This post is a continuation of my first two posts on tagging with Squidoo: Tags and Lenses, and Tag Pages.  If you are a little lost, go read those two to catch up.

Until recently, tag pages consisted of the majority of link flow that could be influenced within squidoo. However, with the recent release of the ‘Discovery Tool’ on lenses (that blue box that has related lenses in it) the possibilities have increased significantly.

The Discovery box on Squidoo displays a subset of other lenses from across Squidoo. Many people have viewed this in a negative light, thinking that this would drive traffic away from their lenses. However, many people are overlooking two major benefits:

  1. If you’ve tagged your lenses well it should very easily bring in more traffic than it sends out.
  2. You can control all of the lenses in the Discovery box.

What you say? All the lenses? Yep.

You are manually allowed to enter up to three lenses in the Discovery box. Don’t even mess around with that unless it’s for a very specific purpose. Dynamic links can be much more powerful in many instances. Instead, use the Discovery tool algorithm to your advantage.

The Squidoo Discovery Tool Algorithm Deconstructed

From my calculations the discovery tool is based on many things, but a few factors that show through are the following:

  • Primary Tags
  • # of tags in common
  • Category
  • Lensrank

I’m not going to reveal which ones I think are the most important, because a Pirate Captain needs to keep a few secrets :) . But with a little testing you should be able to figure it out yourself.

The Discovery tool truly provides the third leg for controlling squidoo link flow. I hope this little series has been of use to you all and I’d love to hear any questions about it.