Christmas is over. Some may be relieved,  some may be bummed, and yet others of you, I’m sure, are wondering what the heck happens now?!

Let’s talk about it!

You’ve spent some time (hopefully) over the last few months putting together some product lenses on Squidoo. Your target was Christmas shoppers, so now what are you going to do now that the holiday shopping frenzy is over? Is all that hard work going to go to waste?

Heck no.

I wouldn’t do that to you!! Even though the blueprint is called Christmas cash, and you targeted Christmas shoppers your lenses will continue to work throughout the year.

When doing your keyword research you identified your search volume from the “global search” number. This number is an average of the last 12 months worth of searches. So unless you targeted products specifically related to Christmas itself your lenses will keep making sales (provided you’ve gotten them ranked in the search engines) all year. It may or may not be at the same rate you saw at Christmas, but it should happen.

What about the Christmas references in my lenses?

If you put in content about these being great Christmas gifts you can do one of two things, and both will probably work.

1. You can just leave them. I personally do not go back in and change my lenses. I don’t have the time quite frankly.

2. You can go in and take out the Christmas references, but leave in the gift reference. These things WILL continue to make great gifts whether it’s for Valentine’s day, birthdays, anniversaries etc.

Keep your eye on next Christmas

Even if you started the Christmas cash blueprint the day I published it, that still didn’t give you a lot of time to get your lenses built, indexed and ranking. Now is the time to keep your eye on the prize ~ next Christmas.

This could go one of two ways. Without the pressure of impending Christmas you can relax a little and build lenses without so much pressure.

Or you can say oh, Christmas is a year away and blow off building lenses.

Which are you going to do? Whether you decide to go with another long term strategy, building product lenses is always a wise move. If you build 1 lens a week for the next year you’ll have 52 more lenses in your arsenal, ready and waiting to not only earn you money during the year but ready for Christmas shopping next year.

The longer you can give your lenses to simmer, and build “age” the better.

I suggest you make it a habit to build and promote, at the very least, 1 lens a week for the next year. You can do these lenses in your spare time ~ don’t spend a ton of time on them, build them, do the basics of promotion and then just let them simmer. When I say simmer I mean leave them alone and just let them be. Don’t touch them, don’t mess with them, move on to something else. Just to be clear.

If you can find a way to learn how to let go of the attachment of any given lens being your best seller you will put yourself at a great advantage. It is our attachment to the outcome/production of any one piece of online real estate that leads to disappointment and frustration. When you focus all your effort on one thing and then it doesn’t work it’s very easy to get discouraged. When you get discouraged it’s really easy to quit.

I don’t want you to quit.

When you can let go of your attachment you will find that you just keep building and building. Then instead of disappointed one day you open your account and see 500 hits to a lens and then you check your stats and find a bunch of commissions in your account you feel excited and SURPRISED!! That is a wonderful feeling. It will make you want to build more, just to see what happens, to see which will take off, which will surprise you.

I can almost guarantee working in internet marketing from the framework of looking for surprises is going to keep you going long past watching one site and being disappointed. Please, please, please ~ if you can do one thing this year, learn to let go.

No matter how much time and effort you put into keyword research, writing content, promotion, there are going to be lenses/sites/blogs that just don’t fly. It’s gonna SUCK, but it’s gonna happen. I promise. If you have all your hopes and dreams invested in that one property you are going to be sorely disappointed, and it’s going to be hard to keep taking action with that nasty little voice in the back of your head saying

See I told you this wasn’t going to work. See I told you you wouldn’t be able to do this. See I told you this was too hard, you’re not smart enough, good enough … whatever it is the ugly voice says to you.

Don’t let the ugly voice win. Spread out your hopes and dreams and look for the surprise.

Here’s one of the surprises from my year. I put up one lens. It was just a test lens. I saw a very cool product while I was searching for a way to do something for my family for Christmas. I did a cursory bit of keyword research and found some keywords that had some search volume. Quite frankly I didn’t think they were buying keywords and I didn’t think they would take off.

I did a quick lens ~ really quick ~ 30 minutes. I just put something together that told the story of how I found this thing, what I wanted to do with it, and how it worked. I happened to think it was super cool so I said that too.

I did a couple posts on free ad blogs, and added it to a couple blogs I have. The RSS feed for my lensmaster account had already been submitted. I just left it.

That was about 6 months ago. I didn’t touch it.

A month or two later I realized it was getting  a trickle of traffic. I added the keywords people were using to find it to the tags and that’s it.

I forgot all about it. In fact, I forgot the name of the product I was promoting. I only went back to the lens because I wanted to go to the product and use it lol. When I got to the lens I clicked through to the product and checked my stats. I’d been making a few sales. Well that’s cool.

Then this month I checked my stats again, and as of last night I had made over $870 from that one product, one lens.

Do you think I was motivated to get my ass to squidoo and build some more lenses?

