Arr... This Be The Captain! Thanks for Stopping by to check out my piratey bag of Squidoo Tricks! If you are new here, you might want to get free updates and squidoo tricks delivered straight to you via RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
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
Doug Eby pointed this one out to me the other day, it’s definitely a must have for going back and optimizing your keywords.
After you begin to see search traffic from your lens, the keywords used to find it will be displayed on your Traffic tab of your Stats area. This is all well and good, but what if you are totally missing a keyword that could bring you even more traffic?
That’s where a Keyword Optimizer comes in. This handy little script takes your lens URL and spits out the most commonly searched phrases based on your content. Have a look, are there keywords that are searched often that are relevant to your lens? Are you using them? I’ve noticed improvements from switching two word keywords around (’black hat ‘ to ‘hat black’ for example) as well as some keywords I just totally missed.
Try out the Keyword Suggestion tool and let me know what you think.
-The Captain
Quick tip from the captain today.
EVERY time you fill out a module, make sure and fill out the second heading line with another keyword-rich sentence. This is important for 2 reasons:
1) the subtitles are in what are called ‘header tags’. H1 tags are the REALLY BIG titles you see at the top of the lens.� H2 titles are the module titles. H3 titles are the subtitles. Google and other search engines weigh keywords in header tags more heavily than in content text. This means you are missing out on potential google goodness every time you leave a subtitle blank.
2) It makes the lens look more ‘put together’ and gives an impression that you spent some time on it to make it look good. Also, I have a sneaking suspicion (unverified) that subtitles may play a very minor role in LensRank calculation.
So, the next time you build a lens, remember those subtitles!
-The Captain
