This URL has 1000+ links from 6 domains.

• angelfire.com 1
• annbrundigestudio.com 20
• digg.com 1
• mythphile.com 25
• squidu.com 952
• squidutils.com 1

(Once again demonstrating the  limitations of social media for SEO, since the links from StumbleUpon, Del.ici.ous. Tagfoot and others don’t show up.)

1000+ backlinks is pretty good, right? Well, yeah, assuming (a) all search engines see the same backlinks as Yahoo Site Explorer (the database SquidUtils uses), and (b) all search engines count those links as relevant. But of course, they don’t.

Checking my Swoosty SEO Tools Firefox Add-on…

(Pagerank 4, not bad, could be better…)

Links according to Google:

• 40, of which 36 are other Squidoo lenses, 4 on my Mom’s blog.

Digg doesn’t show up. That ancient Angelfire site I’ve had since the dawn of the web isn’t listed. More troublingly, my blogs started 8 months (this blog) and 2 months ago don’t count, even though Google indexes their new posts within an hour.

Note that Googling for link:http://www.squidoo.com/lensname may not does not give all the backlinks that Google considers relevant for ranking in search results. I know Google search results occasionally turn up SquidU posts, so it’s seeing those signature links. [EDIT: Fluff explains why Google's link: search doesn't show all the links Google knows about.]

But this test is a sobering wake-up call that using Yahoo tools to count backlinks for Google optimization purposes is like using a German dictionary to translate a French menu.

Okay, it’s no secret that I am better at on-page SEO than backlink-building. But my “Free Web Graphics” lens (and the blogs mentioning it) are less than a year old. How about…

Test #2: A More Established Lens

Ancient Greece Odyssey is a less-searched topic, but it’s been around since May 2007. It’s got pagerank 5 instead of 4, for what little that is worth.

SquidUtils backlink checker:

• This URL has 595 links from 64 domains.

That’s half the number of links, but 10 times the number of different domains.

Google link checker:

• 28 links, of which only TWO are from non-Squidoo pages, but they’re my older blogs which are relevant to the lens topic. Surprisingly, one of those links was from Livejournal, which I don’t often hear of as a good blogging platform for SEO purposes, whereas only my older Wordpress blogs showed up (the ones 2 and 8 months old didn’t, though Google indexes new posts on them promptly).

Among the Squidoo pages that Google’s link: search turned up as links pointing to my lens, I notice a few things:

• Some but not all of my lenses turn up. I am stymied as to which lenses get chosen — they’re not all highly-ranked, they don’t all many backlinks, and at least one of them is old, stale, un-trafficked, and hasn’t changed much since 2007. Hm.
• Lenses with links to my lenses in Plexos did not turn up. I wonder whether Google demotes big lists o’ links.
• Lenses with regular updates tend to get listed. If you haven’t built a “Latest Ten Lenses” lens, do it now.
• The Squidoo tag page for the PRIMARY TAG was listed.
• Other Lensmaster profiles with Ancient Greece Odyssey listed FIRST under Favorites turn up.  Checking Webconf’s Spider Simulator,  it looks like Google may be giving extra love to the first link on a webpage after the header links.

Edited due to comments: As Fluff points out, just two examples isn’t a big enough sample size to let us draw any sweeping conclusions. And the link: search delimiter doesn’t tell us which links Google recognizes as backlinks for SEO; it just shows us “here are some pages that link to yours”.

But it does at least suggest that a good primary tag and links from other Squidoo lenses may help get your lens seen by Google. When you’re looking for places to build links to your lenses, I would start with lensrolling, featured lens modules, careful choice of the primary tag, and embedding links to your new lens  in the body text of your other lenses.

• iTunes – earn commission, feature iTunes tracks
• My Lenses – show your lenses filed under a certain category or topic.
• RSS Mashup – show recent posts from several RSS or blog feeds.

Click links above to see them demonstrated on my “Secret Squidoo Modules” lens!

NOTE: All of these have NoFollow links, so “My Lenses” isn’t the best way to get link juice from a lensography. But the content is crawled/indexed/seen by search engines.

Also, did you know? The Netflix module is commission-earning too!

I’ve been adding and updating my complete list of all Squidoo modules, so you might want to stop by and browse the list or download a new, updated version.

Here’s the steps I took to make this effective lens.

1) Find a controversial subject LOTS of people are talking about, and/or notice something in current news/buzz that people may look up.

I follow space news, and heard there were some new cool photos of moon landing sites. When I searched for them on the web, I ran into a whole pile of people claiming the moon landings are a hoax! (This would be news to my Mom’s friend Neil Armstrong.) A number of people were asking why there were no photos of moon landers from space. Aha! A question that can be answered with a Squidoo lens! Juicy debate and controversy! Perfect for getting traffic. Now, how to target it…

2) Find popular keyword searches for that topic.

