Squidoo Link Flow and SEO Part 2 - Tag Pages
If you missed it, make sure and read the first part of my series on Squidoo link flow from and to lenses.
Now that we’ve established where the links from lenses go to, lets discuss a little bit about how those Squidoo tag pages I crow about so much play into the whole system.
About Tags on Squidoo
The next two diagrams I’m going to show you assume a few things about the tag page. The first is that multiple lenses use that tag (10+). The second is that you use that tag on your lens and that tag is relevant. Having a lens about lemurs and using the ‘marketing’ tag just because lots of lenses use that tag isn’t going to do any good. Unless, of course, your lens is about how to market to lemurs :).
Where do Squidoo Tag Pages get their links?
Every lens that uses a tag creates a link back to the front page of the related tag page.
Where do Squidoo Tag Pages Link to?
The First tag page accumulates all the ‘link juice‘ or ‘votes‘ from all the lenses that use that tag. It then distributes these ‘votes‘ among the top ten lenses for that tag as well as to the deeper pages for that tag. For example, the tag ‘Affiliate Marketing‘ has over 2400 lenses that link to the front tag page. That main tag page then distributes all of it’s accumulated link mojo to the 10 lenses on that page as well as the 247 other ‘affiliate marketing’ tag pages. This means there is a ‘trickle down’ effect where those lower tag pages still get some link mojo to distribute to the lenses on each page after the first.
What Happens when you use uncommon tags on Squidoo?
If you use ‘unique tags‘ like ‘best place to buy a new purple rabbit‘ or some such nonsense, you will end up with a lot of tag pages like this one. A single link between the lens and the tag page. Look less exciting? That’s because it definitely is. There are many fewer ‘votes’, fewer paths for the bots to follow to discover your lens, and less exposure overall for your lens.
The lesson in Squidoo Tags:
Pay attention to what kind of tags you are using. If you have a lot of ‘dead end’ tags on your lens, it’s probably affecting your lens negatively.
Next up:
Squidoo Link flow and the Discovery tool OR Why the new Discovery tool Rocks my Socks
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Comments
Great article Captain. I’m just starting using Squidoo for affiliate marketing purpose and to make my blog become more popular 
I bookmarked your blog for future reference. Thanks!
Hey Captain, my Captain! Thanks for mentioning my rascally rascal lemur lens … you actually had me going for a minute there when you said something about the tag of “marketing” and using it on this lens. “HUH?” I said, scratching my noggin. “I didn’t use that tag … who put it on that lens.” Well I just checked and didn’t see it included … hadn’t thought of marketing to a lemur. “Would a lemur want a lemur plushy?” Hmmm… 
Who know there’d be sooooo much to learn????
Thank you for the very helpful tips and links.
I, too, have bookmarked this page and will look forward to your e-mail updates.
Another important reason not to create a new tag page - until the lens is indexed by the search engine, the tag page won’t be. Much better to include tags that are already indexed, and link to your lens so it’ll get indexed quicker.
Good stuff, I’ve searched your archives and learned a lot.
One thing I would mention is that some of my most frequent Google hits come from key phrases that are lonely on their tag pages. I’m searching for the balance between lensrank and Google/Yahoo.
I have a lot of work to do.
My question is, the longtail keyword tags are helpful for Google as long as they are mentioned in your lens somewhere, right?
So where do you find the line of what tags to use for SE’s and what to use for Squidoo?
Jeff and Bfuniv,
I think that having diversified content that uses a variety of phrasing and tenses about your lens topic helps you more than the tags do. That being said, a handful of ‘orphan’ tags that are still highly relevant are sure worth putting in the tags. I usually keep it to under 5 ‘orphans’ though but that’s just me.
[...] There’s plenty of advice on the subject: MrLewisSmile has done a very popular lens on tagging tricks, PotPieGirl did a blog post on how Squidoo tags are important, and CaptainSquid wrote how link juice flows from tag pages. [...]
I’ve just discovered that the tag pages aren’t indexed by search engines, and don’t pass link juice to the lenses. See the trackback above for details…
I wrote a lens today and added about 20 tags. Is 40 the limit? I am anxious to see how this lens fares!!
Now that I have your blog on my iPhone, I plan to study it!!
Thank you!!
It seems that the perfect thing here are finding long tail tags that have enough results, but where you can rank in the top 10 to be displayed on the first page of the tags results.
Does anyone know of a tool that monitors your positions in the tag results on squidoo?
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