YOU BETCHA!

Here’s the thing though ~ while that lens was over there doing it’s thing I’ve been hanging out with you all, I’ve been building niche sites, I’ve been building more lenses ~ and all of (well some of) those endeavors are making money. So not only did I rock it from that lens this month I’ve made some other money as well.

I don’t tell this story to brag or to make you feel bad. I want to really really really get my point across that you have to LET GO of the attachment to your stuff. Do it, promote it, let it go. Check in on it a month later and see what it’s up to. Really. The more obsessive you get about how your stuff is doing I’m convinced the less it’s going to do. If you know/believe in the law of attraction it says “That which is like unto itself is drawn”. What the…? What that means to me is if you sit there saying “dang, my lens doesn’t have any traffic what the… ” You are going to draw even more of that to you and your lens. The more you focus on what isn’t working, why it’s not working, you’re going to pull more “not working” to you.

So just let it go and have FUN. Do more lenses, have fun doing lenses. Find things to write about that you are excited to share with people. Share things that make you smile. The better you feel while you’re doing this, the better the results. Yes, that’s just my personal experience ~ but its’ what I see over and over again in my business. When I go out and put stuff up just to make money bleck… nada. When I write because I’m loving something and want someone else to experience the fun/joy/love I have then magical things happen.

Passion vs. profit  is an ongoing and long debate in the marketing world ~ but that’s my take on it.

ANYWAY ~ there was my ramble for Tuesday.

Now what?

• If you want to keep building more lenses as your primary or secondary internet marketing strategy I suggest you build, build, build as many as you possibly can. Be consistent, build and promote regularly. Follow the Christmas Cash blueprint (which will have a new name and look shortly, but will be the same information don’t worry).

• Go to the articles page of this blog and follow the steps outlined in the product lens process section.

Many of you mentioned, in the survey,  you wish there was a checklist. Something you could print out to keep you on track and help you see which steps you’ve taken and what still needs to be done.

Your wish is my pleasure to create!

I have put together a  checklist in pdf format. You can download it and then print it out for each lens. It will walk you through all the steps needed to research, create and promote a product lens.  There’s a place to mark off each step when you’ve completed it.

While I’d like to give it away for free I want people to really use it. It seems people think things are really useful and helpful when they have to pay for it. Don’t worry, I’m keeping it really affordable, but if you pay for it, make me one promise. USE IT!!

If you want the Squidoo Lens Creation Checklist just click the buy now button below. You will receive an email with your download link in it. Once you’ve downloaded it make sure you save it to your computer so you can use it over and over again for each of your lenses.

Squidoo Lens Creation Checklist: $7

I hope that answers the question of what’s next for your christmas cash lenses ~ if you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comment section and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Related posts:

1. What’s the 1 Thing I Can Do To Start Making Sales?
2. What’s Next for Us? Please Let Me Know!
3. Are You an Impulse Shopper?

If you want to increase your conversion rate and create a really great lens today’s post is going to give you a couple keys to the process.

1. Create a plan.

2. Tell a story.

Sounds simple ~ and it is. Before you EVER put one word on paper (screen) you need to have a plan, and you need to have a story. Let’s see what those look like.

Create a plan:

You want to make sure you know a couple things for your plan.

1. Your most desired action. What is the one thing you want people that hit this page to do? For our purposes here and now it’s probably “click through to amazon”. However in the future it may be something different. You may want them to subscribe to your newsletter, you may want them to bookmark the page, you may want them to click an adsense ad. Whatever it is a page can really ONLY do one thing at a time.

2. What is the keyword you’re targeting? Really ~ what exactly is the keyword you are targeting for the page? You want to make sure you know it so you can use it.

3. Is your product relevant to the keyword? I’ve talked in another post about how important everything being relevant is to make things really click together and work on your lens.

This brings us to the story. I’ve mentioned many times how important it is to speak conversationally in your lenses. This is very true. I find it much easier to do this when I’ve created a story to tell.

How do you create a story?

1. Think about your keywords. Who do you think is on the other end of the keyboard typing those words in? What do you think they want from typing those words?

2. Get creative and make it up.

Let’s take a look at the inversion table lens I did ~ who did I think was looking up that keyword? People who are having back pain, have tried everything else, are tired of spending money on chiro that doesn’t work, people who are frustrated and just want to be free of back pain.

Are those the only people looking for inversion tables?

NO probably not. ~ however ~ those are the people I’m going to talk to in this lens. When you try to talk to everyone you end up talking to no one. Make your story and stick to it.

What did they want when they got there? Information about how an inversion table will help their back pain, a good inversion table to buy, a little ecouragment that this isn’t the dumbest idea they’ve ever had.

Writing a lens is much like writing a story from this point on. You want to have a beginning a middle and an end.

The beginning is where you make your introductions ~ you tell them what you’re going to talk about, and make them feel comfortable on your page. YOU DO NOT SELL in your introduction.

