Squidoo's and Squidont's: Surviving the Lens Page Jungle

This lens is all about coding from a bloggers perspective, and a few other little nitty gritty morsels of delight! That's right I am not a developer - never have been, never will be. So what's with all this 'do-it-yourself' coding on websites like Squidoo and Hubpages?

Its simple. Sites like Squidoo want you to give your readers the best possible experience when combing through your posts. In this day and age, the best often means the most interactive especially with the social media boom. BOOM!

And why wouldn't it - search engines love interactivity - so you can't blame them for wanting us to get a clue and optimize our own lenses.

Not to worry, there are ways around the little floating question marks that start spinning around your cranium every time you try to figure out how to link, make something bold or give it a bit of color.

Things to Remember:

Patience is NOT a virtue. Not when it comes to delivering the goods. The goods will have people reading and rereading your lenses for centuries to come. If you pop one up, get 2 hits and then give up it's your own fault. Educate yourself!

Google knows. If you don't - I'm 100% sure the answer is somewhere in the 145 9999990 shmillion results that surface with your search term. It never hurts to ask.

Squidoo can earn you money - it really can I've checked! But like most things in life it takes talent, flair, knowledge and a bit of hard work. We are bloggers after all and nothing can distract me from my work (except lunch time, nap time and if there's something riveting on the Discovery channel.)

General tips people often conveniently forget to exhume:

Have a voice - most of us have majestic personalities waiting to be shared with the world - so what are you waiting for!

Be accurate - I can't begin to explain the irritation that incorrect facts tend to bring down upon you.

Force three of your friends to comment on your lenses - it'll kick things off.

Do a spot of keyword research - why not it'll improve your search horizons.

Come over to the dark side of light social networking. Register with sites like Technorati, Digg, Delicious, Facebook and Twitter and shamelessly promote your awesomeness.

Finally a BIG squidon't: Don't expect people to comment on your posts if you don't actively participate on theirs. Staring at your lens day after day is not going to magically improve its visits.

Module Madness!

Pick the ones you like, need or must have and fill them to the brim.

To Code or Not to Code That is the Redundant Question

To link: a href=" with an < in front of it. Then the domain name and " target="_blank" with > directly after it. /a wrapped in <> follows.

Lets not fool ourselves - no one likes a link that changes their current webpage.

To bold: strong wrapped in <>

To italicize: i wrapped in <>

Then there are image tags, list tags, page breaks and a host of other commands you can find out here: Basic Html

OR see the best code site in the world here: W3Schools

Alternatively see this entertaining cartoon about code:
Code sucks

After you have figured out how to create a presentable Squidoo page the sky is the limit.

Now tell me - What is your most successful post to date and how many people have read it?