Squidoo

Jazzy · #1 (**permalink**) 03-03-2008, 05:26 PM

I just made some lenses over at http://www.squidoo.com for inpointing links.

HTH!

ssmorgan · #2 (**permalink**) 03-03-2008, 06:09 PM

Squidoo is great.

Google used to be in love with Squidoo lenses, then a number of spammish-type marketers bombarded Squidoo with horrible lenses, so Google took note of that and penalized Squidoo lenses. I think everything is back to normal now.

Squidoo.com has great PR (I believe it's 7), so it would be similar to writing an article on ezinearticles.com, which is a great link back to your website or blog.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jazzy

HTH!

what does HTH! mean?

Sherif

Jazzy · #3 (**permalink**) 03-03-2008, 07:19 PM

Hope that helps!

Thank you for that info. I'm glad to know it was worth the time to create the lenses!

ssmorgan · #4 (**permalink**) 03-03-2008, 07:27 PM

HTH = Hope That Helps
(writing it in my little book of abbreviations

)

lisa · #5 (**permalink**) 03-04-2008, 01:41 PM

Thanks Jazzy. You know, I never used Squidoo and then I heard about the spammy reputation it started receiving when I was at the Affiliate Summit last week. So then I was on the fence. You'll have to let us know what kind of results you see with it.

Naturally_Amy · #6 (**permalink**) 03-05-2008, 07:15 PM

I was just about to post about this. I know where the spam on squidoo is coming from. A few months ago a program called SMARTS launched a program about how to use social media to drive traffic to your site.

They use their own tips to shoot their site to the first 8 pages of organic search results in Google for the term "going natural" (which happens to be one of my keywords)

Anyway one of the tips that they promoted in there free sneak peak was to use squidoo lenses amongst other methods to build traffic. Those videos were seen by tons of people and alot of people started throwing any old thing up there.

But I have been using Squidoo for about 3 months. Posting content with links back to my site now about 10-15% (600 visitors a month) of my traffic comes directly from my squidoo lenses. So it does work. It works best when you update your lenses regularly. And post real helpful content.

Just another two cents,

Amy

Theresa · #7 (**permalink**) 03-05-2008, 09:48 PM

I made a few for my sites. It takes a while, but the better ones climb up and start getting more traffic which results in increasing hits to your site. My craft lens frequently shows up in search results higher that my site for certain key words.

TechieGuy · #8 (**permalink**) 03-06-2008, 07:18 AM

I'm thinking of starting a lense for my blog. I'll have to see how it affects traffic to my blog.

West · #9 (**permalink**) 03-06-2008, 11:08 AM

Exactly how does Squidoo work? There is a link to my SBI! blog on squidoo, but I don't know how it got there. Does squidoo automatically include blog posts from Google to each topic, or do individual authors submit the links?

ssmorgan · #10 (**permalink**) 03-06-2008, 01:30 PM

Anyone can go to Squidoo.com and create an account and become a "lensmaster". Then, as a lensmaster, you can create a "lens" which is essentially a page on Squidoo.com

In your scenario where you have an incoming link from Squidoo:

Probably a lensmaster created a lens about the same topic as one of your websites, and thought your website is a great resource, so he/she linked to your website from his/her lens.

Sherif

ssmorgan · #11 (**permalink**) 03-06-2008, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by West

Does squidoo automatically include blog posts from Google to each topic, or do individual authors submit the links?

Squidoo has this really cool plugin you can add to your lens, where it can grab an RSS feed from different sources that the lensmaster can designate.

So someone visited your site, then your blog, and thought it was great blog, so they grabbed your blog's RSS feed into their Squidoo lens.

I hope this makes sense.

West · #12 (**permalink**) 03-07-2008, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ssmorgan

Squidoo has this really cool plugin you can add to your lens, where it can grab an RSS feed from different sources that the lensmaster can designate.

So someone visited your site, then your blog, and thought it was great blog, so they grabbed your blog's RSS feed into their Squidoo lens.

I hope this makes sense.

Oh, that explains a lot. Every time I visit the link I notice my most recent post is up, very shortly after I publish it. So the RSS feed makes sense.

MrT68 · #13 (**permalink**) 03-10-2008, 09:33 AM

Squidoo was where I have started my website building. I have been creating videos for my classes at school and wanted a place to organize them. Squidoo was the easiest place I found to do so. The great thing about Squidoo is that for niche topics it is very easy to be found by google. Between the six I have created(about 1/3 of the topics covered for an Algebra 1 course) I am already recieving 100+ visits a day(the stats on Squidoo only count unique visitors once a week). This is with virtually zero marketing. It gives me hope that a really good site with good marketing could generate a lot of traffic

My plan is to finish the videos and lenses and then create an Algebra 1 website on my own this summer. I can then very quickly build backlinks in each of my Squidoo lenses for my new site. Hopefully improving my search engine rank and directly driving traffic to my site. As an added bonus they share ad revenue with you...I made $25 this month(that is the revenue from Januray) and that is with only 4 of the sites built. I plan on using that revenue to pay for site builder this summer.

ssmorgan · #14 (**permalink**) 03-10-2008, 07:08 PM

MrT,

That's kind of funny... Squidoo was my first attempt at making an affiliate marketing type of site!

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrT68

The great thing about Squidoo is that for niche topics it is very easy to be found by google. Between the six I have created(about 1/3 of the topics covered for an Algebra 1 course) I am already recieving 100+ visits a day(the stats on Squidoo only count unique visitors once a week). This is with virtually zero marketing. It gives me hope that a really good site with good marketing could generate a lot of traffic

Wow, that's awesome. You know, the ironic thing is when you create a website (or in this case a Squidoo lens) purely out of interest or passion, it tends to do better with the search engines... because they contain valuable and unique information that people like, visit often, and link to... which is exactly what the search engines have been paying attention to.

That's the problem with many websites, they are made with the sole purpose to make money... so they are not very good... but if one thinks about adding value to the site visitor, he/she will come back often, refers the link to his/her friends, etc.

Clearly, you're adding a ton of value to your lens visitors! So great job!

On a slightly different note, Squidoo can be pretty powerful. A little while ago, I started getting sales from something I didn't realize I was promoting. When I did a little investigation, I found out that an old lens I had created (and never touched for a year) was ranked for a set of pretty decent keywords in an extremely competitive niche.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrT68

I made $25 this month(that is the revenue from Januray) and that is with only 4 of the sites built. I plan on using that revenue to pay for site builder this summer.

That's great! Very smart to re-invest that money in your business.

Sherif

Jazzy · #15 (**permalink**) 03-12-2008, 09:34 PM

Some of my pages have gone up in the rankings a bit, so maybe the Squidoo lenses helped. I think its safe to say they didn't hurt anything, so I would recommend giving it a try.

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