First I looked at news posts, blog posts and especially the comments to see what words and phrases people were using to discuss the topic. I paid special attention to questions people were asking in comments, because when people ask questions, they often search the web for answers! I wrote these words, phrases and questions down, then checked their popularity in Google Adwords and Wordtracker to see what people were searching most often.  Finally, I Googled for “allinurl: <keywords>” and “allintitle: <keywords>” to figure out which of these phrases didn’t have too much competition (other webpages optimized to target those keywods).

Remember the golden rule of SEO: find popular search phrases for which there isn’t too much competition!

3) Weave keywords into page title, URL, lens photo’s filename, links, and a few module headers — this is standard Squidoo SEO practice.

My title is actually long– ideally it should be 4-5 words long  — but it’s covering several different popular search phrases.

4) Write entertaining copy that answers the exact questions people were asking.

For example, I noticed some folks asking about photos of the American flag on the moon, so I found a photo that showed it it. I noticed that some critics were complaining about the bright white spots on some of the moon lander photos, caused by major sun glare, so I found a video that illustrates exactly that.

5) Provide LOTS of clickthrough links.

Clickouts are key. Getting visitors to a webpage is step 1. Step 2 is to get them to DO something once they arrive — click links, buy products, view videos, vote in polls, etc. I included links right in the introduction that Mr. Five Second Attention Span might click on, then useful links — again related to the questions people asked on the topic — throughout.  Clickthroughs boost lensrank, and are a vital part of second tier lenses!

6) Get good, free, LEGAL graphics and videos to illustrate the webpage.

NASA images are very handy: since NASA is a US government agency, most of its images are available to the general public for reuse! Check permissions on NASA pages to make sure. This means that space-related topics are a gold mine for Squidoo lenses, since there’s lots of free photos available. See my Free Web Graphics lens for other sources of free images. For ideas about new lenses, you might take the unusual step of collecting interesting images, then writing a lens on that topic!

7. Interactivity (polls, guestbook, etc).

Interactivity increases reader interest in a lens, and the clicks may boost lensrank.

I tried the W3 Link Checker as Fluff suggested, but its interface is a little intimidating and hard to understand for Jane Average Web User.

After poking around, I would like to recommend the following free tool: iwebtool’s Broken Link Checker.

It limits you to 5 checks an hour unless you’re a paid subscriber. That seems fair enough! The interface is simple: a check means a link is working, a red x means it’s broken.

As usual, Seth is simple and short, whereas my own 3-part Squidoo tips tutorial on how to build web traffic is in-depth and too long.

One of Seth’s points jumped out at me:

You have no right to traffic. If you’re lucky, and GOOD, you earn some.

You’ll earn it when you do something daring, interesting, useful, provocative, free, compelling, emotional or urgent.

Hurry.

I’ve said this in other ways, but never quite so bluntly: YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO [WEB] TRAFFIC.

There are millions of fascinating, useful, incredible, wonderful, exactly-what-people-want web pages out there. A web user will never see more than a tiny fraction of them. So why should anyone pick your page, out of all those pages, to visit? Why stay there? Why read it?

It’s up to you to make it worth their time.

I just noticed on my “Is Squidoo a Scam?” lens that someone said he’d made four lenses and hadn’t earned any money in six months, and he was giving up.

On the one hand, it IS hard to get web traffic.

On the other hand, he hadn’t filled in his profile, he only had ONE lens left in his profile, and it was on a very popular topic for which there are over 970,000 webpages, according to Google.

Newbies write on popular topics, thinking they’ll get lots of traffic. They don’t realize that popular topics have thousands if not millions of pages already written on them, and they’re competiting with all those pages.

Okay, I’m preaching to the choir. The point is, you can’t assume a page will get traffic. It really is work to make useful, unique, readable, entertaining, grab-the-visitor-by-the-throat-and-make-them-stay webpages.

What can you do to boost the odds?

• Write on what you LOVE and KNOW. Passion, humor, and real in-depth knowledge shines through.
• Write on things that aren’t the most popular topic. Think of things you’ve looked up online or wondered about. Think about things you know which are off the beaten track. Lionel trains? Your town’s traditions or landmarks? A particular product, book, author, body part or animal? Seek topics that haven’t been done to death.
• Research, research, research. Not only do you want to cover the most important things about your topic, but you should find and link to the best websites and videos on your topic.
• Organization. Make it clear what your page is about, where you’re going to take your reader, and what they’ll get out of your lens right in the introduction.
• See my top ten Squidoo tips for some other ideas about how to make your lens stand out.
• Once in a while, make a list of ten webpages you’ve visited. Then write down the following. What brought you there? Did you read the webpage all the way through? What on the page held your attention?  If you clicked on any links, why did you click them? If you did NOT read the whole page, why? What did you skip? What did NOT hold your attention? Your tastes aren’t everybody’s, but the more you understand what keeps people on a page — and what doesn’t — the more you’ll be able to write successful webpages.

