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:

Something jumps out when you compare these search results.

The FIRST example tells the reader exactly what’s on the page. It has energy and pep!  It says “FREE STUFF for you,” always a draw. And it includes the keywords right in the title and opening sentence. The only thing it’s missing is a Call to Action.

The SECOND example begins with a friendly but generic “Welcome to my webpage” message. Courtesy is a fine thing, but it’s too generic for bait. Any webpage on any topic could start, “welcome to my webpage.” Skip vagueries. Get right to the point and say, “Come and get X and Y on this page.”

The THIRD example is a little hard to read — evidently there’s a logo there with some image alt text right at the beginning — however, it manages to get  hard and compelling fact into a very short snippet: “90 Free Squidoo…” something. Clip art graphics? Who knows. Maybe if they’d sacrifice the alt-text for that image they could fit the free whatsit in before the snippet breaks off.

Stepping back from the example, here’s some general guidelines to help you “bait your hook”.

1. Include your keywords in the opening sentence, showing you have exactly what someone is looking for (this also helps with SEO).
2. The sentence must be well-written, proving you know what you’re talking about.
3. When possible, the sentence should include a Call to Action, or at least build the reader’s enthusiasm and expectation.
4. The webpage title — the link — should include both keywords and something that tells the reader, “I’m what you need/want.” “Easy Kite Making” is a good search term. “Easy Kite Making: How to Build a Pyramid Kite” tells the reader they’ll be getting a step-by-step guide. See the difference?

You can’t always predict what excerpt people will see in search results. Sometimes they’ll land on your page searching for a term that’s halfway down it. But you can refine your introduction, the opening of your webpage or lens, to make sure it looks sexy. You can make sure that the first instance of your keywords on your webpage is in a sentence that’s compelling, informative, and phrased to attract clicks.

What is the character length for search engine results?

Maximizing the blurb served up by search engines helps you bait your hook. How much bait can you use?

Google search engine results show about 130 characters for the very first page on a domain that matches a search query, then they will either list just ONE more result for that domain, again with about 130 characters, or TWO results, with only 75 characters each. The example above shows three results.

This example shows just two results:

Yep, there’s an SEO blunder in result #2! I’ve fixed it, but of course, it takes a while to get re-indexed.

The third place to worry about is Squidoo search results. What do people see when your lens shows up in search results, tag pages or featured lenses modules?

That’s about 195-200 characters.

Finally, the Featured Lenses module gives you a generous 250 characters:

So what?

Craft the first 128-130 characters of your introduction with extreme care. That’s for Google. It’s best if you can get something catchy and/or keywords within the first 75 characters. Use the next 80-100 characters to engage your reader even more in Squidoo search results.

This takes practice– I’m still working on it myself. Check your search results now and then to see how they look. If you haven’t made maximum use of the blurb Google or Squidoo is giving you, try rewriting for brevity and punch.

“Bait your hook” wisely wherever you’ve bookmarked, plugged or promoted your lens.

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…

3. I search Squidoo and the web to make sure there’s not thousands of pages with those keywords. Popularity doesn’t mean YOUR page will be popular; it means tons of competition.

I do this by Googling to see which pages use my potential keywords in their title:

• allinurl:keyword1 keyword2
• allintitle:keyword1 keyword2
• allinanchor:keyword1 keyword2
• site:www.squidoo.com keyword1 keyword2

Note that I search Squidoo. When Google serves up search results, its default view only shows the two most relevant pages for one domain, with a “more” link. If there are two well-optimized Squidoo lenses for my keywords, they’ll bump mine out of view.

4. Provide a lot of useful, original, exciting content.

If I’m struggling to figure out what to say, or I’m not having a lot of fun making the lens, there’s a good possibility I don’t HAVE enough to say, or people won’t have much fun reading my lens. I’ve been known to abandon ideas at this stage when it’s clear I don’t have a great lens idea.

5. Good graphics/design/visuals.

The best content in the world won’t hold visitors if they don’t have shiny things to look at. I use my Free Web Graphics: Where to Find Them lens to help me search likely sites for graphics, or make my own.

6. Provide tempting places for people to click.

Link to good, relevant, and USEFUL content. Cicks and clickthroughs are vital. They boost lensrank. They keep your reader engaged in your lens. They send your reader to other lenses (maybe yours). Attracting web traffic is great, but what do you DO with it once you get it? This is the payout.

6. Integrate keywords into page.

I use keywords when I think of them in the writing stage, but really, getting great content out is MOST important. Then go back and tweak headers, text, link text and graphics filenames to include your keywords in a subtle way.

8. Refine Squidoo tags.

Remember that the primary tag is like the label on a grocery aisle, broad enough that your lens will be cross-referenced with lots of lenses that are likely to have the same kind of audience as yours. Other tags may be more specific, but there’s no need to get REALLY specific: Squidoo tags are used to help lenses get cross-linked, so they always have to be broad enough to be shared by other lenses.

Search tags pages. Turn on your Discovery Tool and see which lenses show up in your sidebar. You may want to search tags to make sure the tags you pick tend to pull up GOOD lenses.

