Ok, so I let everyone know a while back in my Well Squidoo you too post that I was absolutely clueless in regards to what Squidoo has to offer. Well, I’ve spent the past 3 weeks playing around with building lenses, reviewing other people’s lenses, searching thru the Squidoo forums looking for those who ARE the Squid masters, and finding out what works and what’s possible. Great news….I found some of the experts and the Squidoo system is a LOT of fun!
From the standpoint of putting your information on a page, the basics are pretty much the same as a Blog. But there’s more. They offer what are called “Modules”. You can add a module for Amazon, text links, Flickr Photos, an RSS Feed…you can even add a Poll that people can take. And you don’t have to know how to do ANY type of programming…just point and click!
As with anything else we set up to market our ideas and products, there are specific ways to go about it in order to generate free, quality traffic and backlinks. One of the Squidoo “experts” I’ve been reading a lot of information from keeps it very simple in the way of putting together a quality blog (And once you can build ONE, you can build hundreds!).
- Use a keyword tool to find out how people are searching for your subject matter (these will be used in all of your content, and in the titles of ALL your modules, including the Amazon ones).
- Use your lens to target long-tail keywords, especially long-tail phrases that contain a more competitive shorter phrase.
- Start by writing an introduction (at least 250 words long using your keywords).
- Write quality, relevant articles (at least 750 words total, broken up into 3 sections).
- Include your introduction, your 3 articles, and a guestbook (no less than that before publishing).
- Use ALL 40 tag (keyword) spaces allowed on your lens.
- If you already have a primary website, have a number of links back to it using your target keywords in the links.
- Once you’re comfortable with setting up these modules, you can beginning adding modules (in the “add modules” section), like sticky notes, big arrows, talk bubbles or links in your text to emphasize the links to your site.
- You can then start adding pictures to your lenses (especially useful in your article modules) to break up the text and give your lens a bit more personalization and character.
- Once you’re happy with your lens, submit it to any RELEVANT groups on Squidoo for inclusion.
- Update your lens at least once a week (add a sentence or tow…or just republish).
- Rinse and repeat!
So, is that ALL it takes to generate traffic to your website? Not quite. There are more advanced things you can do as well to promote your lenses, but we’ll cover those on another day!
Until then…