The bottom line: your lens has to be useful, entertaining and/or informative, NOT generic. You have to “earn” your traffic, as Seth puts it.

And then use as much SEO as you can to get your content found.

How to Make a Pyramid Kite gets kids trying to build pyramids for a school project.

Ancient Greece Odyssey, my travel diary, gets kids needing maps of Greece or information about Greek history and art.

My California Sea Hare page gets medical students trying to track down neurological research using sea slugs!

How do I know? I watch the Traffic Stats tab on my lenses and monitor for phrases like “Roman names for Greek gods” or “How to make a pyramid school project”.

This suggests a powerful untapped strategy for web traffic.

First, monitor your lens traffic stats. If you’ve got queries asking student-type questions, TARGET them. I do this in a few ways.

1) I create  a new lens answering the question and targeting the search phrase. I’ve done a few spin-off lenses like my Greece Odyssey FAQ answering “Ten questions students have about ancient Greece.”

2) I create a quiz targeting the questions/area that students are asking about.

3) Adjust/tweak the content of a lens to target unexpected search queries. Traffic stats showed my kitemaking lens drew a lot of students trying to build an Egyptian pyramid for school. So I put a note in the introduction saying, “Kids! Need to build a pyramid for school? Here’s how to adapt these instructions to make a pyramid! And here’s a stone wall pattern you can print out to wrap the pyramid!” with a link. The link is important– clickthroughs boost lensrank!

4) If you’re a parent, you have a secret weapon that I don’t — your kids’ homework! Don’t just help them with their homework. Make a lens about it. Even better, get THEM to make a lens, or help you make it! Today’s homework could be tomorrow’s second tier lens earning $2 a month!

Students don’t have big pocketbooks, so they’re not going to help you make gobs of money in affiliate marketing. But they ARE search engine savvy. They’re lazy. They want answers, and they want ‘em now!

Make sure the intro to your lens shows that you’ve got the exact answers they’re looking for, as I did with the “make a pyramid” query I kept seeing. Otherwise they’re liable to hit the back button and look elsewhere.

Don’t do their homework for them.  I give hints, help, and links to good websites on Greece, etc where they can find more info. I try NOT to write a big block that a student could lift wholesale and plug into an essay.

I also teach about plagiarism. I tell visitors that since I’ve done some work for them, the honest way to say “thank you” and not steal my work is to give credit. I tell them how to cite my webpage in a bibliography for a student paper. It’s good to teach students about copyright when they’re young! I’ve had a few students thanking me and promising to give me credit.

As I said, most students aren’t going to purchase much on your lenses except, perhaps, books that may help them in class or may help them write a paper. So targeting student traffic won’t earn you gobs of money. But if you can target student queries using good SEO, you’ll be aiming for an audience that big online businesses tend to ignore. It doesn’t take that much traffic to get a lens into the second tier, as long as you’re encouraging clickthroughs. So use students to build $2-a-month lenses, second tier lenses, and you could start raking an untapped resource of web traffic!

So my tips and suggestions here can get you from raw beginner to intermediate, but not expert SEO level.

However, there’s something else I’ve learned a lot about: Squidoo in general! How to build lenses. What looks good. I probably know as much about Squidoo modules as any ordinary member, since I did a test drive of every Squidoo module in 2008 and again this November.

So I’ve created a new “Lensblography” blog: a lensography of all my lenses done as a blog. Partly, as you should guess, it’s to build backlinks to my lenses. Partly it’s to help fans find my old lenses.

But on each lens, I’m going to share THREE things you may find useful:

• What I Learned Making This Lens
• What I Didn’t Learn Making This Lens
• Lens Stats and Milestones

So check out Greekgeek’s Lensblography in the weeks to come. I’ve got two lenses reviewed so far.

She wrote a funny yet very practical lens about Getting Over the SquidHump which is not just kind words — it also has some useful tips.

My own approach when I’m down is to go back over my Squidoo SEO, but we all have different ways of tackling Squidoo!

There is a powerful backlink source hidden right in plain sight: your Squidoo lensmaster bio.

Your “About Me” bio includes links to your top ten lenses in terms of lensrank, plus any links you may have hand-typed within your Bio. For instance, if you click the “More” link in my Default Lensmaster Bio  that shows up in the upper righthand of EVERY ONE of my Squidoo lenses, you get a popup that says:

Part-time Latin tutor, art history instructor, artist and writer puttering away at a PhD in mythology and depth psychology.

