Squidoo Workshop 101 - SEO for Beginners

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Most web-browsing begins with a search at Google, MSN Search, AOL Search, or some other search engine. Therefore, pages that tend to appear high in search results pages are more likely to be seen than those that don't

There is a tremendous amount of material online about SEO, although most of it is outdated, just plain wrong, or even fraudulent. The tips included here are intended to help your pages get the attention they deserve. No more. No less.

Before you write anything, identify your topic. For the sake of illustration, let's say it's your mother's favorite recipe for potato salad.

Now try to think of all the words you can that somebody might use -- better yet, words that they would almost have to use -- if they were searching for potato salad recipes.

Your mother's maiden name -- no good. It might be an important detail you'll want to include, but unless your mother is famous, it isn't likely people will use it in their search.

"Recipe" and "potato salad" are good, and while we're on the subject of "potatoes," you might include "eggs," "pickles," "onions," "mustard," "mayonaise," and "celery."

You have a pretty good list of keywords, but now you want to think of a few more. You have "pickles," but not "relish." There's no meat in potato salad, but there are eggs, so you might think of "vegetarian" and "lacto-ovo." Does your mother's potato salad qualify as "German?" (i.e. bacon-fat and vinegar dressing?) No? Leave that one out. Do people call this dish something else? Try looking up "American Potato Salad."

Hey! It turns out that some recipes call for French dressing and are called "French Potato Salad," and that during WWI and WWII "German Potato Salad was called "hot potato salad." (Would you like "freedom fries" with that?) And yes, our recipe could properly be called "American potato salad."

Now we can write a headline / title for our lens, cramming in as many keywords as we comfortably can. How about: "American Vegetarian Potato Salad Recipe?" Not bad, but there are a couple of problems:

First, hardly anybody calls this dish "American potato salad." We just now looked that one up. How about All-American Potato salad?" Probably better. Second, we usually expect potato salad to contain eggs. Will vegan vegetarians feel deceived, expecting tofu in place of eggs or something? Maybe.

Let's try again. "Mom's All-American Lacto-ovo Vegetarian Potato Salad Recipe with Spicy Mustard." Maybe that's a little over-the-top, but I hope you get the idea.

This seems like a good time to mention that I didn't name this lens. I found it abandoned and took it in.

You need to write a short, catchy introduction that will capture the reader's attention and tell them what your article (Oops! "Lens") is about.

Include the "five W's -- who, what, when, where, why (and how!) or at least most of them. Writing a good lead will help you focus on what is really central to your story. Not co-incidentally, the lead appears in a number of places:

1.  The top of your lens, where it says "Introduction"

2.  On your Lensmaster's Page

3.  Any favorites page your lens is added to.

4.  The RSS version of your feed AND LISTINGS DERIVED FROM IT.

5.   Search results.

6.   Probably half a dozen more places.

Your lead is the most important paragraph on the page. Take the time to make it great!

The cheapest and easiest links you're ever going to get are links from the tag pages that apply to your lens. ALWAYS fill in the tags. (Use the keyword list you developed at the beginning of this exercise.)

(I'm still retro-fitting tags to my lenses, since I didn't know this at first, but "Do as I say, not as I do.")

I'm using this lens to test the Squidom Squidoo Directory Click on the optional reciprocal link banner below to register your opinion