Tips for building successful squidoo pages

[Roo]

Hi All!

(just to show how much of a newb I am here I hadn't noticed there was 3 more pages of this thread and posted this having only read the first one!)

I was sorta invited along by TeamPlayer, so hope you don't all mind me crashing the party! Looks like a pretty cool forum so I'll have a wander around and you may see me popping up here and there on different threads!

I'm maybe not the most experienced or successful squidoo member, I've never got in the top 100 (overall, top 100 per category is easy in comparison!), but I've come close a couple of times and quite a few of my lenses get a good amount of traffic and some even earn me money! Hopefully I can share with you some tips to improve our output on squidoo. I'll cover a couple of things a few people seem to have in common, but I'll try and keep it short!

Modules - these are the bits that come pre-formatted with titles and suggestions for what goes in them - Make sure you do alter the default title of each module - If you don't want to put anything in the module, delete it. - Have a look and see what modules are available and what they do, there's dozens, if not hundreds! (many, many, many more than previously mentioned - just go to add module and scroll thru the tabs, each of which usually has a few pages too)

Content - same rules apply here as they would anywhere, without unique content you can forget about visitors, and the more content the better. If you have a lot of text, split it up and create a few more text/write modules to put it in. (it's rumoured that search engines like this as they give emphasis to the module headers in results), Add pictures to each write module, you know a sea of text isn't inviting.

Affiliate marketing - Feel perfectly free to make it as commercial as you like, include the same affiliate ads that you have on your website or add others. The only restriction here is it has to be HTML, no java or iframes, no gambling links, and afew other common sense conditions. Avoid making it too spammy as if reported as spam it may get deleted along with your account. If you're new to affiliate marketing using squidoo's product modules maybe a good start, though as the bucks mount up (they pay in dollars by paypal), you may start to resent them taking about 50% of it! Amazon and ebay modules do tend to perform well, though there are alternatives to using the squidoo ones. Squidutils provides a nice tool to create similair links to amazon which you can add your own affiliate id to and link to the UK amazon, which the normal squidoo module won't. The only downside using that tool is they take 20% of your clicks! You can also generate Ebay RSS feeds with your affiliate code and drop these in the RSS module to great effect!

There's dozens of links I could place here to give you tips, show you tutorials and give examples, though am not sure I can post links being a newbie! Where I'd recommend you starting was by having a look at the top performing lenses by seeing what's in the top 100 of the category you're interested in and seeing what they look like.
I'd also recommend looking at some of the squidoo tutorials, there's a great one on basic squidoo html, one on advanced squidoo html, one on tweaking the css, justfor a start and these will really show you how to alter the look and feel of a page and optimise the html/css available. One that I'd plug, (cos i made it!), is one about using ebay rss feeds with your affiliate id.

Seems you all are helping each other out learning the ropes together so I hope my input has been useful. Rolling each others lenses is a great start, as is joining each others fanclubs. One of you may even wish to set up a 'group' which will feature all your output on squidoo.

one other thing - add some module or other to get user interaction, whether it's a comment module, poll or duel, getting interaction with visitors improves squidoo lensrank, which in turn should result in a higher PR. Plexo's I find aren't great methods of getting interaction but polls are. Just make sure you alter the submission/participation settings so anyone can join in.

One final thing, when editing a lens, make sure in the right hand column you tick the button for 'cash' or you won't earn any royalties from squidoo!

I've been and starred, favorited and fanclubbed at least one lens from each of you so you should be able to find me and my squidoo content easy enough.

PS. once a lens is finished pop back every month or so and just freshen it up, this way search engines will give it favour again as they treat lenses a bit like blogs

[temi]

Roo,
Welcome to UK WW. Your tips are very detailed and informative, than very much for taking the time to put it together, I think its of a hight enough quality to stand on its own as post, so I have moved it from the hidden position it is and posted it as a thread of its own.

Thanks for taking the time to put it together

[Roo]

Original post -

Thanks Temi!
I'm flattered to have been given such a platform!
Guess I need to surf around a bit and post some more response elsewhere so I can include some useful links here as well!
Unfortunately squidoo seems to suffering from a rare outage this morning, hopefully it won't last for long!

Now, the first trick in using squidoo I feel is to make your page look professional. Anyone with a basic knowledge of Html can do this, but funny rules do apply!
For some great tutorials on this Basic Html & Advanced Html are both worth looking through. Also, if you master that easy enough you may want to check out some CSS Tricks , all of these will help improve the look of your lens.

Want to use your own amazon affiliate links, or UK ones, but want a way to do so quickly and have them looking professional and in keeping with the squidoo style? Squidutils does this for a slight cut) easily, it also provides you with a RSS feed of all your lenses which you can then submit anywhere. When you have just published a lens (can take a little while for it too publish the first time) or recently updated it squidutils gives you a dashboard allowing you to ping a number of search engines. There are a few more features, but they are the main ones I use.

Assuming most users here are UK based and are aiming for UK visitors you may not like the ebay module provided as it makes things quite tricky to select items from the UK. Fear not, by using an RSS feed of your ebay search results you can add this to a RSS module, I wrote a tutorial on Using Ebay RSS Feeds To Earn Commission which I hope you'll like. (I'm considering writing a synopsis of this tutorial for here shortly)

Good places to find other squids? Well Squidu is the main forum for support and socialising and is worth looking over and a great place to go for help and advice. Lensroll is a kind of Digg site for squidoo lenses, easiest way of getting a back link, though only submit 2 lenses a day or risk being deleted by them, also has a forum. Squoogle is another squidoo directory, though combined with submissions from a few other social networks.

Hope y'all find these links useful too!

[TeamPlayer]

Roo, excellent write up which I`m sure those of us who are already into Squidoo will find useful. I`m sure too that those of us who aren`t might now be tempted to join in the fun.

[TeamPlayer]

I've been and starred, favorited and fanclubbed at least one lens from each of you so you should be able to find me and my squidoo content easy enough.

Roo, not sure whether you are able to or not, but why not post your link to your lens(es) in this thread which will hopefully be picked up by others who use Squidoo so we can reciprocate?


http://forums.ukwebmasterworld.com/s...oo-lenses.html

[Roo]

Thanks TP,

I've got to make a few more posts before I can include links! I did intend to post some useful links to how-to squidoo pages, i'll come back and add them later.

Meanwhile I did run through that thread and starred, favorited and joined fanclubs for most, (if not all, forgive me for missing them), so hopefully people will see an icon like my avatar here on their lensmaster page or on their lenses possibly so the can find my squidoo output. I'd highly reccomend people looking through my current number #1 lens about ebay & RSS. I'm thinking of writing a brief tutorial on this linking back to the lens on it, hopefully will be with you shortly!

[seonotes]

Welcome to UKWW Roo,

These are excellent tips on squidoo. I believe you have done a good research work and spent lot time putting together these tips. Thanks for sharing.

[temi]

Roo, your fan club is incredible, well done sir.

[seonotes]

Originally Posted by temi

Roo, your fan club is incredible, well done sir.

Thats a good research work temi this is super detective work

[Roo]

Originally Posted by temi

Roo, your fan club is incredible, well done sir.

Why Thank You! I'm only a humble squid, some of the 'Giant Squids' have huge fan clubs!

Now I believe this is my 10th post so hopefully I can start adding links. If you give me 10minutes or so to test this out, I'll go back an edit an earlier post on this thread to give links to some good squidoo examples, resources and tools!