9. Get the word out.

Ping it with SquidUtils’ Workshop Add-on. Twitter. Tagfoot. Post in Lenses We Like. Add to Lensography (you do have a lensography?) Blog it. You may want to Stumble /Digg, but see my post on which social networking sites help SEO. Lensroll your lens, feature your lens, or add it to the Discovery Tool of your other relevant lenses. This lets your followers AND search engines know about new lens.

10. Refine.

• Monitor traffic.
• If a lot of people are coming to your lens searching for some particular phrase, make sure your lens has what they’re looking for near the top of the page, or make a NEW lens targeting that query and cross-linke the lenses.
• Refine text of lens to match phrases in search queries that come up fairly often.
• Look for new resources / videos / lenses that are related to your lens.
• Lensroll related lenses.
• Improve graphics/layout and readability.
• Trim unnecessary filler text.
• Reply to guestbook queries.

Remember, lens updates give a lensrank freshness boost. Don’t worry about getting your lens perfect before publication.

Final Tip: Don’t be afraid to publish your lens to see how it looks.  Squidoo’s not going to index it for a day; search engines usually take a day or two to find a lens, and your friends and followers are not likely to notice the new lens on your Squidoo Profile until you’ve Squidcast, Twittered, or otherwise announced the new lens. Few if any eyeballs will see a half-finished lens, as long as you really do finish it within a day or so. You can also add a Text Module with a humorous “Under Construction” note as the first module after the introduction, as long as you remember to remove it. I’d wager that very few people have seen my “Whoops! You’ve caught me with my pants down!” message with the dancing penguins animated gif!

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.

I got the same advice. I bought into it. But does social media/social networking really benefit SEO (search engine optimization)?

Hey, let me be social and ask you, the readers!

Now, let me give you my answer…

Answer: Tagfoot, as far as I can tell, is one of the few social media sites that benefits SEO.

It’s time for me to remind you of that social media links and SEO rant by Michael Martinez of SEO-Theory (you should really read the whole post to understand the context):

“Social media link building is a complete waste of time from a search engine optimization point of view. Even if you know of social media sites that haven’t yet implemented nofollow you don’t know how long that gravy will continue to taste good. Google is chasing your sorry social media linking profile and you need a better plan than that.”  —“Real Advice from Bad SEOs”

How do we know he’s right? How do we know which social networking links still pass the “backlink gravy”?

We need more than just a NoDoFollow Firefox plugin, although that’s a start.

That tells us that links on StumbleUpon, Del.ici.ous, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook are set NoFollow.

NoFollow means that search engines won’t follow or index those links. So for SEO purposes, those links are invisible! Links on those sites won’t boost your webpage’s position in search engine results one jot.

LinkedIn? It depends. The “Website” listed in your profile is Follow, the “Additional Information” section, including “My Websites”, is NoFollow. So, one link from a not-particularly-relevant website with no pagerank. Whoopie.

Reddit? Another “It depends.” Submitted URLs start out Nofollow and may be promoted to Follow if enough people up-vote them. But Reddit members react like antibodies when they sense self-promotion– they will BURY you.

Digg? Ah yes, the holy grail of linkspam. Nevermind that you can get your account suspended for self-promotion on Digg. Links on Digg are Follow, right? Linkbuild me, baby! I can always open a new account!

Except now Digg has implemented an ingenious way of redirecting all the SEO benefit to itself for links submitted to Digg. See The Truth about Digg’s Diggbar, The Digg Toolbar Exposed or 5 Reasons Diggbar Sucks for more information. (In light of their findings, I’ve added a Frame Free WordPress plug-in to block Diggbar from this blog. Nice PR disaster, Digg.)

Tagfoot is the only social networking I’ve found whose bookmarks are set Follow, whose robots.txt file doesn’t block spiders, and which doesn’t ban users for self-promotion. But before you all run out to spam Tagfoot, remember that Tagfoot members will block you or flag you as a spammer if you abuse the system. [[UPDATE June 9, 2009: Tagfoot has set its links to NoFollow for ordinary users, DoFollow for special members. See this post for more info.]]

So, am I saying you should give up on using social networking to promote your (quality!) webpages?

No. My point is that social media sites are lousy for search engine optimization– getting search engines to send you traffic. So don’t bother with SEO tactics on social media sites. When participating in social networking, optimize for humans!

Post a viral video on YouTube or a good photograph on Flickr with a link back to your website, and members of those sites may click on the link, even if search engine spiders ignore it.

Likewise, if you participate in a social media community, recommend good websites, and earn a following, your followers will follow your links even if search engines don’t.

That means investing time in meaningful participation on social networking sites. Interact with people. React to people. Carry on conversations. Read and rate what others are linking to. Retweet. Etc. You can’t cheat with social networking — you have to be social.

You may find that you’d prefer to sink more effort into passive forms of traffic generation — e.g. keyword optimization — which continue to work when you’re busy doing other stuff. With blogs, forums, and social networking, as soon as you stop participating, most of the traffic dies away.

Which brings me back to the point I keep making about building web traffic with social media: join social networking communities if you enjoy being active in online communities! Getting visitor traffic from followers is a secondary return on your (time) investment. Your primary ROI for social networking sites is the enjoyment and satisfaction of social networking.