Squidoo Traffic Tricks: (how to get more visitors and a better search engine ranking for your Squidoo lens)
Ranked #37 in How-To, #364 overall
Getting more visitors to your Squidoo lens...
Would you like to learn how to get more people reading your lenses?
Wanna know how to make people come back to your lenses again and again?
Would you like to rank higher in Google search results?
Keep reading :)
Words You Need To Know:
URL: Don't worry about what this stands for. It refers to your link. So if you were the owner of iloveducks.com then your URL would be iloveducks.com. When you are registering a lens you are asked to choose a URL, and this refers to the string that will come after squidoo.com. Like this: squidoo.com/like-this
1. Add your keyphrase to your module titles
2. Add your keyphrase as your primary tag
Short Story: You should add your main keyphrase as your Primary tag!
Full explanation coming soon...
3. Forget lensrank
Lensrank is a number that is calculated from lots of different factors. Only Squidoo knows the secret formula. They take visitor numbers in to account, sales made, links clicked on, etc etc.
A *LOT* of people get completely hung up on trying to increase their lensrank. But why?! A higher adsense share won't make you rich, and fretting about your lensrank will not get you any more sales.
You need to concentrate on getting more visitors and sales, not on getting your lensrank higher. Don't take your eyes of the goal. And don't get it backwards, like too many other people.
4. Go small!
a. Rank in the top 3 in Google for *Exploding Puzzle Alarm Clock*.
b. Rank in the top 100 in Google for *Alarm Clock*
...is that your final answer?
If you said b, you lose!
This is for a few reasons:
1. The people searching for *alarm clock* will never see you in the search results.
2. The people searching for *alarm clock* aren't BUYERS. They don't know what they want.
3. The people searching for *Exploding Puzzle Alarm Clock* know EXACTLY what they want.
4. The people searching for *Exploding Puzzle Alarm Clock* will see your link.
Go small, and you will rank well and make sales. Go large and non-specific and you will be doomed to chasing scraps of visitors with their credit cards lodged firmly in their wallets.
5. Start a group
* Your lens gets linked to from the group listings
* Your lens may get featured on the group homepage (ideal)
* And your lens will display a link to the group in your lens sidebar
So it's quite important that you start a group, and it's important that you join some groups too.
The extra links to your lenses will help Google find and rank your lens, and people exploring the group pages may click to read your lens too.
You can't fail. Go for it.
Why Start a Group
Written by Linette
1. Keep an eye on the competition.
If you start a group in your niche area, you can check out what others are saying about your subject. You will be able to interact with others in your niche, get to know them, and learn more about your subject matter and how to market it.
2. Make your lenses stronger in your topic and promote your lenses.
Putting together a great group page with several lenses on the same topic can help draw in traffic. The traffic to the group page will turn into additional traffic to your lenses.
3. Build a community around your topic.
Gather a group of people promoting the same topic. Get to know other lensmasters who are interested in the same thing you are.
4. Build credibility as the expert in your niche.
Being a group master helps make you the master of your group's topic, and helps build your credibility as the "expert."
5. Creates a quality link back to your lenses.
Google likes Squidoo groups and gives them a high page rank. I have 3 groups with a page rank of 4. There are many group pages with a page rank of 5 or 6. When it's your group, you can feature the lenses of your choice for quality back links to your lenses.
6. Links links links
When Google determines where in the search results to rank you (1st or... 100001st!) one of the main factors they take into account is how many links there are pointing to your lens.
When a website links to your lens Google sees that as a 'vote'. There is a website willing to 'vote' for yours by linking to it. There are 2 key parts to this. The first: The more trusted the website linking to your lens is, the more valuable that vote will be.
For example: A link to your lens from the homepage of the BBC will be weighted far more heavily than a link to your lens from your myspace profile. The quality of an 'incoming link' is important.
But there is nothing at all wrong with the myspace profile link. All links help. In fact, the second key part to all this is quantity.
All other things being equal, if you and I both make a lens about the same thing and your lens gets linked to from 100 different places and mine only gets linked to from 10 different places... you win. Google would see your lens as more important than mine. So it would show it higher up the search results.
