Squidoo Tips and Tricks #4: Is Your Lens Indexed?

For the first couple of years that I made Squidoo lenses, I just made them and hoped that traffic would come. Some lenses did get traffic and some got ZILCH (ie, nothing). I was puzzled that many of them were simply ignored by Google. Google is king and if your lens is not getting traffic from Google, it is doomed.

To my surprise, I soon discovered that some of my lenses were not only ignored by Google, they were not even indexed! That means, that Google did not even know some of my lenses existed. How do you know if your lens is indexed by Google? The best way is to copy and paste a single line from your lens and put it into Google with quotations around it. For example, I recently wrote a lens called What To Do About Cold Feet? The first sentence is: There are many reasons why feet are always cold.. If you put that sentence into Google like this:

"There are many reasons why feet are always cold"

You should get TWO hits, first my lens and sencond this blog post. If you do that with your lens and nothing comes up...WHOOPS...your lens is not indexed and it will NEVER get Google traffic, not a good thing.

What is the best way to get your lenses indexed? In my experience, the best way to make sure your lens is indexed is to give it a quality link, the more links, the better. I find a link from a blog to be one of the best ways to get a link to a Squidoo lens and for that reason, I write a post from this blog for nearly every lens that I create. If you do not have a blog, that might be a good reason to start one. If you are a Squidoo Giant, you are invited to participate in this blog. Read more about that in this lens about Valley of The Giants.

This is my forth in the series of Squidoo Tips and Tricks. I am looking for your feedback. Are these tips and tricks helpful? Is there anything else you would like to see discussed in future tips and tricks?

Squidoo Tips And Tricks #3: Amazon Modules

I try to put an Amazon module on every lens I have. Why? Several reasons.

* Commissions: Obviously, Amazon modules sell stuff and you get a commision on every sale.

* Lens Rank: Amazon modules help your lensrank in two ways. First, everytime someone clicks on an Amazon module, you get a "clickout" the more clickouts, the better your lensrank. Read more about why clickouts are good. Second, if you earn a commission, that also improves your lensrank.

* Diversity. An Amazon module has pictures and adds interesting diversity to your page.

But which is the best Amazon module to use? These days I prefer the classic Amazon module. I no longer use Amazon Spotlight UNLESS I am listing a book. Why?

In most cases if you select the products, the product will change within 1 year and you will have a deadlink. If you select the products, you must check the links every few months to make sure that they are still active. This is not so difficult if you have 2 or 3 lenses. But if you have over 100, you will not be able to check all of the links.

In this case it is best to use a classic Amazon module and select "Let Amazon Choose". In this case you will seldom get deadlinks. The problem with letting Amazon choose is that sometimes Amazon chooses the wrong products. It can be difficult to find the right keywords to use and often takes some trial and error. For example, on this lens about Christmas 2011, I have Amazon module about Ride On Cars. I selected the catagory Toys and put Ride On Cars into the keyword space, however, instead of Ride On Cars, I got a variety of toy cars, most of them not the type I was interested. After I looked at the cars, I noticed that most of the Ride On Cars I was interested in had MP3 players. So, if I use the keywords Ride On Cars MP3, I got the type of cars I was interested in displaying.

Why will I use Amazon spotlight if I am listing a book? Because when you are listing a book, you use the ASIN number for a book. That number will not change. So long as the book is being sold, if you have used the ASIN number that book will always appear in your module. I actually prefer the spotlight modules for books because the image is large and it looks nice. So, unless you have alot of books you want to sell, use the spotlight module for books and the traditional Amazon module for everything else.

This is my third in the series of Squidoo Tips And Tricks. I wonder if these are helpful to anyone? Is there anything else you would like me to cover? If I get a good response, there will be more. If not, this idea will probably die out.

Squidoo Tips And Tricks #2: Monitor Your ClickOuts

How often do you check your clickouts? Honestly, I do not do it often enough and I bet there are some people who never check there clickouts at all. In case it is not clear what a clickout is, that is when someone clicks on a link in your lens and it takes them somewhere OUTSIDE of Squidoo. Why are clickouts important?

* First, many times clickouts are from commercial modules such as Amazon or Ebay. Checking your clickouts will tell you what people are buying from your lens, or more importantly, what they are not buying. If a certain product has no clickouts, maybe it is time delete and replace it with something else.

* Second, one of the factors which determine your lensrank is the number of clickouts that you have. If your lens has alot of clickouts it will rank higher. Higher ranking lenses earn more money from Squidoo.

So, for two reasons, if a certain product or link has no clickouts, it is wasting valuable real estate on your lens and should be replaced with something else.

As an example, I have a lens about Christmas 2011. Recently, that lens had 3 Amazon modules on it, one with Christmas songs, another with postpartum girdles and the third with Christmas Cards. When I reviewed my clickouts, I noticed that the Christmas cards and postpartum girdles were getting all of the clickouts. Christmas Songs? Nada. Zip. Nothing. Even though they were at the top of the lens, Christmas Songs were getting NO clickouts at all. I guess people are not so excited about buying DVDS of Christmas songs. Needless to say, I deleted the Christmas songs and am currently testing other products.

How do you check clickouts for a lens? On your Squidoo dashboard, point your mouse at the lens you are interested in. Below the lens you will see "Edit, Label, Stats, Delete. Click on Stats. On the top of the Stats page you will see "Summary, Traffic, Earnings, Royalties", click on Traffic. Scroll to the bottom of the Traffic page to find the clickouts for that lens. It should look something like this:



This is my second in the series of Squidoo Tips And Tricks. I wonder if these are helpful to anyone? Is there anything else you would like me to cover? If I get a good response, there will be more. If not, this idea will probably die out.

Squidoo Tips and Tricks #1: Put Duel AND Comment Box On ALL Lenses

I have decided to start a new feature called "Squidoo Tips and Tricks". Squidoo Tips and Tricks will be the things that I have learned in my five or so years of being in Squidoo. Many of them will be small reminders, which you may already know. I hope some of these will be helpful.

Here is tip #1: Put BOTH duel and comment box on all lenses. Allow everyone (not just logged in Squidoo members) to post, but require that you approve all posts. Strip out all HTML. Above you will find a screen grab of how I set all of my duel and comment modules. Why?

Search engines like fresh content. If a website or lens is old and not updated, in time it will drop in the rankings. Comment box and duel modules allow site visitors to create content for you. Not only do you get to read their interesting feedback, these modules keep your lens fresh. This is why I allow everyone to post whether they are member of Squidoo or not. However, you get a lot of spam. So, you must review all comments before they are allowed to be posted. While I typically delete most posts with links or html inside, check the "strip out htmal" in case you let one slip by. Why? You can get punished for having links to bad websites.