Honestly, I’m not a big fan of MySpace for a number of reasons. Most important is that the links there are cloaked. Though people may see them on our profiles and click on them, the cloaked links don’t do a thing to add to our search engine rankings.

In case you’re wondering what a cloaked link is, this refers to a link that directs the click to a secondary URL set up by the site owner, in this case, the owner of MySpace. That secondary link at MySpace directs the click finally to the correct destination which would be my lens.

You can see the cloaking in action. Go to my MySpace and run your cursor over the links in the left-side column - the ones that look like they’ll go to Squidoo lenses. Then look at your status line. You’ll see the cloaking link there, not the Squidoo lens link.

My main reason for having a MySpace page is to keep in touch with my five children. They’re all on MySpace. Even my mother is on MySpace! And as you can see, I’ve got other friends there too. If you’d like to do a friend request, be my guest. I like Squidoo people no matter where.

Here’s what I can tell you: There are four political lenses, and no religious lenses (unless you want to count Christmas.) There are twenty-one holiday lenses and that is bound to be a popular topic during the next few months. There are twelve entertainment lenses and none of those are about books. There are nine fashion lenses - two of those are about hair. There are nine lenses about Squidoo and four about animals.

Now that we know the hot topics of the day, we might want to know more about why one lens about animals makes the top 100 list and 99% of the others never will.

This week I made two lenses that may help answer that question. The first one focuses on what works: Website Content Writing Tips for Squidoo, Your Website or Blog. This has three lists: how to choose the right topic, how people read websites, and how to build your credibility, plus a host of other tips and links to more information.

The second lens I made this week is My Least Popular Lenses and Lessons I Learned From Making Them. I got this idea from Spirituality’s blog here at SquidTop. In this list I looked at each lens that’s not getting site visitors, and thought about why. At the bottom of that lens you’ll find a list of conclusions I came to about why these lenses are failing.

While I agree that we should make lenses that reflect our interests, it is also good to make them wisely keeping our readers in mind.

I was surprised by one of the headlines that claimed that SEO (search engine optimization) is not important for Squidoo lenses. There’s a thought that never crossed my mind. I had to read the short article and then had to wonder who was writing this blog. The “about” section of the blog gives no clue.

I’m not of the same mind as this blogger. I believe that SEO is vital for Squidoo lensmasters, just as it is for any other dedicated content writer and webmaster on the Internet. Whenever I have a lens that does especially well, it is usually because of success in search engine optimization. With very few exceptions those search engines send a lot more traffic my way than any of the links I’ve been leaving around the Internet.

Search engine optimization is easy to learn. It includes the following elements:

1. Choose keywords wisely based on the number of searches for the term balanced by the number of sites that compete for the term. For example, the term “web design” sounds good but since there’s a gazillion other people wanting to rank well for that term, it isn’t really a good term for SEO purposes. Something more specific like “Oregon flash web design” might be easier to compete for.

2. Use your keywords in the title of your web document, in your headers, in your meta description tag, in your alt and title attributes, and in your text - but don’t do it to the point where your writing sounds unnatural or stilted. Your text must still be very useful and interesting to read or you will lose the respect of those whose business you wish to gain.

3. Reduce the clutter in your pages by hiding javascript and CSS (put them in separate files) and by using the most recent version of HTML, XHTML, or PHP, etc.. Of course, with Squidoo, you don’t have to worry about this one!

4. Write the best article you can. Remember, the more you write, the more text Google can index. Be sure your keywords are totally appropriate for the article you’ve written. For more information, see my newest lens, Website Content Writing for Squidoo, Your Website or Blog.

And whatever else you do, think twice before believing everything you read. You’ll find a list of credibility criteria in that new content writing lens I just mentioned. It is worth giving some thought to!

I’m still developing myself as a lensmaster, even after publishing fifty-one lenses. I’ve made the mistake of creating a lot of WIP (work in progress) lenses that throw off my cumulative lens stats. I would like to stop that habit.

Now, when I have a new lens idea, I usually don’t rush to get a lens started. Too often they sit there undone for weeks or months even. That’s depressing to see day after day! Instead I open my “Lens Ideas” lens and use one of the blank text boxes to jot down my newest lens brainstorm.

