. Check the lensrank and primary tag of the last lens on the first tag page


2. If the lensrank is lower than the lensrank of your lens AND they are not using that tag as primary tag, you can safely use that tag for an ordinary tag on that lens

If you have as many lenses as I do, keeping track of tags is not a luxury.

It will help you make sure that all your lenses in the same niche have at least one or two tags in common: making it more likely that they show up on each other's 'related lenses' feature.

I keep track of tags :

• that fit my niches, but aren't used by many lenses (aka: less than 20)


• to make sure each lens in a niche has at least one tag in common with every other of my lenses in that niche.


• interlink my lenses: on tag that each of my lenses uses

If you do all that - the tags showing up on your profile will become a better reflection of your lenses.

Unfortunately changes in my personal life, and in the way squidu is managed, have made me decide to stop answering questions on that forum. I'm also too busy to answer questions elsewhere.

I am available for consulting though, but that doesn't come cheap. For $99 you get a month of asking whatever questions you want and advice on your SEO strategy, link building, optimizing your blog etc. SEO consult online publishing.

If you aren't willing to pay up, you'll have to be content to stay updated on my Marketing Spiritual Blog where I am also willing to answer any questions related to the posts. It also contains a free ebook.

I'm active on twitter and facebook.