Have you Remodeled your Squidoo Lens Primary Tags?
Just wanted to give everyone a heads up and a reminder: If you haven’t remodeled your Primary Tags, Do It!
Fluffanutta has written an exceptional article on Primary Tagging as a forum post. I’m going to repost it here after offering a few of my thoughts on Primary Tagging.
1) If your lens is about polka dotted teddy bears, I would just use ‘Teddy Bears’ as my Primary Tag. (as an example)
2) Primary Tags are going to be a careful balance between choosing a tag that has more than one or two lenses under it, but not choosing some of the most general tags on Squidoo (i.e. Marketing and Music should not be your primary tags)
3) Primary tagging has an effect on search results withing squidoo as well as on ‘tags’ pages. You can look at tags pages by either clicking on the ‘More Lenses About Primary Tag‘ link on the lens or by going to the Tag Cloud.
�Fluffanutta’s Initial Post: (Reminder: Check the Forum Post, the Follow-up Tips have been excellent also)
The Primary Tag is the first tag you get to define when creating your new lens, and it is an often misunderstood and very under utilised by many Lensmasters. Admittedly, it doesn’t seem do a whole lot, but there are some important points to note:
- In some lens formats (e.g. Ever.com and SquidWho) the primary tag appears at the very top of the page, next to “Explore more:”.
- Most lenses (maxxed) have a box in the side bar titles “Explore more…”, containing links to the Category and Primary Tag of the lens, plus all the groups it belongs too.
- Another feature of the sidebar (which is not always present) is the tag list, which is usually headed by the Primary Tag (on un-maxxed lenses), and then the first 5 regular tags (in alphabetical order). The remaining tags are hidden, and search engines may ignore these ones.
- Every appearance of the Primary Tag on your lens adds weight to that key phrase on your lens.
In addition, I am working on a new project that will make these Primary Tags even more important! So, you need to make sure that your these tags are as optimal as possible.
Here are some tips:
1. Your Primary Tag wants to be the most important key phrase that you can think of. For example, if your lens is about a person or a product, stick to just their name.
2. Keep your tag to just 2 or 3 words, where possible. One word is not always specific enough (unless the subject is a strong brand like Pepsi), and more than 3 words can sometimes be too specific. Of course, it does depend on your subject matter.
3. Don’t simply repeat your Lens title again (even though this is the default when building a lens). Your title should include as many keywords as you can sensibly fit (no keyword stuffing!), while your Primary Tag is about your key phrase.
4. Format your Primary Tag nicely - keep it Capitalised, spelt correctly (!) and don’t include any special characters or quotes (”). Use spaces between words, not dashes or underscores.
5. Make sure you repeat your Primary Tag as a regular tag too. The tags appear as the Meta Keywords at the top of the page, and you don’t want your key phrase to be missing from it.
6. Pick a Primary Tag which is popular, i.e. people will be likely to be searching for it and other lenses are might also have the same Primary Tag.
Here are some examples: Doctor Who :: Discworld :: Digital Camera Accessories :: Smart Phones
Bad examples: The Whole Lens Title Again :: Kee Frase Spelt Wong :: lowercasewithnospaces :: “Phrase in Quotes”
I hope that people remember these tips - I need to go and change a lot of my own Primary Tags having just looked at a few of them. And remember - I’m developing a project that’ll bring these tags in to their own…
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Comments
Hi Captain: One comment on tags and one suggestion for your blog that has nothing to do with tags:
Tags: I have noticed that one word tags usually have a nice google page rank, often PR5 while two word tags rarely have a google page rank. Since the tag page gives a link to your lens, it would seem to me that we would want a balance of several one word tags in order to get improved page rank, and several two word tags in order to get traffic. Of course one word tags can also bring traffic.
Suggestion: How about adding a dofollow plugin so that commenters to this blog can get page rank? If you want, it can be moderated to avoid spam. As you know, it can be quite difficult to get good links to squidoo lenses. This is such an excellent resource, I think if it also gave dofollow links, it may motivate more interaction.
Just a couple of thoughts for you to chew on along with yer chewin’ tabaco.
LMP
LMP,
I think do follow is an excellent idea. I use it on my other blog, I guess I just forgot to throw it up here.
I’ll put that up tonight and make an announcement.
as far as tags go, I’ve seen some two word tags with good PRs if a lot of lenses have that tag 
But your point about traffic vs link juice is very appropriate and the essence of what I’m talking about.
Thanks for the comment!
captain; Yes the tags are a must.
But the word order and search power involved in
the given names, needs your advice as well. Looking
today for a lens on the new Google tool for finding
the right words for tags. If you can add that info
on your blogs it would sure help out.
Best and thank you so very much for your help and kind works, From H-Jack
[...] In my Lens Publishing Checklist as well as in previous posts, I have repeatedly emphasized the importance of the Primary Tag in Squidoo. [...]
The more I’m reading and researching about squidooing, the more I realize how many things I’ve been doing completely wrong - with the best intention… 
Thank you for this post and newsletter and all the knowledge you so generously share!
yap! 100% clear…only, sorry to tell you that I’m down these days! I got a mild stroke, and thanks for all these tips, I can still read them, though my left eye was mildly affected. I’ll be your friend forever.
Squidoo still doesn’t like my primary tags. I guess I need to work on it. I have found out that changing 40 tags to 10-15 tags is more to squidoo’s liking. Why do they allow you to put 40 tags in?
My problem seems to be that I keep on making lenses which nobody is interested in and I battle to tag these. Seems whatever I do, can’t get it right.
Tags seem to be an eternal battle. When I first started on Squidoo 40 tags seemed to be recommended, now, not so much. The internet is not a static place and you have to be changeable to keep up with it.
We do like it when the Fluffanutter gets tinkering on a project.
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Good reminder - thanks. I think many of mine are still at “same as lens title” default. The later ones I think I started paying more attention, but this is a good time to do some maintenance and check up on that sort of thing.