Why most Squidoo SEO advice is bunk
Sometimes I’ll see some advice on ’succeeding with Squidoo’ that just makes me shake my head in wonder… especially when it comes to basic SEO advice for lenses. Now, I’m not really an SEO but I’ve built a giant pile of lenses and I’m starting to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
So, with no further blathering, here is The Captain’s Dos and Don’ts with Squidoo SEO.
DO
- Write in clear, concise paragraphs that are easy to read and make sense. Use keywords in your content text.
- Use less than 3 keywords in your URL
- Build multiple lenses around a general theme and link them together with a directory lens.
- Think very carefully about tagging your lens.
- If you have text content in a module, use the subtitle with relevant words in it.
- Know your audience. Who is your lens written to appeal to? Where do they hang out? Find them.
- No-follow your affiliate links.
Don’t…
- RSS modules on Squidoo are rendered with JavaScript. Google does not see any links from an RSS feed in any of your lenses. Don’t believe me? Google one of your lenses and click the ‘cached’ link on the result. Instead, use the google blog search module or one of the other evergreen modules that Does have its contents indexed by G.
- Leaving drive-by links on lenses and blogs just makes you look spammy. Stop it.
- Do your followers on Twitter want to know more about your lens? Match your promotion to your audience, Twitter is full of ‘Digerati’ and is very tech oriented. You may have a bunch of followers that are rabid fans of German Polka Music and in that case you should share your German Polka Lenses with them. Don’t Share every lens you have on Twitter.
- stop looking for places to promote your lens where people will actually care.
- go bombard 25 social networks with the link to your lens. Try one you think is most appropriate first and see how that goes.
- Write huge introduction modules with a short novel and a bunch of pictures. 3-5 sentences in the intro, tops.
- throw a lens up in 20 minutes, come back in 3 months, and state unequivocally that Squidoo sucks and no money can be made using it and there is no value in Squidoo. You look silly.
- copy/paste your article or blog post straight into a lens. Most likely it will just be ignored or the search engines will rank the squidoo lens and demote your blog. Spend some time changing it around.
- think there’s only one definition of success on squidoo.
- links passed from nearly all directories and articles really don’t carry that much weight. Directories and Article (Bum) Marketing require a tremendous amount of energy for the ROI. Find a better way.
I could go on but I’ve got to go now. I’ll try to expand on this list later.
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Comments
Great list, Captain! Amazing information…as always…Until recently, I thought RSS feeds were indexed by Google. Boy was I wrong…
Thanks!
Hi Captain,
What exactly is “No-follow your affiliate links”? Can I do that with my Amazon links for instance? Thanks for your great posts. Really worth reading.
I can definitely agree with everything you’ve listed.
However, the last point regarding Article Marketing puzzled me somewhat and I’m hoping you will expand on this a bit.
I’m just curious; has submitting articles to article directories not contributed to your success with Squidoo?
Also, do you simply create a family of lenses per theme and link them together via a Lensmaster directory in order to build your link count and prominence in Google?
As always, thank you for great information.
Kindly,
Sunshine
Sunshine and Course,
Very good questions and awesome ideas for some new posts. I’ll make sure and go back and explain some of these concepts in detail in the next few days.
[...] updates and squidoo tricks delivered straight to you via RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!After my SEO Tips for Squidoo yesterday, I had a few comments asking some great questions. One was by ‘A Course in [...]
Great tips on SEO, Captain! My advice: great content beats SEO - every time. We’ve all heard this a zillion times, but it’s true.
If you build something that people like and want to visit, you won’t need to spend much time on SEO.
Of course the problem that no one helps you with is how to find those compelling topics…
Hey, THIS was the post I was looking for. I came upon this when I first started studying Squidoo for a business, then lost track of it.
My question, related to your third bullet point under “DO”: Just what is a “directory lens”? How do make ‘em?
Thanks so much! (BTW — I lived in Denver for 5 years when I was a kid back in the Dark Ages. Proud student then at Ashland Elementary — which no longer exists — and Skinner Junior High.)
Stumbled across this post while trying to see if Google is even giving much credit to Squidoo lenses anymore. Judging by some of these older blog posts, it seems like Google has definitely curtailed rankings for Squidoo compared to a year or so ago (which is probably a good thing). Good advice nonetheless, though.
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However using the rss module for affiliate stuff is great. The search engines don’t need to see my amazon links.