- Squidoo Set Up & Techniques -

Transcription

1 - Squidoo Set Up & Techniques - 1 P a g e

2 Introduction... Squidoo.com is the popular Web 2.0 publishing platform that allows you to create pages or 'lenses' within their website on topics that interest you. Lenses are pages that gather information about your topic of interest and snap it all into focus. As an affiliate marketer, the advantage with Squidoo is that Google ranks their pages highly in the search results (not as well as they once did, but still pretty highly) so you can create a page of content based around your keyword phrase, get it ranked in the top 10 and hopefully draw in traffic and sales. As I said in the keyword research manuals, after finding a phrase with a decent amount of traffic and low to medium levels of competition, the idea is not just to get your own website or blog ranked, but also to create Web 2.0 pages based around these keywords and get them ranked as well. End aim? To dominate that phrase on Google. Of course, all the content you produce for these differing sites will have to be unique but if a keyword is getting 1000 searches a day and you own 3 or 4 listings in the top 10, then it will obviously be worth creating it. With Squidoo, if you create your page effectively, you should stand a good chance of getting ranked if there are 50,000 competing pages or less. If the competition is greater, it doesn't mean you shouldn't create a lens, you may just have to start building back links to your Squidoo URL (in the same way as you would do with your own website) in order to achieve the rankings you want. 2 P a g e

3 Squidoo Rules & Regulations... Recently, Squidoo has cracked down on some areas of content and there are now a number markets where you won't be able to create lenses. You can get the full details on this page however here's a quick list that you should take note of: - Pharmaceutical, drug, and diet aid reviews and diet pill sales. - Weight loss and dieting ebooks. - Medical cures. This means yeast infections, snoring, hair loss, augmentations, asthma miracle cures, etc. - Help with love life such as 'getting an ex back'. - Gambling. - Money stuff like: mortgages, currency trading, and Forex. - Website traffic boosting systems....and even though they don't state it specifically, 'make money online' content probably won't cut the mustard with them either. Even though this seems like quite an expansive list, especially to an affiliate marketer (no weight-loss :( ), there are a gazillion markets out there in which you can create content and when you do, make sure you follow these golden rules: 1. Squidoo manually reviews all lenses before they allow them to be viewed by the world. This means you must produce decent content to begin with or they won't let it go live. I suggest getting 3 articles written based around the topic in question, do some sort of a 'top 10' list, embed a couple of relevant You Tube videos and write an interesting 'introduction' to the lens. 3 P a g e

4 2. Until your lens is approved, DO NOT include any affiliate links. In fact, do not include ANY links unless they are to an authority or news website such as the BBC.com or CNN.com 3. Don't include product reviews to begin with, even if you don't initially link out to the site that you are talking about. 4. Do not overstuff your content with keywords As an overview, just make sure you produce good content to start with. If you do, your lens will almost certainly be approved and the quality content will actually help you make more sales when it goes live. Once that has happened, you can then add additional content and start promoting a product in your market although I would highly recommend that you avoid adding direct affiliate links. Link to your own blog or review site instead or use a php redirect. For more information on 'over-promotion' and out-going links, I highly recommend reading point #4 on this page: before you begin creating lenses. 4 P a g e

5 Squidoo Set Up... Step 1 in getting your Squidoo page up and running is to sign up: Go to: and click the Sign Up button. On the next page fill in your details, tick the appropriate boxes and enter the Captcha image. Click the Continue button in the bottom right had corner of the box you're filling your details in. If there are any issues with the information you've entered you'll be taken to the top of the sign up page and a red box with what the problem is will be displayed, eg: 5 P a g e

6 The most common errors are to do with user name selection, like in the above example. Probably the most common is that some one has already picked the user name you wanted. Note that if this happens you will also need to enter your password again as those fields will be blanked and the acceptance of the T's & C's will be un-ticked each time. Once you've managed to get registered you'll see this screen: 6 P a g e

7 Enter the subject matter for your first Lens in the box with the text I want to make a page about... (green arrow) and then click the Create! button (red arrow) Creating A Squidoo Lens... Now you've entered what your Lens is going to be about you'll be asked what the goal is for your page, just pick one, doesn't matter which, if in doubt use I just want to do my own thing. Once you've selected your goal click the Go to step 3 button. Fill in the boxes and pay special attention to the title of your new lens. For this, use the exact keyword phrase you want to target in Google. For the URL, use your keywords again. If that URL has already been taken, try using 'dashes' or 'underscores' between the keywords. For example, if you were building a lens on 'tattoo designs' and was taken, you would try either: or Then, make sure you select the closest matching category to keep things targeted. Click the Go to step 4 button. 7 P a g e

