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November, 2009:

Add Tasty Bait to Search Engine Results!

Nov 30th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
2 comments

People find things on the web by searching. SEO helps you get your page in front of people searching for it. SEO is like throwing fishing hooks into a sea full of hungry fish. The more SEO you know, the better you'll be able to ensure your hook gets seen by lots of fish.

But a fishing hook isn't enough to catch a fish. Even if you get to page one of search engine results, you still need your "hook" to stand out from all the rest. What kind of bait should you use to attract a click on your link?

Look at this example:

search-engine-results

Something jumps out when you compare these search results.

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SquidQuiz -- A Great Way to Build Relevant Backlinks

Nov 27th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
Comments are off for this post

SquidQuiz is a fun, quick kind of Squidoo lens. Create a trivia quiz on a topic you love, add a Featured Lenses module to your other quizzes, and you only need one more content module to get the lens featured. For those of us who tend to make long, involved lenses on topics, this is a great way to force us to be brief.

greek-mythology-trivia-quizgreek-myth-quiz-apollogreek-mythology-quiz-athena

But WAIT! Back up. See what I said back there? Add a Featured Lenses module to your other quizzes. Or any sort of links to your lenses on related topics!

I think this could be very powerful for SEO. I didn't figure out the system until lens #3, but I soon realized there's an SEO trick staring us in the face.

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Using Squidoo's Traffic Stats to Tweak SEO

Nov 24th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
No comments yet

Last time I talked about Squidoo Tags functioning as meta keywords. We know that meta keywords don't boost SEO much, because most search engines, apart from Yahoo, don't give them any more weight than any other link text on your lens.

So when you check your traffic stats tab on a lens, what good does it do to see which search phrases people used to get there? Newbie lensmasters often think they should add them as tags, but in fact, that may not be helpful.

Instead, I recommend using that data to apply SEO techniques manually. In this post, I'll walk you through an example to show you how.

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Squidoo Tags and the Meta Keyword Tag: SEO or No?

Nov 24th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
1 comment

Squidoo tags are funny beasts. They work in two entirely different ways: on Squidoo, as a way to cross-link lenses together, and in search engines, they help target search traffic. Just to be more complicated, we've got some conflicting info on how, exactly, search engines handle meta keywords, which for our purposes are Squidoo tags.

It's time to sort out Squidoo tags and how to use 'em.

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Recipe for a Successful Squidoo Lens

Nov 21st, 2009
by Greekgeek.
1 comment

Now and then I like to review what I actually do to make a successful Squidoo lens, since this has changed as I've learned more.

Note that this is the Lazy Lensmaster's guide to making successful Squidoo lenses. I want to spend most of my time making content, not promoting and linkbuilding, so I craft self-sustaining, quality lenses that pull in traffic without my having to build tons of links. Combine my techniques with a lens promoter's techniques, and you'll blow both of us out of the water. :)

1. Have a great idea that hasn't been done to death.

I ask myself, "Would I want to read a webpage on X?" Too many people go right to traffic tools and SEO without stopping to think whether anyone would really want to read a page like the one they intend to make.

2. Brainstorm keywords, phrases that people might search for to find my page.

I use Wordtracker and Google Adwords to figure out what related words and phrases generate a lot of traffic. At the same time, in another web browser tab...

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The "Antwerp Sound of Music" viral video and SEO

Nov 16th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
No comments yet

I  just made a new lens on a popular funny YouTube video, the "Antwerp Train Station Sound of Music" prank.

If you haven't seen the video, you need to-- it'll make you smile. VERY effective. So far it's gotten nearly 13 million hits, and that's not counting all the duplicate copies floating around on YouTube plus a few million more on various European YouTube sites.

It's a great case study in "linkbait," content that's so good people start linking to it. (Also known as "viral," since linkbait this good can spread by word-of-mouth to millions of web users within days, even hours).

It also illustrates an SEO blunder.

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The Squidoo Modules List Is DONE!

Nov 14th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
No comments yet

It's here! The Squidoo Modules List is finally (re)done!

Squidoo Module Categories

In March '08, I made a lens showcasing all existing Squidoo modules. Many were busted, many were strange little widgets that most of us have never used, but they all fit on one (long) lens.

Squidoo has grown. Some widgets have been retired. Others have busted. Many more have been added. The module browser has been completely revamped. It was going to be a ton of work to redo my Module Index. But at last, I have reviewed, tested, and showcased every single blinking module, at least until five minutes from now when the SquidTeam changes something.