My lenses currently include art, gifts and musings related to ancient Greece – Ancient Greece Odyssey and my Toyota Prius, just because I keep having to answer the question –  “Yes, I Love My Hybrid Car!”

Greekgeek’s Pages

• Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveler’s Journal
• Free Web Graphics: Where to Get Them (Legally!)
• SquidU’s Lensmaster Lounge: Help for New Squids
• Squidoo SEO: Help Search Engines Send Traffic to You
• Squidoo Tips: Building Web Traffic
• Convert Your Prius to a Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle (PHEV)
• Make a Fancy Table of Contents
• Basic Kite Making: How to Build a Pyramid Kite
• The Care and Feeding of Apostrophes
• Sparta, The Mean Kitty of YouTube

See all of Greekgeek’s pages

ALL of those links are embedded in EVERY single one of my lenses. So those count as backlinks. LOTS of backlinks. With 110 lenses, that means that those lenses all get 110 backlinks!  So be sure to include links to some lenses you want to promote in your default bio. Then rejoice that all your lenses are giving a small SEO boost to your ten highest-ranked lenses…automatically!

I also feel like bragging, although I am actually a little surprised at one of the purple stars I just found in my inbox. It’s not my best lens. I suppose it’s unique content, though!

So here are all my Purple Stars and other Squidoo awards, plus a few personal benchmarks for which I am proud.

The Purple Stars

• Make a Fancy Table of Contents (5.29.09) I put a buttload of work into making this tutorial beautiful as well as useful.
• The Great Blizzard of 1978 (11.16.09) Just a fun lens about a piece of history I lived through.
• Convert Your Prius to a Plug-in Hybrid (11.21.09) Who found this?! It’s one of my oldest lenses, a somewhat dated report on the very first commercially-available kit to turn a regular into a plug-in hybrid.
• Greekgeek Squidoo Tips: How to Get Your Lens Found ( I think and hope this lens and its 2 sequels have helped a lot of new Squidoo lensmasters.
• How to Make a Pyramid Kite (12.9.09) Woot! I first built this webpage in ‘94 as a cool “here’s something I know — use it!” gift to the web. I’ve always been proud of this lens, despite its simplicity.

The Lens of the Day(s)

The first one was nominated barely two weeks after I started on Squidoo, and is still the cornerstone of my Squidoo presence. The second one is a rare case in which I self-nominated, but I had a good reason: (a) Jackie Robinson Day was coming up and (b) the lens donates its earnings to his charity, so I was eager to get it in the spotlight.

• Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveler’s Journal (Lens created 5.5.07,  Made LOTD on 5.17.07)
• Jackie Robinson: An American Hero (Made LOTD in early April ‘09)

Ancient Greece Odyssey also made 5th place runner-up for Lens of the Year 2007, and won Best Travel Lens in 2008. It has also been reviewed by several lensmaster blogs!

Giant Squid Community Showcase

• Funny Signs and Bizarre Billboards As so often, I had no idea this lens had been nominated until I noticed the traffic stats sending me fresh traffic. This would’ve been September ‘08.

Top 100 Lenses

• Ancient Greece Odyssey: A Traveler’s Journal 220 days in the Top 100, currently at 91.  Best rank: #3.
• Greekgeek’s Squidoo Tips: How to Get Your Lens Found 200 days in the Top 100, currently at 61. Best rank: #8.
• SquidU Lensmaster Lounge Help 72 days in Top 100, currently 1111. Best rank #29.
• Make a Fancy Table of Contents 50 days in Top 100, currently 3094. Best rank #3.
• Volcanoes Are Hot Stuff, 31 days on top 100, currently 7503. Best Rank: #31.
• Jackie Robinson: An American Hero 36 days on Top 100, currently 8500. Best Rank: #6.

As you can see, about half my “Best” lenses are Squidoo-related, but I’m happy to see that half of them are simply on topics I’m passionate about. Although really I’m such a CSS Addict that “Fancy Table of Contents” counts, too.

Random Traffic and Ratings

• Ancient Greece Odyssey lifetime visits: 19160 (adding all the other chapters, it’s about  40,000). 200 ratings.
• Greekgeek’s Squidoo Tips: 20193 lifetime visits, 826 ratings.
• Funny Signs: 26307 visits, 28 ratings. LOTS of search engine traffic, even though I knew nothing about SEO when I made it!
• How to Make a Pyramid Kite: 19797 lifetime visits, 15 ratings. Another pre-SEO lens that just happene to grab keywords.
  
• Fancy Table of Contents: only 4600 visits, but it was made 7 months ago and has 258 ratings!

Okay, that’s enough stats. I’m not so interested in pay, but if you want to know more about ALL my lenses and stats, see Greekgeek’s Squidoo Stats for pay days and breakdowns of my lenses from best to worst.