8 Step 4 is very important too from an SEO point of view and this is where you tag your lenses. Enter the main keyword phrase you are trying to rank for in the 'best keyword' box and then enter 3 additional targeted keywords. These can be either based around your main keyword or LSI keywords (see the SEO module for information on LSI) Then, fill in the Captcha image, click the Done! button and you'll eventually be taken to your Workshop where you actually create your lens. 8 P a g e

9 Adding Content... Adding content is self explanatory and easy to do but none the less, lets quickly run through the process. Your Workshop is where you'll add content to your lens. Click the Edit button. Enter a title for the introduction to your lens and remember to include your keyword phrase. 9 P a g e

10 Enter a description of your lens and remember to include your keyword at least once but don't go mad with it, this has to be human readable and as I mentioned a moment ago they can detect keyword stuffing. It's a good idea to have an image relating to your subject matter and make sure that the file name also has your keyword in it. Once selected (use the Browse button (green arrow)) click the Upload Photo button (blue arrow). When you're done click the Save button (red arrow): 10 P a g e

11 Now you'll have your introduction done but no real content so you'll need to begin adding modules. The first one you'll want to add is a plain and simple text module introducing your module. Either type a number into the box (red arrow) or click the + symbol to add a text box NOTE: Squidoo does not consider a lens to be complete until it has at least 3 text modules (not including the introduction) so make sure you have 3 modules as a minimum. You can have keyword rich articles written for these. Once you've selected how many of which type of module you require click the ADD button. 11 P a g e

12 The new modules will show up on the left portion of your Workshop. Click the Edit button to the right of your new module to start adding content. I've chosen text for mine... Enter a title, a sub-title, then your text in the large box, 10,000 characters max. per text box. Once done, click the Save box unless you want to add a picture to your text and it's exactly the same to do this as it was before, in other words click Upload Photo after browsing for it. You can use standard HTML hyperlink code to create links in your lens text (note that Squidoo supports only a very small subset of HTML tags should you wish to use them), and just like any hyperlink the code is as follows: <a href= YOUR_DOMAIN >ANCHOR TEXT</a> Those are the basics but you might want to do something a little more than just text... Click the Browse all modules link below the standard module addition boxes on the right hand side of the window and you'll get this: 12 P a g e

13 There are many types of module available and you can even add video to your site as I mentioned a moment ago. With some creative use of text, images, videos, audio or even a poll for your visitors to vote on (every one likes to give their opinion) you can build a lens that will get approved, attract traffic and also rank highly in Google. After completing your initial content, click the Publish button in the top right corner (yellow arrow). 13 P a g e

14 Additional Tips... Once you re up and running with your new lens, it s time to make sure it s optimized for Google. As ever, there are some pretty basic do s and don ts for making sure that Google ranks your lens as high and as quickly as possible, so you start to generate good levels of traffic. Furthermore, making your lens user-friendly and attractive is important for when traffic does arrive so that visitors are not put-off and move on before pausing to see what you are offering and have to say. Content... Squidoo lenses are already pretty well optimized for on-page SEO, but content is still important - write clearly and concisely in paragraphs that read well, and once your lens is approved, make them keyword rich to a value of about 3% - in other words don't over do it. Don t try and cover too much with a single lens, stick to one keyword phrase per lens and simply create more if you need to. Google will get confused if your lens focuses on more than one theme and may not rank you for any of them. As ever, fresh content is a great way of showing Google that your lens is active and evolving, and they will be more inclined to send traffic your way. Keep adding to your lens, even if it s a case of re-writing or adding to old modules. Once your lens is approved, make sure the information/review about the product you're promoting is at the top. Then have any additional content such as videos and articles underneath. Here's a example of a really good lens that does this: 14 P a g e

15 Groups... Joining groups is essential. When you have your lens complete, published and up and running, start looking for groups you can join. Obviously the best groups for your lens to join are the ones that are relevant to your lens. When you join a group, the group s title appears on your lens, which adds weight to your keywords. Lensroll... If you have several lenses focusing on totally different content/products/markets don t be tempted to Lensroll them, just for the sake of it. Only Lensroll them if they are relevant to each other, and if not, then either find another high quality lens that fits. 15 P a g e