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!
On to Day two of the Ebay Squidoo Challenge and I’m starting to pick up a little steam.
For my second lens in the contest I chose to do a product based lens, specifically Rubik’s Cubes and Variants.
Good tips from this lens:
- Less can be more - Notice how I use fewer than the standard 3 listings in the ebay modules. This cuts down on choice but really cleans the look up. In situations like this where I’m featuring different kinds of similar products I’ve found I get better CTRs with this method.
- Use the Description Area of Ebay Modules - Since google will not index the actual auctions pulled in the module any information you can give to the spiders to tell them more about what’s going on helps a ton. Plus, it looks better.
- Picture Poll - I don’t use these very often but this was a perfect situation for it. Instead of a guestbook module I chose to use a poll with images. How did I do it? some simple HTML code with the <image> tag. I have a lens on HTML for Images, and I’m sure there’s a bunch more that describe the process even better (if you know one, post it in the comments!).
- Have fun - Since I am a huge nerd at heart, I love topics like this. It makes it easier to make the lens when you like the topic.
- Don’t be afraid of competition - I didn’t even look to see if there were other Rubik’s Cube lenses on squidoo when I made the lens. After I hit publish, it appears there are a few other lenses on it. That’s fine, more places for my link to hang out in discovery tools :). The more coverage there is on topics like Rubik’s cubes, the more that squidoo can build its reputation as a reliable place to go to find good information. And that’s better for everyone.
Comments or thoughts?
The Rubik’s Cube Lens can be found here.
If you are feeling really excitable you can even go to the main contest page and vote for the Captain in the plexo!
I know there are some lensmasters out there that love their pets, make lenses about their pets, have piles of lenses about taking care of their pets, etc.
I think I found a great site today for you guys : Youpet.com
I heard about it from a neighbor, went over and checked it out and it looks like a great place for all you pet lovers (and link lovers 
) to spread the word about your pet lenses.
It looks like it’s got a pretty good pile of features with blogs, pictures, a rating system (treats) and other cool stuff.
Unfortunately, I haven’t made a lens about my dog yet (it’s on the list!) so I haven’t had a chance to fully get into it yet.
Those of you that have, check Youpet.com out and let me know what you think!
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.