Quality AND Quantity of the 'incoming links' matter.
So get to work!
Tagging Tricks: Tag Effectiveness
This makes your tags SUPER-IMPORTANT for search engine rankings. So use them effectively.
Effective tagging is something to master.
Make sure you make each tag as specific as you can to the subject of your lens.
Tagging Tricks: Your Tags Influence Google Ads
If you were weird enough to look at the source code which makes up your lens (the code google reads to understand what your page is about) you'll see this:
google_hints = "TAG 1, TAG 2, TAG 3, TAG 4, ETC, ETC";
This means that when Google decides what ads to display on your lens, they look at your tags when making the decision. A whole load of other stuff on your page is taken into account, but the initial hints come from the tags.
This is just useful information. You can't really do anything with this, but it's nice to know :)
Tagging Tricks: Phrases Matter
What I Wrote Was This:
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Use PHRASES as tags as well as single words.
Squidoo lenses rank really highly in google, often #1 for non-competitive search terms, and tags help your lens come up for SPECIFIC search terms.
What might a person new to your subject search for? Might they type a QUESTION into google?
For example, someone might type: is rich dad poor dad worth reading? If you had this as a tag on your rich dad door dad book lens then you would probably come up quite high!
Do you have a lens about camera memory cards? Maybe this would be a good tag: what memory cards work with CAMERA WHATEVER. Not everybody is going to search google for that, but those who do will probably find you.
Will anyone in your target audience type a QUESTION into google? What might they type? Think of some examples, and add them as tags!
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To read the replies click this link...
http://www.squidu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1699
Tagging Tricks: Google Suggest
This time they have made a thing called Google Suggest.
You start typing a search term into the google search box and it shows you other phrases commonly searched for how many search results there are for that term.
It's very cool. It's free, and you don't need to download anything.
It's great for finding out any tag phrases you might have forgotten about and great for seeing, at a glance, how many other web pages you will be up against to rank for that term.Check it out here:
http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en
Choosing an Optimized Lens URL
Lens URL = Lens Link
Your URL is your lens link.
Like this: www.squidoo.com/this-is-the-url
So you have to make sure you choose it correctly!
Here is your new URL picking rule: If your URL will be more than 1 word long, split it up with hyphens.
Google employee Matt Cutts has said that using hyphens in your URL will provide a little google ranking power, whereas using underscores like_this won't provide any google ranking power.
So if you have a lens URL all_about_ducks, your lens won't rank for all about ducks just because of the URL. You can still rank for that search term, but your URL won't help you out by providing any value.
Whereas if you had chosen all-about-ducks, then your URL choice will help a little bit toward a higher google ranking.
You have to give yourself every help you can get in google, so make sure you use hyphens instead of underscores!
Proper Keyword Research With The 'AdWords Keyword Tool'
Here is his tip:
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Google Suggest is cool and can be useful, but nothing beats the power of the Google Keyword Tool (also known as the sandbox).
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Type your main keyword into the Keyword Variations box, and make sure that "Use synonyms" is checked, then hit "Get More Keywords" and there you have it, a huge list of alternatives many of which you may not have heard of. You can sort by how commonly the keywords are searched.
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SquidooCool.com, by Lewis Smile
SquidooCool.com
I have started a blog to post all the tips and tricks too small to have a lens of their own. A lot of my posts will hopefully also help you earn more money on Squidoo too.
Find everything at SquidooCool.com
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What else should I add to this lens?
Is there anything missing from this lens? Do you have any questions which I haven't answered? Let me know and I'll keep writing!
If you would like to leave a comment for me or some advice you want to add to this lens, feel free!
To add this lens to your Squidoo Favorites, click here.
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- linkcity linkcity Oct 14, 2009 @ 8:18 pm
- Squidoo, such an amazing community of honest and hardworking individuals who are really making a difference in the lives of people every day, every where, simply by giving their opinion. However, ever since I started, I was having difficulty getting found so I decided to create a Digg style website for Squidoo Lenses only.
