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graphics

The Most Powerful Way to Get Clickouts

I’ve had a lens that’s been driving me nuts. My Aligning Images tutorial was getting 500, 600, now 700-800 visitors a week, but it was always tier 2. Why?

Simple. People read tutorials, and then they leave. No clickouts means no tier one for you. I had included links to a free HTML editor and various other resources, and still, the fish weren’t biting.

I changed one graphic which I had created for my How to Get More Clicks, Sales tutorial. I didn’t really expect it to make that much of a difference.

Kapow. Tier one, baby. You can offer people freebies, useful resources, and printables on a silver platter, but they may not click. You need good clip art to get the clicks. (My favorite two are OpenClipart and clker.com.)

That, or everyone is too curious when they see a random URL of a YouTube video not to check it out.

I’d think that’s a joke, except that I’ve seen a similar “What’s in the box? I have to poke it!” effect when I use the Amazon module in thumbnail mode. Normally, people are less likely to click on small images than large ones. But if it’s a “what the heck IS that thing?!” type graphic, they click, because they want a closer look. Sometimes they buy it. More often they buy something else. Or, maybe, they don’t buy, but at least you scored a clickout!

I’ve seen a similar phenomenon on bizarre images with humorous captions that are slightly too small to read. Demotivational posters on Zazzle are very effective for clicks.

But of course, the most powerful way to get clickouts isn’t a killer, you’ve-just-got-to-click graphic.

The key is that you have to link to the Extreme Shepherding video.

Squidoo, Zazzle, and Creative Commons

Zazzle Referrals = Creative Commons that Earn Cash?

Last week I had a brain wave. Zazzle designs work a little like e Creative Commons: as a Zazzle Associate, you may feature them on your page or blog by providing credit and a link (in this case, a referral link) back!  You’re promoting an artist’s products (that’s the whole point). But as a side benefit, you have access to a huge body of gorgeous graphics.

Which of course meant I had to make a lens about it:

Want Graphics? Use Zazzle Designs Like Creative Commons

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Squidoo Graphics and Image File Types

I was  discouraged when I found a Squidoo lensmaster taking designs from my Squidoo Graphics lens and selling them on Zazzle, ignoring the Creative Commons license I posted on that lens. I didn’t feel like making new graphics, after that. However, I’ve recently been inspired again.

Recently, a newbie asked if there were Squidoo banners one could download. I started to send him to the official Squidoo banners downloads lens, but I saw that none of those graphics are really banners. So I made some and posted a new Squidoo Banners For You lens.

So what? Is this just a transparent link-drop? No, actually, I want to teach you a little about graphics, so you understand what I’m doing, and more importantly, so you understand what you are doing when you resize, save, or use a graphic.

Disclaimer: The Squidoo logo is a trademark of Squidoo LLC. This blog is not endorsed by/affiliated with Squidoo LLC.

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Squidoo Graphics: Colors, Themes, Black Box Tips

I’ve been thinking. Try as I might, I’m a journeyman when it comes to Squidoo SEO: I have the basic techniques down, I know what I’m doing, but I’ve got the online equivalent of an undergraduate college degree rather than a PhD. Whereas I’ve been doing computer graphics and layout since 1980, HTML since 1993, and CSS since–well, whenever it first came out.

So I should share more of my tips on graphics and webpage design. Here’s a few!

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Images and Videos as Linkbait!

I often use Flickr and YouTube for hosting my lens images and video and as a way to drive traffic.  I prefer hosting my best-looking photos on Flickr as opposed to Photobucket or even my own website, because I can add something in the description field like “This is an illustration for Ancient Greece Odyssey: My Tour of Delphi” which gets keywords into the link. Having tagged my photos carefully for things like Greece and Delphi and Greek Art, I get a lot of traffic from people searching for those iamges on Flickr.

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.

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Two More Quick Squidoo SEO Tips

Here’s two easy steps I do as a quick “freshness boost” for a lens about to slip past the bottom of its tier. It’s no substitute for adding new, updated, exciting content, but it’s a quick fix.

  1. In traffic stats, I change the window to 30-day-traffic and add any keyword phrase to my Squidoo Tags that’s been searched 4-5 times, if I haven’t got it already. This won’t help much with Google, which doesn’t put much stock in Squidoo tags, but it may help with MSN and Yahoo (once Yahoo rediscovers Squidoo). Don’t forget you need to PUBLISH a lens again after adding tags!
  2. I make note of my chosen keywords and the top 2-3 searches for my lens. I then add each as alt-tags to one image on my lens, in a module talking about that topic, or a graphic that illustrates it.  I may even delete an image, change its filename on my computer to a better keyword (use hyphens to separate words, e.g. picture-of-stork.jpg), upload it again and change the HTML to point to the new filename. Both these methods are using images to attract search engine traffic.

Voilá! Publish, and you’ve just updated your lens, which can give it a small ranking boost. Again, you can’t always cheat like this — sometimes you need to add new content! — but we can’t be rewriting all our lenses every day.

Two Quick Squidoo SEO Tips

I’m assuming most of you have read my Squidoo SEO tutorial, teaching you how to optimize your Squidoo page to help boost it to the front page of Google or other search engine searches.

Now, here’s two quick tips to help tweak the your SEO of existing Squidoo pages — and give it a lensrank boost to boot!

Keywords and Alt-Tags: Match ’Em Up

Check your traffic stats and see what keyword phrases are drawing traffic. (Hopefully, they match your chosen keywords.) Copy and paste them to a spare window.

Now go edit the lens and add alt-tags to all your images. That’s one of those chores we often neglect or put off. In naming images with alt-tags, keep your keywords in mind, especially those which keep turning up in searches.

If you don’t know what alt-tags are, read my section on How to Use Images to Drive Traffic to Your Lens!

Keywords: Plural Is Better Than Singular

Many search engines can find a singular from a plural (cat from cats), but not a plural from a singular. For some search engines, using the plural form is slightly better for optimization, as long as it’s not an irregular word like geese tht doesn’t have the word “goose” in it.

If you don’t know what a keyword is, get yourself back to my Squidoo SEO tutorial for a brush-up on search engine optimzation 101. It’s okay. There’s a lot of jargon out there; sorry I keep throwing it at ya!

Lensrank Boost?

Yep. Remember, regularly-updated Squidoo lenses receive a lensrank boost; if you leave a lens untouched for months, it drops. It’s usually better to scour the web for new quality content and link to it, and/or update your own content. But SEO  counts. After all, it’s bringing visitors.