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!
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
This is the beginning of a 4-part series I’m going to release this week that describes how I believe Squidoo’s internal link structure works to help you get better rankings and what you can do to take advantage of it.
Let’s start off by looking at the 4 different ‘types’ of links that go into and out of Squidoo lenses.
Squidoo Link Flow Away from a Lens
As you can see, there are 4 major types of links out of a lens:
- Tags - These link to tag pages within squidoo. You have complete control over which tag pages, but they will always go to tag pages.
- Category - There is always a link to the Squidoo Category you chose when setting up your lens. You have control over this.
- Discover lenses - This is a new addition and links out to other lenses on Squidoo. You have some ways to control these links as well, both directly and indirectly.
- Modules - Any links you add to your lens in your modules or profile are completely under your control. These are the only links on your lens that lead out from squidoo.
Squidoo Link Flow Towards a Lens
Notice any similarities here? You have the exact same four sources of incoming links to your lens. These could also be called ‘backlinks’, those things everyone wants to have.
- Tags - All the tag pages that you link to also link back to you in some form. The link to your lens might be on page 27 of ‘music’ though and your link to the tag page is to the first ‘music’ page….
- Category - The same concept as tags. Your link points to the first page in the category but your link back is not necessarily from the front page.
- Discover - Your lens will receive some links back to it from other lenses through the discover tool. These are ‘one-way’ links because you are not necessarily linking to the lens that links to you. There are some ways to control these links that could potentially make this very powerful.
- External - These are the links that set you apart from other lenses. The toughest to get, they can make or break your lens if used correctly. There are a few Squidoo modules that allow you to automatically acquire external links to your lens as well…
Summary
So what does this mean? Squidoo allows you to control the links coming into your lens as well as the links leaving your lens when done correctly. The key is to use the ‘link infrastructure’ that’s in place to achieve your extra piratey goal…
Next up: Using Link flow from Tag and Category Pages to Improve your Rankings
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
