Lensmastery by Linda

Lately I’ve been wondering how to get my lenses to rank higher. Sound familiar? I’ll bet 90% of you are also wondering the same thing! I was focused on this question enough that I took time to go through the entire top 100 list and analyze it. I didn’t look at every lens there (yet) but I recorded the name of the successful lensmaster and the general topic of the lens.

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.