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In the first part of this series, I talked about what different kind of links there were and some basic ideas on using these link types to get indexed and ranked by google quickly.
Along those lines, you can also use tags on your squidoo lens to create some very awesome backlinks. I’ve recently done an about face on how I use tagging on Squidoo and have noticed some great results.
Since each tag has it’s own page on Squidoo, you are creating an instant backlink to your lens each time you create a tag. Similarly, every time you change a tag, your link goes from one tag page to another…
Here’s the trick,
You want your lens to show up on highly relevant tags that that have multiple lenses pointing to them. You also want to be on the very first page if there are more than one page of results for that tag.
Example:
For a lens about polar bears I might have used to use the following tags:
- Polar Bear christmas card designs
- arctic polar bear habitats
- Polar Bear clothes and shirts
- Polar Bear Pictures and videos
etc.
But now I’ll set my tags to look more like this:
- Polar Bear
- animals
- arctic bears
- iceberg
etc.
Tags that are highly relevant and have multiple lenses linking to them will get you indexed faster and ranked higher.
By doing this, and practicing Primary Tag domination, you build up a nucleus of high ranking mini-sites that connect to each other in loads of different ways.
And that’s a good thing
I’ve seen a lot of questions lately on getting your lens indexed in Google and keeping there. I’m no stranger to having my lenses dropped out of Google search results after a few days, or never getting indexed at all. From what I can tell there are several major factors that play a role in Google’s results.
This is a pretty in depth topic, so I might take a few posts to cover it fully. For now, we’ll call this part 1 and discuss links.
Links
Links are obviously important for getting noticed by both real people and the search engines. Of course, Google has made billions of dollars by turning linking into a science as well as an art form. Squidoo can be very powerful for generating internal links (links to other squidoo pages) and is optimized very well for ‘on-page’ SEO elements. Here are some ideas to tip the scales in your favor even more.
Link Freshness- If your lens has some new links pointing at it every few days or weeks, it gives google a new ‘path’ to find your lens by. There are some automatic tools I use like Zimbio to accomplish this on a basic level, but there is always more that can be done.
Link volume - The more links you have, the more likely Google is to find one, follow it to your page, and index it. This can backfire if you just spam your link to poor directories and other ’shady’ neighborhoods. Sites with a good internal linking structure (Lensroll.com is a great example of good linking structure) can actually provide you with multiple links to your lens through various categories, user pages, etc.
Link Quality / Power A few really great links are all you really need to get indexed and start climbing the results. Unfortunately, this is much easier said than done. This is where creativity can really help you out. Do you know the market leader in your niche? What sites are people that view your lens also going to? Do you have a link plexo or link list that points to relevant sites? If those sites have any kind of social interaction (blogs, forums, etc.) then it’s an easy step to join in there conversation and contribute some valuable content to them (as comments and posts) with a link back to your lens. Again, providing something valuable is critical here, as spammy actions could wreck your reputation with those sites, as well as google. A relevant link with relevant anchor text is well worth the work and will reward you with organic traffic from the link as well as improved results in google. As Seth is fond of saying, Make it Remarkable and they will come 
That should provide a good foundation for you to begin to build your outside links. In the next part, I’ll show you some ways that I use different options available on your lens to build more links and more importantly, more powerful links from within squidoo.
Please feel free to ask any questions about this in the comments.
I’m constantly amazed at the people I find on forums that are still stuck in last summer and convinced that Squidoo is worthless as a tool for promotion or for making money. Their loss, my gain I suppose..
However, there are some common lensbuilding and squidoo techniques that many people use that are just plain wrong. So, I thought that I’d debunk a few of those for you piratey squids this morning.
- Squidoo RSS Feeds show google new information everytime someone visits - False -� the RSS feed is run on Javascript (AJAX), not php. Technospeak aside, this means that google can see your module title, description, and subtitle of RSS feeds. However, there are some Squidoo modules that will show different content to google every visit.
- Excessive keyword tagging can hurt - Sometimes - I always recommend starting a lens with 8-15 keywords and then adding long tail terms as they are discovered. This is more about relevancy than number. I’ve got a lens with the full 40 keywords being used that is getting over 1k hits a week. I’ve got others where I’ve gone back and found I did a terrible job tagging them and only have a few tags that could be more relevant. worry about good relevant tags, not about having ‘too many good tags’.
- You can’t make any money with Squidoo - If you believe this one you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog.. and whatever you do, don’t look here.
- Google has Slapped Squidoo - Ahh the infamous ‘Google Slap’. Yes, a penalty was applied to Squidoo pages last July. Squidoo and Seth immediately set about beating up on some spam that had snuck into the system. They addressed the problem and traffic has been on the rise ever since August. Google is constantly changing its algorithm to rank on many different factors. I have some lenses that do great with google and some that don’t. Google is going to show what they think the most relevant search results are at the top of the pages. So, provide relevant content to your topic and Google will find your lens.
- Gil’s Pony is the Secret to Lensrank - Actually, This one may be true…
-The Captain
