Squidoo Tips: The Secrets of My Squidoo Success

If you're writing for writing's sake, you don't want success. Close this window and go have fun.

What to Write on That Gets Traffic

If you're writing to succeed, paradoxically, you can't write for yourself. You have to write for your readers, just as a furniture maker has to make chairs that fit the customer's needs.

Luckily, there are trillions of web users, and hundreds of thousands of them like things you like! That means you can exploit what you know and like to create effective content.

So don't write on what bores you. You'll bore and lose your visitors. Write on what you know and love, but filter it through what audiences want to know or find or purchase that's related to that topic: answers to specific questions, resources, reviews, how-tos, pictures, videos, free stuff, top ten lists, buyers' guides, or fascinating, beautiful, provocative or fun content they'll want to share.

For example, I'm a fan of the space program. I noticed that people debate whether we went to the moon. So I researched and created a lens on photos of Apollo moon landers from space, which people link to and share as "proof" when debating with one another.

Tip: Need Help Brainstorming? Here's Ten Great Ideas for Squidoo Lenses.

Made with txt2pic sign generator

The page (lens) title doubles as the link pointing to your article from the rest of the web. It appears in Google results, likes, Tweets, the "related" box in Squidoo's sidebar, and many more places. That link is your traffic hook; the title is the bait.

Choose lens titles that:

• tell HUMAN visitors exactly what your webpage is about
• pack a punch and CONNECT with your reader
• tell SEARCH ENGINES what topic your lens is about.

For example, before I knew what I was doing, I wrote a lens titled "Pets on a Plane!" But people don't search for that. Even if they stumbled across the link, they wouldn't click it because they don't know what the page is about or what's in it for them. Traffic improved when I changed it to "How to Take Your Pet on a Plane."

A Call to Action like "Take the Easy Greek Mythology Quiz!" is often more effective than just "here's what's on my page." Try action verbs like "learn, buy, understand, view, find, make, explore." Some phrases like "pictures of" or "free [X]" are also effective.

TIP: I'll teach you "keyword research" in my Squidoo SEO tutorial, but for now, don't get too hung up on the exact wording of your title. If you're stumped, challenge yourself to a game of Jeopardy ("what question does my page answer?"), try Googling for your topic and watch what words you type in, or play around with the Google keyword tool.

Notepad: Slavomir Ulicny on Stock Xchng

Readers glance at the first screen of a page for less than 3 seconds to decide whether to hit "back" or read on. You have that long to prove your page has what they're looking for.

That means your introduction needs to be clear, compelling, and give a preview or teaser of (1) what your page covers and (2) what's in it for them! Build on or expand on the page title.

For practice, write the goal or point of your lens, your "Lens Mission Statement," on a post-it note. Write a sentence or 2-3 bullet points, summarizing: What is your lens topic? What will your readers get out of it? Optionally, what is the goal of the lens? Keep in mind your target audience (college students? Squidoo members? baseball fans?) and what goals they may have in coming to your page.

Convert that mission statement into a few compelling sentences for your introduction, and use it as a yardstick in deciding what to include, what NOT to include on your lens. If part of a lens doesn't fit the mission statement, you might use it for a new lens, instead!

Tip: The first 150 characters of your introduction show up in Facebook likes, the Featured Lenses module and other sites linking to your page. Use this free character counter to maximize that opening sentence.

Good writing is like your appearance at a job interview: it makes you look competent. When users scan Google results, they tend to click links whose excerpts show clear, polished, skilled writing rather than sloppy, error-prone, poor English.

Once readers arrive on your page, your easy-to-read, error-free writing helps hold their attention and inspire their trust. Reader trust is the secret ingredient that drives clickouts and sales, two factors that boost Squidoo lensrank and payouts!

Search engines also check your page's writing quality when deciding how high to list it. They detect and downrate pages with lots of typos, spelling mistakes and poor grammar.

Tip: In Firefox or Chrome, pay attention to red underlines warning you of typos. Read your page aloud or have your computer read it. Simplify phrases you trip over.

Online reading is more fatiguing, and web readers have shorter attention spans. So:

Credit: photos of Lady Washington

• Divide articles into sections (text modules).
  
• Use brief, clear sentences and short paragraphs. Vary paragraph lengths, too.
• Use section headers.
  
• Top ten lists and bulleted lists work well.
  
• Use graphics and video modules to add visual interest.

Tip: web users tend to skip around, skim, browse, and leave quickly. In most cases, you're writing for Sammy the Three Second Surfer. Don't waste their time or your words.

Credit: Leonardini @ Stock Xchng

This page would be pretty boring without graphics, wouldn't it? Great graphics can draw the reader's eye down a page. You don't need one in every text module, like I have here, but an excellent lens graphic in the introduction module is essential.

However, as you probably know, nearly all graphics found on the web are copyrighted. You can't grab anything you like! You have to use Creative Commons or other graphics that people give you permission to use (with credit and a link back):

• Wikimedia Commons. Search this site quickly by doing a Google Image Search for: site:commons.wikimedia.org searchterm replacing searchterm with apple, dog, etc.
  
• Stock Xchng, a free stock photography site
  
• Search Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr, Fotopedia or Open Clip Art WITH "commercial use" CHECKED.
  