I’m sure as time goes by my secret lens will find other uses, but for now, I’m gratefully keeping it all to myself as a tool that helps me cope with my lensmaster inspirations.

This month I’m also breathing another sigh of relief. I’ve been working for a year and a half as a cook in a restaurant downtown, and my job ended on September 22. I had no idea how much pressure I’d been under until it was gone. Suddenly it was like the world was beautiful again. I was happy… joyful even. I wrote more about that in my Squidoo Diary a few days ago. The world turned upside down for me and I suddenly realized I can make it on what I’m earning online. My expenses are few, so what I’m bringing in along with what I have in my savings will see me through for a while.

This is my big chance to see how much I can get done online, to make my online income viable. I’m hoping to give it about a year, unless, of course, I get another job outside my home in the meantime. That’s somewhat unlikely as I live in a very small town with few job opportunities. Because I need to make this income happen, I will be creating as many new Squidoo lenses as I can. Yes, I’m committed to trying to make this work. I regret that I won’t be able to donate much to charity with my lenses; I wish my financial circumstances would allow it especially since donations are so encouraged here. Perhaps eventually I’ll be able to turn many of these lenses over to charity, and that is an altruistic goal to keep in mind and heart.

Anyhow, please join me in a few deep breaths, a moment of gratitude, and an awareness of joy. Life is good, Squidoo is fun, and my co-adventurers here are pleasant to be around. Thank you all very much for that!

Have you heard of the annual Muse Online Writers Conference?

The 2008 conference will be held from October 13 through 19. It is all online, and all FREE.

To participate you must register by September 1.

Last year was my first year to participate, and I had so much fun I offered to present a workshop at this year’s conference.

I’ve never done anything like this before, and honestly, many times during the year I’ve questioned my decision as I rushed to meet deadline after deadline, getting things ready for the conference coordinator. I’ve got a bit of stage fright but I’m going ahead with it anyhow.

My workshop is called Creating An Impressive Writing Website.

I chose this workshop because I was a professional web designer from 2002 through 2007. I cherish the hope of helping writers learn to make attractive, professional quality websites. I’m doing this because so many writing websites I visited were substandard and didn’t show the writer’s talents to the best advantage. Writers need help in the web design department… and I’ll be there to answer questions every evening for the entire week.

The conference is divided into two sections - the chats and the message board. I’ll have a section on the message board that I’ll work on daily, and will appear at one chat, on Friday evening.

The Muse Online Writers Conference is about much more than my little workshop. There are dozens of talented presenters… and they all have one or more topic to present. Some of these presenters are so gung-ho they’re presenting on multiple topics. I have to admire them!

Producing a new lens is like having a new baby. At first you look on it as a strange new entity, albeit one you’ve loved and become familiar with as you put it together, wrote the words, and chose the images to go with it.

Tonight I finally finished a lens I originally set up back in the summer of 2007. It was the last WIP lens I had from last year. I was SO happy to see it finally ready to leave my WIP list and enter the big world of Squidoo.

I felt joy, relief, and fear (of it not being perfect yet)… yet a great weight lifted from me. The topic was Lao Tse - the Chinese philosopher who wrote the Tao Te Ching more than 2000 years ago.

What made me think I could write about Lao Tse? I didn’t know much about him though I enjoyed occasionally leafing through the book and trying to understand the philosophy.

Honestly, writing this lens required a lot of research. I read several pages about him out there in Internet Land. I had to list references on the lens.

It is easier to write lenses about a topic you’re intimately familiar with, but then I’d be stuck writing about what we do at work while we’re waiting for customers to arrive. Personally, I need to expand my consciousness and thought doing research to learn about Lao Tse wouldn’t hurt me at all. I was right about that, and enjoyed finding photos of Chinese paintings in the public domain that I could legally use on the lens.

So now it is over. The lens is alive. The die is cast. The words are written, and the public can see it. I feel SO very pleased.

What is your most recent lens? How do you feel about publishing it?

