Greekgeek's Online Odyssey - Hubpages and Online Article Writing Tips

Updating Squidoo Lenses: Staying Fresh

After 60 (?) days, a lens loses lensrank because it’s not fresh.

Also, Google rewards frequently updated content.

These are two separate things, but they go together.

What are your techniques for keeping lenses fresh?

Here’s some of mine.

Quick Fix — do one of the following

  • While watching TV, I’ll sort my dashboard by date (click the date column at top), then edit and re-publish. Don’t do all of them on the same day — stagger them so you’re doing 10 or so on different days.
  • Check traffic stats. Change the range to 3 months. See any long tail phrases that are getting a lot of hits? Go edit your lens, see if you can have that phrase appear in a module title or image filename or body text without it being intrusive to human readers.
  • Edit for clarity. Trim excess verbiage, tighten prose.
  • Check your images. Do you have alt-text (or labels) that match your keywords? Do imagenames match your keywords?
  • Search Squidoo. See if you can find any good lenses on your topic to feature or lensroll.
  • Search Amazon. See if you can find any good products to feature in a sidebar widget.

Slightly Longer Fix

  • Jot down the purpose of your lens on a post-it or something (Goals #1, 2, 3). Read your lens module by module. Does each part satisfy a goal? Or is there stuff in your lens that doesn’t satisfy the lens goal? Why is it there?
  • Look for any graphics that could be improved. Search for Creative Commons, clip art or stock photos to make it look better.
  • Skim the answer deck. See any ideas that catch your eye? Read a “tips and techniques” lens, and apply it to yours.
  • Search the web for your topic. See any useful information or sites you could link to? Maybe get some new ideas.
  • Search YouTube for related videos.
  • Search Vimeo, Veoh, and OTHER video sites for related videos. We always forget those!
  • Search Twitter for tweets related to your lens topic. The Tweets themselves won’t give you anything new, but they might point you at (a) news, products, or content you could add to your lens or (b) what people interested in your topic are talking about.

All right, your turn! What do you do to keep lenses updated?

2 Comments

  1. Hi Greekgeek – I just wanted to say that you have a fabulous blog full of great tips!

  2. I thought that lenses were static and I didn’t want to keep improving them all the time. However, you made me change my mind. Thank you!

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