• Clker.com's free clipart repository.
• Sign up with Amazon Associates and AllPosters and use their affiliate codes to display posters of celebrities, stars.

Be sure to fill in the "Label this Photo" field if you upload a graphic into a text module. Or, if you upload the photo to an image hosting site, first rename the image file to identify what's in the picture (e.g. bald-eagle-chick.jpg). Specific labels and names help draw traffic from Google image search.

Tip: For more graphics help, see Where to Get Free (Legal!) Graphics and how to make Squidoo Image Captions.

"Free Gift Inside!"
Credit: Eduardo Schäfer, Stock Xchng

Give your readers useful, interesting links to related resources. Provide free downloads. Create photo galleries with thumbnails that link to bigger images. Take the time to scour the web for especially good resources, webpages, and related content that will make your page even more useful to your readers.

Wait... link out? Why? Don't you want your reader to stay? Yes, but you want them to leave via a click, not the back button, because:

• If your links provide a few excellent, interesting, useful things suited to their needs or tastes, that may encourage them to click OTHER links, like ads or products
  
• Google rewards pages that link TO excellent, relevant content
  
• Clickouts are one of the factors that boost Squidoo lensrank
  
• Links to your other, related content on Squidoo or other websites count as backlinks

Make sure you're linking to things your readers will like. Don't disappoint them by linking to something that's not helpful, relevant or interesting. They won't click again.

Warning: A few good links are probably better than twenty. Did you click any links on this page, or are you feeling a little overwhelmed? One thing I do wrong is go overboard!

Tip: Here's How to make clickable photo galleries. Or use the Squidoo "Big Arrow Link" module, like this:

Editing my profile

The web is vast and impersonal. We're hardwired to pay more attention and feel more connection to something when we sense that a real person is "talking" to us. Author profile photos and mini-bios help establish that connection. Surprisingly, they even help sales pages.

By contrast, a default icon or blank profile looks unfriendly, unfinished, and untrustworthy: "Oh, this is a newbie who's just getting started." "Who IS this person? What's she hiding?"

Check your profile right now! Make sure you have an interesting photo and bio that quickly tells people who you are and some of your interests and passions. The first 155 characters (here's a free character counter) show in the sidebar of your lenses as a mini-bio, with a "more" link pointing to the rest.

Tip: If you have a Google Profile, be SURE to put a link TO it in the Google slot on your Squidoo profile, then add a link back to your Squidoo profile FROM your Google profile's "Contributor to" slot. See Claim Your Google Authorship for how and why.

Credit: S. Eastop, Stock Exchange

The web has grown social, and people often find things by getting to know you. By contributing to a web community, you gain a "tribe," a network of people around you who share tips, listen to what you have to say, and visit your profile, pages, or content if you prove that you have content they like.

Join Facebook. Or join Twitter. Or Google Plus. Or join a knitting forum. Or participate in Squidoo's own SquidU forum, hidden under the Help & Tips Menu. Get involved, make social connections. Pay attention to forum or site rules, so you don't bumble in like a bull in a china shop and make a bad first impression!

Every post you make, every funny picture you share, every question you ask, every link you drop builds or erodes your online reputation. Don't just self-promote. People will tune you out or report you as a spammer. Instead, share things you find interesting, that your followers or online friends will enjoy or find useful.

Tip: On Twitter, "tag" your Tweets with words that describe your topic (for example: #baseball or #squidoo) so that people searching for those things will find your Tweet.

After a few months of lensbuilding with these tips, your traffic should start to grow. This is great, because then you can learn more from your readers than tutorials. How? Once a lens has traffic, the "stats" collected by Squidoo on each lens are a hidden treasure trove telling you exactly what your visitors are looking for.

Find this data by hovering over a lens name on the dashboard and clicking "stats," or by editing a lens and clicking "lens stats" at the top. Then click the traffic tab and set the pulldown menu to "90 days" to collect as much data as possible.

A healthy lens will have one or a few strong phrases that get the lion's share of traffic, and a "long tail" of more specific searches that get one hit here, one hit there...they all add up.

Copy the top search phrase (or a few) into a spare window. Examine your lens. Ask yourself:

• Does my lens answer the query? Can I answer it more clearly, or add links to great resources on that topic?
  
• Does my introduction make clear I'll be addressing that topic if they stick around?
  
• Are the words of that query in a header somewhere on the lens (search engines give extra weight to phrases in headers)?
  
• Or does that search phrase really not match my lens? If so, reword that phrase on the lens to attract the right audience.
  
  (For example, I created a lens about a sea slug -- really! -- and included its scientific name. My traffic stats showed the lens was attracting graduate students studying neuroscience! They left quickly, since my page didn't meet their needs. So I removed some scientific jargon and tweaked the introduction to be more folksy, which attracted the audience I was aiming for: beachcombers.)

Often, a reader's search query will suggest a new lens idea. Over time, if you pay attention to what your readers often search for, you'll improve your lenses and get a better idea of what topics you can write on that will get traffic. This is extremely valuable information -- especially because you're the only one with access to it!

Advanced Tip: When updating old lenses, do a Google Spot check. This means searching for your top-traffic phrase in Google, looking to see what excerpt from your lens Google quotes in the search results, and fine-tuning the wording (if necessary) to make that except more clear and compelling.

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