These are the kind of visitors you want most: a targeted audience who will be more likely to click your links, or even your sales modules, because they’re interested in what your lens is about.

Note that it’s against Flickr’s terms of service to use their site to store photos that are simply graphical elements of webpages (titles, banners, buttons), or items you’re trying to sell. But this is an indirect way of drawing in a target audience who may click on your links or products.

Linkbait — making something so compelling, outrageous, attractive or argument-inducing that people are liable to click on the link — is harder. You can’t count on any picture or image going viral, and most don’t. However, if one ever does, it could bring in traffic by the thousands.

Here’s a linkbait I’d been planning to make for a while.

The key is that I didn’t make it just for linkbait. I’ve been wanting to show off my cat’s silly dance for 12 years, ever since she first started amusing me and visitors! But “funny cat videos” — the best ones — tend to enjoy widespread circulation. I included the link in the video itself, just in case people start replicating and distributing it (they shouldn’t, but that’s often what happens with viral videos).

I’ve also posted the raw URL near the top of the video description, where it shows up on YouTube in the video’s sidebar above the “More…” link. I’m already getting some traffic from there. Cool slideshows and fun videos can thus be embedded on your lens, and drive traffic to your lens.

My “How to Get Your Lens Found” tutorial includes some tips I learned from PotPieGirl and Spirituality and Fluffanutta, and I used to cite Mr Lewissmile, before I decided I disagreed with some of his tricks and changed my recommendations. My CSS Codes Tutorial includes something I call CSS Kung Fu, which I learned from Glen. On baseball lenses, I’ve got links to forum discussions on MLB boards.

And ya know what? I thank these people for their help, and pay them by sending them traffic. It’s only fair!

On a pragmatic level, those links represent a large part of the clickthroughs for my lens. Repeat after me, squids: clickthroughs boost lensrank; lensrank determines payout tier.

There are several other ways that being honest about your sources can actually benefit your bottom line.

If you’re sending traffic off to Amazon buy that book you used as a reference source, you and Squidoo are getting a commission. If you’re sending traffic to another Squidoo lens, you’re giving Squidoo another chance to collect ad revenue and/or royalties from that visitor. That supports Squidoo — and all of us.

I’ve been pondering lately how Squidoo’s business model promotes helping other lensmasters, because we all profit when one profits. That’s true more abstractly on other sites, where success breeds success. But think of CafePress for a moment (if you can without steam coming out of your ears). For the most part, each shopkeeper works in isolation and is competing with all the rest.

What about citing your sources on pages not hosted by Squidoo? Yes, it still helps! Linking to content closely related to your topic — preferably using your keywords — can boost SEO. Other sites often have ways to monitor where their traffic is coming from, and may follow the links back to your webpage or lens. Other sites may even list “Trackbacks” at the bottom of their pages, posting links to pages talking about their page. Then, woo hah, you’ve got a free backlink.

Finally, citing your sources helps establish you as trustworthy.

Visitor trust and respect is one of those intangibles that can be your longterm key to online success or obscurity.

Earn that trust.

So it’s time to shake things up a little with my first guest blogger, none other than Samhain the Cat!

Samhain is a real pro when it comes to getting noticed, and she’ll be the first to tell you she’s at the top of any meaningful search. Of course, she’s also an expert at NOFOLLOW— you’ll never find her with any search engine on the planet, when she doesn’t want to be found!

So without further ado, let me vacate the keyboard so she can give you:

Samhain the Cat’s SEO Guide

(THE LOLCAT VERSION)