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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:
- If you’ve tagged your lenses well it should very easily bring in more traffic than it sends out.
- 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.
During our little discussion on tags the past few days, I noticed that Drew from Squidoography posted an excellent tip on easily searching different squidoo tag pages using Firefox.
Essentially, you can create a firefox bookmark that allows you to type ‘tag search+tag+here‘ into your Firefox address bar and instantly pull up the related squidoo tag page for that search term.
This is a great way to avoid having ’stranded’ tag pages that your lens links to.
Thanks for the great tip Drew!
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
