What is Squidoo?

An effective Internet Marketing strategy, Squidoo is a website which allows you to build your own webpages, called “lenses” wth your own custom URL, personally designed and with a ton of features and components.

What are the Benefits of Building a Squidoo Lens

Website Promotion – To promote your sites and blogs and get exposure to large amounts of traffic from other Squidoo members as well as the Search Engines. When optimized with hand picked keywords, and customized and promoted correctly (as described below) Squidoo lenses will rank high and quickly in SERPS, and you will get some great website promotion opportunities for all your campaigns.

Backlink – Get a backlink to your websites/blogs.

Steps to Building an Effective Squidoo Lens

1. Choose your Keywords

Make sure, as always, to research the keywords you want the lens to rank for. These are not necessarily the same keywords as the website your promoting, they could be other good keywords for your niche that you did not use on your website, this way access to your website is all over the search engine results. Read this guide to get tips for keyword research: Step-by-Step Niche and Keyword Research.

Sign up for your free Squidoo account, and you can begin to build a lens.

Creating a Squidoo Lens Step-by-Step:

Pre-Design Squidoo Lens Wizard

1. You will be asked “What your Lens is About, just put in the general subject (we will change it later)

2. What’s Your Goal of your Page?: Just choose option 1 (I want to get the word out about..your subject)

3. This step is crucial: Title and URL

Title: Must have your main Keyword that you want the lens to rank for. It can have other words to make it interesting, but title must have your keywords in order to rank in SERPS in Google. The title is coded within Squidoo as the h1 title tag of an SEO Meta tag.

URL: Also must have your keywords, preferably the URL should be the same as the title. If the URL you want is unavailable (because someone else is using it) then just add some other words to it, like your name. For example, if I want Internet Marketing as my URL and it is all ready taken, I may add, Internet Marketing Secrets, or Easy Internet Marketing, etc.

Category: Make sure to pick the best possible category for your lens and rate the lens as appropriate.

4. Another crucial step – TAGS

Add Tags: tags are basically keywords or categories that are appropriate to your lens, all possible good KW that apply to your lens should be added here. The more the better. Tags will allow your lens to show up in Google for those keywords and help people to find your lens. Tip: you can add all the tags you want once you are in the “workshop” window of your Squid lens and are actually designing your lens.

Lensmaster Workshop

Now that you have set-up your lens with the wizard you will be in the Lensmaster Workshop where you can add content and design the lens.

BIO:

Fill in the bio section with a photo (yourself or something related to your niche, you can use your website logo) and then add some content about yourself or your website, or a catchy slogan, this makes your lens personalized and gives you authority.

If you don’t do this your lens will literally say “This is my Bio, I will fit in later”…looks really lame!

Modules:

In Squidoo “modules” are sections within your lens. There are many types of modules available, including text, photo, rss feeds, comments, links..etc. (More on modules below).

Unmax your Lens:

Make sure to UNMAX your lens from the box at the bottom portion of the sidebar. This will make your lens less busy and look more attractive.

OPT Out:

Lenses can earn you a little money from ads that are automatically generated by Squidoo if you select that option within your profile settings. But, if you want a cleaner lens, you can forego the few dollars you may earn, if you select “donate all my money to charity” from your profile settings, then the “WHOOPS” box will be available to you and you can select it to OPT OUT OF DISPLAY ADS, and have less clutter on your lenses.

Here is a screenshot of Max and Whoops!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of the Lens:

For search engines to find and correctly rank your websites, you need to optimize certain attributes of the Meta Tags, Title <h1>, Description and Keywords, as well as the second in importance, the <h2> and <h3> tags.

In Squidoo, there is no “Meta Tags” section, but Squidoo lenses are automatically coded with Search Engine Optimization tags and so it is important to enter the relevant information correctly.

Squidoo coding for SEO:

Lens Title <h1> = Meta Tag Title

Lens Introduction Module = Meta Description

Lens Tags = Meta Keywords

Module Headers = <h2> tagged

Module Subheaders = <h3> tagged

So in order to have your lens rank in Google and stay there, make sure to fill in all of the above properly with your keywords and main subjects/points so that Google knows what your lens is about and what keywords you want to rank for.

Content/Modules for a Great Lens:

Table of Contents. Important! Select yes under table of contents from the tab under Introduction module. This will display an organized list at the top of your Squidoo lens with the titles of all your modules. Adding a table of content increases the click-through rate and navigation for visitors easier.

Create several text modules. Most Important! This is where you will add content that promotes your website. Break up your content and create several text modules, at least 5, but, the more modules, with relevant optimal headers and subheaders, the better. Make sure to use your main keywords, and a 3-5% keyword density throughout the content of the lens.

Create polaroid (picture) modules. Most Important! Add screenshots or photos that support your content at least 2 or 3.

Links module. Most Important! Linkback to your website and other helpful links and resources that related to your lens subject or website.

Comments Module. Most Important! Make sure to add a comment module, and edit the header with your own blurb, as discussed above. This way people will the opportunity to comment on your lens.

Add Del.ic.ious Bookmark Module – Make sure to select “show popular bookmarks within the module settings.

Add other Modules. Check the entire module selection, there are lots of options, and pick whatever suits your fancy. Just be sure to choose the modules that support your goal, of website promotion, don’t go overboard and choose so many that it will take focus away from your lens subject.

Once again, make sure to change the headers and subheaders, with your keywords/subjects for each of the modules (as discussed above under SEO).

Lens Design:

HTML
Squid lenses do not come with a wysiwyg builder, you have to add some html:

Basic HTML tags:
Bold- <b> </b>
Italic – <i> </i>
Hyperlink – <a href=”http://yourdomain.com”>Anchor Text</a>

For a complete guide to all HTML tags, including color please visit: Basic HTML for Squidoo

Lenses on their own are very basic, which is really okay if you don’t want to take more time on design. However, they can be tricked out with different module placement, colors, highlighted boxes, borders for content…etc. Here are some excellent and simple guides to trick out your lenses:

CSS Tricks for Squidoo Lenses | Basic HTML for Squidoo
Advanced HTML for Squidoo – My favorite! Get code for background color and borders.
Bulleted and Ordered List in Squidoo – My favorite!

Remember: Make your lens yours, add lots of modules, information and design tweaks to create a user-friendly information filled lens page.

Promoting Squidoo Lenses for Maximum Exposure:

These steps are crucial in getting the maximum exposure and visitors for your lenses, and these will also help your lens get ranked in Google.

1. Add your lens to as many Squidoo groups as possible (based on subject), there are tons of them for all subjects, and there are also groups that take any lens.

2. Do lens link exchanges (lensrolls) with other relevant lenses. Just select lensroll icon on the sidebar of the other lens and then select which of your lenses you want to lensroll with from a dropdown box, the link exchange is then added automatically by Squidoo.

3. Lensroll all your lenses with each other. In Squidoo this is easily done by selecting lensroll from your admin area and then selecting the lenses you want to roll with from a drop down menu.

4. Add your lenses to these Squidoo Directories and Search Engines:

Squoogle | Squid Directory | Isle of Squid | BUMPzee! | Scrub the Web | Gigablast| Yahoo | MSN | Google | Lensroll.com | SurfGopher | SquidLink

5. Write some articles and point them to your lenses.

6. Social bookmark your lenses, especially the do-follow social sites (see list) all over the place.

Other Excellent Squidoo Resources:

Squidoo FAQ
SquidUtils-Lensmaster Tools

I know this may sound overwhelming, but once you build a couple of lenses it really becomes a piece of cake.

Now, go and Squidoo