I have blogs on other topics - for example, Bigfoot Sightings (the blog) complements my Bigfoot Sightings lens. They are linked to each other, and they both get lots of traffic.

I have a new movie review blog: Mystic Movie Reviews. This will help drive traffic to the SquidFlix lenses I’m planning. Likewise, I can promote my movie review blog by linking to it on my SquidFlix lenses.

The goal is to keep the same subjects together. Placing links on appropriate sites with similar topics increases the SEO value of your links.

I’m not recommending that anyone go out and get ten blogs. In fact, that’s crazy-making, believe me. If you can have one or two blogs and manage to keep them up to date, you’ll be doing fine. You will find tips on blogging like an expert at my lens, Expert Blogging.

Two of my favorite bloggers whose niche is to help us learn to blog better are Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett. Both these guys are phenomenal and worth knowing. Their blogs are worth reading. I’ve also participated in Chris Garrett’s forum, Authority Blogger. Great stuff there. The two men got together and wrote a fantastic book, ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.

You can learn to blog like a pro. You can use blogs to promote your lenses and you can place your blog RSS feed on your lenses. It’s a win-win situation for those of us ready to do both.

The most important thing I can do is to make sure these lenses are linked from as many places on the Internet as possible. I’ve got a lens that lists places where links can be posted - for example, MySpace blogs, Xanga blogs, and many Web 2.0 sites. I’m making a list of these sites on Squidoo Traffic: How To Promote Your Squidoo Lens. This lens is becoming an ongoing research project to find places where lensmasters can create back-links for their lenses.

After making sure I’ve got back-links in place, I’m reviewing key elements of the lenses that aren’t performing. I’m checking the keywords, comparing them to the ones I find at Google’s Keyword Tool. I also make sure those keywords are represented in headings and other text on my lens. I check out the search engine results to see how possible it is that my lens could ever rank on page one of the search engine results for my chosen keywords. If need be, I change the main keywords to something longer (the long-tail) so I’ll eventually get to page one of the results.

I’m pleased with the number of lenses I have that do get search engine traffic, and encouraged to keep trying for the lenses that are not working yet. I know that with constant updates and keyword tweaking I’ll most likely succeed sooner or later. I’ve done this with some of my websites - with great success.

There may come a time when I feel I must leave a dead lens and go on to other projects, but for now I’ll keep trying. I like all my lenses and would love to see them succeed.

The title I gave my lens, Books and Writings of Benjamin Franklin, sounded like we’d be spending an hour in a dusty old library trying to decipher handwriting barely legible by today’s standards. What could old Ben tell us that we’d want to know about, anyhow? Sure he had some cool aphorisms, but he wasn’t like King Solomon by any standards. Or was he?

I took a good long look at the reasons why my lens wasn’t attracting any attention. I was disappointed because I read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography last year and was astounded and delighted with the personality, attitudes and accomplishments of the man I found there. I wanted to tell more people what a cool guy he was. I wanted people to read his autobiography and find out for themselves what this man who helped found our country was really like.

So I thought about what in the book had delighted me most… and realized it was that he’d embraced a vegetarian diet at an early age. So the new title of my lens is Benjamin Franklin Was A Vegetarian. Now the lens is getting hits… maybe because people don’t believe it could be true. I dispel that notion by quoting him regarding his vegetarianism.

Now I’m looking at a few of my other lenses that are bombing. I’ve got two I’m concerned about right now. I changed the one called Tents to Ten Ways To Use A Tent, but it still isn’t getting hits - even though I came up with some really cool ideas for using tents. I even impressed my significant other, Bob, and that takes talent.

The other lens that is doing even worse (current rating: 75,590!!!) is Expert Blogging. I’m wondering what I can do to jazz up that title so people will click on it. Maybe the topic of expert blogging is just so overdone on the internet these days that it will never have the chance to be seen in the search engines. And possibly Squidoo lensmasters pass it by because they aren’t bloggers per se - for the most part they are lensmasters only.

Perhaps Benjamin Franklin gave us the principle on which we should rely when choosing our lens names: “If you would persuade, you must appeal to interest rather than intellect.”