I present to you, my humble attempt at bringing all the squids together at one place to share love and prosperity. I give you SquidUp! http://SquidUp.org. It is absolutely free to use just like Digg but Unlike Digg, SquidUp provides a backlink to all the lenses that you submit hence, boosting your Search Engine Rankings and traffic to your lens.
I highly recommend that you submit your lenses in this Free directory if you like. The Process is very simple and takes less than 30 seconds to submit your Lens. Please pardon me for any housekeeping on the site as I have just released it to Beta.
Thank you very much for your time.
Regards,
Azam
Founder SquidUp.org
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- Frankster Frankster Aug 24, 2009 @ 11:57 am
- More excellent advice! Thanks. Bear hugs, Frankie
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- leahthemoose leahthemoose Aug 20, 2009 @ 11:35 am
- Thanks for the information - great advice!! Definitely a fave and a 5* :)
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- Cherrybomb2009 Cherrybomb2009 Aug 15, 2009 @ 10:45 am
- Well, I learned that I screwed up the url on my first lens (I have no hyphens in it). Hopefully I can make up for that by either a) creating another lens like it and deleting the first later on, or b) taking all the other advice on this page and applying it to the lens as it is.
Thank you for the good advice!
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- The_Party_Animal The_Party_Animal Aug 3, 2009 @ 9:51 am
- Awesome info - I am going to get cleaning up my lenses - thanks
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- OhMe OhMe Jul 27, 2009 @ 7:24 am
- This has so much helpful information that I needed. Thank you.
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- Joan4 Joan4 Jul 27, 2009 @ 6:50 am
- Super advice and great lessons! Thank you! Blessed by a joyful angel!
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- BevsPaper BevsPaper Jul 14, 2009 @ 9:32 am
- Incredibly helpful! Thank you for making this!
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- dc64 dc64 Jul 12, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
- Superb lens with excellent advice. The way you spaced the sentences make it easy to read, and I especially like your no-nonsense writing style.
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- edsamuals edsamuals Jul 6, 2009 @ 12:15 am
- Hi! Great Hub with lots of tricks for getting traffic! I especially liked the section about the use of tags. It's so important for newbies to understand the importance of proper tag selection. Over on HubPages I've gone through all my old hubs and redid the tags. Google immediately picked up on it and those hubs are now getting way more traffic. Anyways, thanks for this - dawei888 on HubPages.
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- karanta karanta Jul 3, 2009 @ 4:53 pm
- Very, very interesting lens! 5*
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- Auris Auris Jul 1, 2009 @ 10:37 am
- Thanks for these tips on Squidoo SEO - especially the ones regarding the tags...
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- Blueginger07 Blueginger07 Jun 27, 2009 @ 5:04 pm
- Thankx . . . very good suggestions!
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- Damone Damone Jun 27, 2009 @ 3:46 pm
- Awesome lens. I am new to squidoo and the SEO arena. It is not as easy as one might think. The information of this lens is invaluable. If I could shake your hand I would, but since I cant I will say thanks and keep up the good job. Please continue with the great content.
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- aoife aoife Jun 27, 2009 @ 7:18 am
- Excellent. There's just no end to the info you can absorb here is there? Thanks, really helpful...
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- nDee nDee Jun 26, 2009 @ 12:16 am
- E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T information! 5-Star and Favorited
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- Jun 24, 2009 @ 12:43 pm
- Very nice lens. I need to learn how to get more traffic so that I can save my marriage.
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- lwhitelaw lwhitelaw Jun 22, 2009 @ 5:25 pm
- Thanks for a very informative lens - I'm still trying to figure out the whole keyword research thing and this lens was a big help.
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- italianheart92 italianheart92 Jun 22, 2009 @ 7:10 am
- Amazing lens thanks for the info! :)
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- Alouette Alouette Jun 18, 2009 @ 11:12 am
- Thanks for some useful tips. There are too many for me to absorb as I begin but it is good to know I can come back to learn how to improve present and future lenses. I will work on some keyword concepts first & try to figure out what tags are. (I still don't quite get it after reading the examples).
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