Your Ten Most Recent Lenses

I'm issuing a challenge to all lensmasters. I would like to see lenses that list your ten most recent lenses.

The reason for this is simple. I often look through the lensmaster bio pages, trying to figure out what lenses are new. As of today, there's no way to tell. However... if you make a lens that lists only your newest lenses, and list that as one of your "Featured Lenses" on your bio page, then it will be easy for others to find them.

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I make a new lens, I want the world to know! Sometimes it takes days for those new lenses to get any attention at all. Well, having a list of ten new lenses would make it easier for people to find your fledgling creations.

Today I created Ten New Lenses by LindaJM, and wrote about it in SquidU, asking people to make a similar lens then leave their link on that thread. I also offered use of my graphic, included here. You can use it at will, or create another that is more to your liking.

Places to blog about squidoo

Blogging about squidoo on a free blog usually has this disadvantage: you may get your blog removed for linking only to one domain. For about a year there has been squidtop. Now there's also crabbysbeach.

So far some familiar people are blogging at crabbysbeach: AJ blogs about green lenses, luvmyludwig blogs about squidoo anniversaries, I'm doing more tributes to squidoo lensmasters and calendars.

Why I love squidoo

I know, this is just about the least original title for a squidoo blogpost. But while I'm at it, I might as well confess... I AM addicted.

I love that squidoo is a community place where new squids sometimes start out sharing their favorite lenses... like JOAN did.

I love that it's such a successful online place that it's considered normal to create a blog (like this one) for squidoo purposes only. Check out: Squidutils about how tags are important again... and The question of the weeks by growwear. This week: What would make you a better lensmaster? Great question, and all her questions are like that. The added bonus is links to your lenses, website or lensography (depending on Mimi's mood I think) for the best answer.

I also love the challenges - giant squid summer school, rocket moms and now the teams that are helping new squids (and old squids) reach their goals.

Then the culture of helping each other out is great. The squidoo answer deck is only a selection of all the great help lenses out there or course. Would this blog be complete without bragging a bit about my own efforts at helping the squidoo community?

Getting your lens found in google

Two of my most popular squidoo help lenses are devoted to how to get your lens found in google. The first I made was about that subject specifically, but in order to be really successful one has to start with something else: keyword research.

If you want to make a lens that is successful economically and gets found by google, you need to think about keywords BEFORE you make your lens. This is called 'keyword research'.

I did a blogpost about keyword research on my squidtop blog: analyzing a weight loss lens.

If you've set that up right the next step is promotion. You want your lens found in google, so some people submit their lens to google, yahoo etc. This is a waste of time.

The basis for Search Engine Optimization is getting links (good links) to your lenses. There are all kinds of ways to do that. Within squidoo it makes sense to submit to groups in your niche. But that is also potentially a trap. So I thought I'd give some advice about what to look out for when submitting your lens to a squidoo group. I also did a post analyzing link building for that same weight loss lens I talked about earlier.

One more thing: when it comes to search engine optimization I still see a lot of advice relating to tags. Tag pages however DO NOT COUNT towards your lenses backlink profile. What tags ARE good for was explored here.

Get Lost In Your Own Sites?

I have had such varied interests and have done so many sites in the last couple of years that I had to have some way for me to keep up with me. So, I did a blog site just to keep up with me. I found myself forgetting about blogs or other writings I had started and for some reason never followed up on. It was not a lack of interest, but a lack of organization. How can you keep a site up if you forget you even developed it?

So, I finally decided to do a site specifically to keep up with my internet writings. I started actually searching my records for all the sites I had previously done. As of tonight I am probably still missing some, but will add them as I remember them or come across them in my lists of ID’s and passwords. In the future, it will be easier for me as I will have all my links organized in one place. .

For you “Squidooers”, you probably have a lensography and that serves a good practical purpose for you and for your “friends”. However, if you get to the point I have gotten to in a few short years, you will probably have to organize the rest of your sites in a similar fashion.

On the site I just developed for me [LamarRoss.Com ] I have used a Wordpress blog format, developed pages to categorize my squidoo links, and made various other categories of links to organize links to my blogs, ezinearticles, etc. This is the site where I will attempt to keep a running tabulation of all my internet blogs, sites, affiliate links, etc. as they are developed.

If my followers, friends, and casual passersby learn from these “parts” that the “whole” of me is greater than the parts, so much the better, but the site was done primarily to organize me. I, like most everyone in life, have now and have had throughout my life many varying interests. These interests are reflected in the links on this site.

Some of my sites have been for fun. Some of my sites have been for money. But all of my sites are an expression of me and my interests. That will never change.

I will make occasional posting on items related to my many interests and attempt to keep on this site a listing of links to all my internet ventures, adventures, and misadventures. Only time will tell which of these sites reflect the ventures and which the misadventures. But, I promise you that I will always be having fun.

Check out my site. Maybe it will be something you will decide to do for you.

How To Un-Junk Your Squidoo Lens

People who go to your site have certain expectations. It is up to you to reshape those expectations or reinforce them. Use the Introduction Module of your Squidoo lens to target your market and to set your reader's expectations. Tell them what they will find on your page.

Then follow through – give them what you told them you would. If your lens is on how to bathe a cat, don't include facts about the latest kitchen gadget or wrench.

A Squidoo lens which sells something – and most do – does not necessarily have to appear as a junk site. In fact, I go to certain lenses, especially shopping lenses, because I'm looking for a product and I want to have a variety to choose from. This usually equates to lots of Amazon or CarePress modules.

However, I also want and expect some content - product reviews, care tips, what style goes with what, materials comparisons, etc. There are lots of ways to add value to these lenses and keep them from being junky – facts that make it a valuable resource for deciding which product, if any, to buy.

How to your sites stack up?

For an example of a lens selling products but offering more, click Bear Paw Boots

eBay and me

I took eBay off all my lenses. No, I didn't have a bad experience with them directly, but after adding them, I noticed a huge drop in Google traffic to those very lenses. One of my top lenses at the time, Fantasy: Castles, Dragons, and Wizards, was completely dropped by Google. It had a PR of 3 at the time, and I was frantically trying to figure out what I did wrong. My lighthouse and wolf lenses fell drastically, and I couldn't figure out what was going on. I scoured the 'net' for a solution, and came up with very little. I did a 'site ban' check on my fantasy lens, and it wasn't banned by Google, they just dropped it. Perhaps it was penalized for some reason? All I did was add eBay modules, and not a lot of them, because I didn't want to junk up my lens. Finally, I did a keyword density check on it...and got 'cat' and 'seller' as the top keywords, also the phrase 'cat seller' as the top phrase of words. Huh? I didn't have either word in my text, so it must have been linked to eBay code. I suppose the Google crawlers thought I was trying to fool the public into thinking my lens was about one thing, when it was actually about 'cat sellers'. I honestly don't know. It's all I could come up with.

Well, all I could think to do was delete all the eBay modules on all my lenses and see what happened, and it worked. My lens got picked up by Google again, but started all over with a PR of 0, and my wolf and lighthouse lenses have shot up to the 3rd and 4th spot on my dashboard. I hate not offering eBay products, because they have some great collectibles at good prices, but for now, it's the best thing for me. I never made a sell from them anyways.