Lensmastery by Linda

While reading comments on another blog I noted that some lensmasters feel that lens making is more important than networking on social media sites. They feel that Squidoo is enough online activity, and that lenses will promote themselves as much as they need to.

I made a study of social media sites during the past few years for my lens, How to Promote Your Squidoo Lens. I’ve been looking for sites that provide good SEO backlinks, as opposed to sites that cloak or add ‘nofollow’ to links so they provide no SEO value.

Whether or not you choose to promote your Squidoo lens by participating in other social media sites may depend on what your goal is for your earnings. If you have all your lens earnings earmarked for charity, perhaps you don’t care about revenue as much as someone who lost a job and is in deep financial turmoil. If you are trying to make money with your Squidoo lenses, lens promotion has got to be at least as important as lens making, and probably even more time consuming.

Some social networking sites have minimal use in terms of SEO. For example, FaceBook and MySpace both cloak all outgoing links so any links placed on those sites do nothing to make your lenses more visible in search engines. There are many other social bookmarking sites and social media sites that are similarly useless for me, for the most part. I know that people can always go there, see the link, and click on it to land on my lens, but that’s pretty much nothing in terms of numbers. The big influx of lens readers usually happens from good search engine optimization or from having a link on a site that is capable of funneling large numbers of readers to a lens.

For example, if I put a lens link on Facebook I’m lucky to get one or two viewers clicking on it. However if that same lens link is on a high-traffic blog, I may be able to get hundreds of visits per week from that venue. Even better, if my lens ranks high for a popular keyword in Google, I may get thousands of visits per week. I believe that SEO is a vital issue for anyone wanting to make a lot of money on Squidoo.

My recommendation is not to toss out the baby with the bathwater. Yes, truly a lot of social networking sites are a waste of time — but not all of them. It is important to recognize good backlink opportunities and to follow up on them.

For example, the site Qondio states it is there to give good backlinks for content writers. For each article I write there I get a backlink for one of my Squidoo lenses or blogs. It is a wonderful opportunity and I’ve even been able to add AdSense to my Qondio pages. I don’t know how profitable this will be for me yet; I’ve just started submitting articles there.

Gather is a popular site for informal article writing and networking. Lensmasters can put links in their Gather articles to let people know about their lenses. You can even put them in comments on other people’s articles. If you want to join Gather, please use my link as it will help me earn a few more points. Gather pays with gift cards or PayPal payments but I think it is easier to earn money at Squidoo.

One BIG caution is not to let your articles look spammy. If your articles look like spam, promoting products like medications, ebooks, and breath mints, nobody will appreciate them no matter where they are. Make sure you speak from your heart, never copy writing from elsewhere, be a real person who is sincere in making friends and participating in the sites, and offer something that goes beyond the mere hope for material gain.

…

Recently I issued a challenge on SquidU: to create a lens listing your ten most recent lenses, and to place that in the “Featured Lenses” section of your Squidoo profile/bio page. Here’s my challenge: Quick Challenge: Your Ten Newest Lenses . . . and here’s my lens with my ten most recent lenses.

There’s an infinite amount of money available, and we’re all entitled to a share of it.

“An INFINITE amount,” you say?

There’s a lot of money tied up in BANKS right now, as we all know. …But there’s PLENTY left for us. We just need to leverage our time and efforts to be able to get money flowing in our direction. (Or, for you who are here for charity, to get the money flowing in the direction of your dearly loved charities.)

Money, however, likes to flow. It is like a fountain… the water moving, changing, refreshing itself constantly. When held tightly in one place, water stagnates. Money does the same – and that’s not what we need. We’ll all be better off if we can help get that money flowing in all directions… to make a fountain of money… something beautiful to look at, be refreshed by, and to share.

There’s one great way to help that happen, and that’s to work hard at helping each other succeed.

A few days ago there was a phone conference for Giant Squids to talk to Seth Godin and Megan Casey. BDKZ (Bonnie) moderated, and we Giant Squids who could attend gathered in a chat room while listening to Seth and Megan answer some of our questions. A question I asked prior to the phone call was answered – it was “What can we do for Squidoo?” I wanted to know if there was something we could do to help make Squidoo a better site — to give back to this wonderful site and community that helps us so much. Megan’s surprising answer was that we should take a few minutes each day to promote someone else’s lens.

Someone else’s lens? Why????????

LOL

Seth explained that people tend to tune out a lot of self-promotion. I’ll bet you do that too. I know I do. But when someone plugs someone else’s site or book or Squidoo lens, people listen. When someone takes the time to point out someone else’s work, it is a signal that it is worth looking at.

He said that when the recommendation comes from someone else, it is much more likely that people will read it. When he promotes someone else’s book on his blog it sells three times as many copies as when the author promotes his own work.

This brings into play a whole alternate awareness of how prosperity happens. Too many people think that shouting “Look at me! Look at my lens!” is the answer, and it really isn’t. Self-promotion is boring! We all know that.

But this place, Squidoo, is a wonderful community adventure. A place where we can come together to help one another in many ways. Promotion is one of those ways that we should be helping each other.

I’m so excited about this. I like to promote other people’s lenses by Twittering about them, or adding them to Tagfoot. Ohhh, how I LOVE Tagfoot! I’ve also been known to plug other people’s lenses on my blogs. I really need to do that A LOT more.

I intend it, and so it is…

follow my footsteps

Today I’ve been having fun adding my lenses to my MySpace. I just discovered that our MySpace links in the “Bookmark and Share” section of each lens now put Squidoo links directly onto the front page of our MySpace – and you get a choice of what section to put them in. I think last time I tried that link (the one on our lenses) it went to a MySpace blog posting.

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.

Recently someone left a link on my lens, How to Promote Your Squidoo Lens. The link was to a new blog that claimed to be the best source of information on how to use Squidoo. I had to move the link to a different area of my lens and while doing so I took a look at this new blog.

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 now have more than ten blogs on a variety of topics. I also have over 35 Squidoo lenses on similar topics. For example, I have a writing blog at Perspectives on Writing. To that blog I can link my literary arts lenses because the topics are similar.

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.

[Update 12.29.08 - When you place blog links on your lenses, use the link module and enter them one at a time. This gives a perfect backlink for SEO purposes. Don't use the RSS module as it provides no backlinking benefit.]

Like most of you, I have some lenses that get no hits, or very few. I’m going to have to focus on doing things to make these lenses viable.

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.