The Squidoo Module List:

  • Summary list of all modules, including an Excel and Ready-to-Print version
  • Demonstrations of each and every module
  • Suggestions about the best settings for some of them
  • Info on character limits, image size limts
  • Which modules are NoFollow, which ones aren't indexed by search engines
  • and more.

I don't usually ask y'all to rate it, but by gods... that was a LOT of work. Please stop by!

Now all I have to do is edit/trim my bug report for Gil and the gang.

Profile of a Successful Squidoo Lensmaster

Nov 13th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
2 comments

Have you taken a look at Pastiche's Squidoo Stats Blog?

She doesn't give earnings, just her lens tier breakdown. 40 lenses in the top 2000 out of 120. FORTY. That's
one out of every three of her lenses earning top dollar. AND they'll be earning lots of Amazon commisisons, on top of ad revenue!

I have been aware of and lensrolled or featured some of Pastiche's lenses on clipart, but that figure still knocked my socks off.

It's worth taking the time to stop and admire Pastiche, and observe her secrets to Squidoo success:

1) Cover a niche very well, with lots of lenses devoted to seasonal and specific topics within that niche.
2) Make well-organized, attractive, easy-to-use and easy-to-read lenses.
3) Target keywords like crazy so you get a lot of traffic for specific searches. Don't just have a lens on clipart. Have a lens on clipart for vintage hearts, or John Deere Tractor clipart, or squirrels.
4) Clickthroughs. Oh my gosh the clickthroughs. Nearly everyone coming to her lens is LOOKING for something, and almost certainly will be clicking on some of her links because she gives EXACTLY what she promise to give with the lens title and opening blurb.
5) Amazon modules that target her reader's wishes and needs exactly. It's one thing to promote items related to your lens topic. It's another thing altogether to target a particular audience that is desperately wanting the thing you offer, and will be quite likely to buy it.

She's identified a corner of the web for which there is a steady and unrelenting command, and provides a service so that lots and lots of people looking for it will come to her. I know from my own lens on where to get free graphics that there's a bottomless demand here, but I haven't really done much to monetize or follow up on that. Pastiche has!

Of course, since she's cornered the market on clipart so well, the answer is not to try and target the same niche, but to apply Pastiche's winning Squidoo strategy to another niche-- one that's wide open.

Hats off to you, Pastiche!

Squidoo Blog Recommendation: SquidUtils

Nov 9th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
Comments are off for this post

Here is an unsolicited recommendation: Read the SquidUtils Blog!

The Fluffanutta is a tech-savvy Squidoo member who has created add-ons for the Squidoo Workshop, maintains the SquidUtils site chock-full of free goodies for Squidoo lensmasters, and is responsible for some of the tools that eventually became incorporated into Squidoo itself.  I use his Workshop Add-ons tools as part of my lensbuilding/promoting routine. He knows more about how Squidoo works than just about anybody who isn't an actual employee of Squidoo.

The SquidUtils Blog has tons of tips and suggestions for how to get the most out of Squidoo. I've learned an awful lot of what I know from that blog and Fluff's post in the SquidU forums, and when I ask a question, Fluffanutta is usually the one who tells me what I need to know.

So. SquidUtils Blog. Great source of Squidoo secrets and practical knowledge.

This post is a thank-you to Fluff for straightening me out and helping me understand two different Squidoo topics in the last couple of days!

Lensrank Factors: Pages Per Visit?

Nov 8th, 2009
by Greekgeek.
4 comments

My theory about Lensrank is that most Dashboard stats are used to calculate Lensrank, although we have no idea how they're weighted. Otherwise, why is Squidoo taking up huge gobs of server time and space to crunch those numbers for hundreds of thousands of lenses each day?

I have been away for a while, and just noticed a third stat added to the Traffic stats for a lens:

Total visits: 174 visits     Total pageviews: 256 pageviews     Pages/visit: 1.47

O-ho. Squidoo's decided pages/visit is important!

EDIT: Oh, but what IS pages/visit? No, it's not how many times your visitor comes back to the page, as I had thought. Fluffanutta explains: each lens now has sub-pages aka "Module pages," so this gives you an idea how often visitors are going to those pages as well as the main lens.

Lakeeerieartist has a great lens explaining Module Pages and what they're good for.

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