This is NOT to say you don’t  link to your product in your intro module, because you should. In a post over at SquidooCool Lewis is talking about the green links in intro modules and what Squidoo found out when they took them out of the intro modules.

In a forum post about these ads Megan from Squidoo HQ posted the following message: “We tried excluding the links from the Intro module, and that made revenue from these ads nosedive. Really nosedive. So we put them back in”.

So, good news!

Squidoo can see from their stats on over one million lenses that text links in intro modules get LOTS of clicks.

The Best:

Forget the text link ads – it’s time to go through all your lenses and add a relevant affiliate link to the intro module!

What squidoo learned from that test really shows us that having a link in the intro module seriously increases conversion. So put them in there ~ but don’t sell it.

The middle ~ this is where the meat of your content is going to be. This is where you’re going to give them the information, the links to buy, and let them know this is a good decision that has been made by many other happy people.

The end ~ this is where you want to tell them exactly what to do next (complete your most desired action). We call this a call to action. You also want to let them know ~ from your content this is the end of the lens, thanks for coming and make them feel good for being there.

How do we accomplish ALL this on a Squidoo lens?

Seems like a mighty task, but it’s really pretty simple.

The beginning ~ say hi ~ not literally, but tell them what you’re going to be talking about, let them know it’s THEM you are talking to. So for the inversion table I’m talking to people with back pain who are frustrated and looking for a solution. Here’s what I said to them:

If you have or know someone that is experiencing back pain you can give them a great gift this holiday season. You can give them the gift of relief. The Ironman Gravity 4000 inversion table will help relieve back pain and improve posture.

This let’s them know I’m speaking to them, and their problem. I’ve got a link to the solution right there, but I’m not selling it ~ I”m just saying it might be something that can help.

The middle ~ where we give them information, links, and make them feel comfortable about the buying decision.

features module:  talk about the features, let them get a feeling if this might be the solution for them.

videos:  give them more information about the product/what it does/if it will help them.

polls: let’s them get involved

testimonials: let’s them know other people have made the same decision and were happy they did.

call to action: give them a way to get to the product and a savings is always a bonus.

The end ~ Where you get them to take your most desired action, help them feel good about being on your page.

Call to action:  the big arrow module is super for this.

Guestbook: great way to say a little “thank you for stopping by” and make then feel like you really are glad they were there.

It’s all about how you approach it.

All of these elements are truly dependant on what you write. For example:

The beginning: If you start your lens off with”save 70% on this item now” That doesn’t really help you introduce yourself or let them know you are going to help solve their problem ~ that many times may lead to them having the opposite feeling ~ “oh they’re just trying to sell me something”. While savings are great ~ and 70% rocks ~ you don’t ask someone to marry you on the first date and you shouldn’t start off your lens relationship with buy this now.

In the middle you can have features modules and it can go one of two ways ~ you can copy info off the amazon page or you can talk to people, like you were really talking to them, trying to solve their problem.  The latter will definitely work better toward improving your conversion rate.

The testimonials, videos etc you have to keep talking to people. Sure you can just post a video ~ but really. If you found a great video you thought would help a friend would you really send them a video without any explanation of why you’re sending it or why they should watch it? You shouldn’t on your lens either.

You can just post testimonials, but again ~ would you just send a friend a testimonial if you all were talking about maybe buying a product? No you’d probably say ~ hey a bunch of people have bought this and looks like they’re pretty happy about it, check out these testimonials I found about it.  Right?

The end: The big arrow module pretty much speaks for itself, but when it comes to making people feel glad they hit your page ~ you have a lot to do with that. Do you just leave the default title on your guestbook or do you ask them a question about what they’ve been reading about? Do you leave the default content in the guestbook module or do you talk to them, ask them a question get them involved. When you’ve been hanging out with a friend do you just get up and walk to your car without even a goodbye or maybe a hug? That’s what your guestbook is. Even though you may not say those exact words ~ that’s the feeling you can provide with the guestbook.

Final thoughts:

Even though you are trying to sell stuff on these lenses remember there is a person trying to solve a problem at the other end. Whether it’s what to get for Uncle Fred for Christmas or how to alleviate this unbearable back pain. If you can give the person what they came for, and make them feel glad they found YOU the sale will be the easiest part of the lens.

Related posts:

1. 5 Easy Ways to Increase Your Opt In Rate (and get people on the bus)
2. Twitter Action Plan
3. Content Creation Series: List Post

Today I was making breakfast, unsure about what I would blog about today. I wished to my idea fairies that there would be a comment on the blog that would spur an idea for a blog post when I got ready to write.

Thank you.

I opened my inbox and there is a comment. For some reason it hadn’t published yet (probably so I could easily put it here!) I hope this person doesn’t mind me sharing the comment and I’m going to give a little bit of advice on what could be done differently to help her improve her ranking in the search engines, get traffic and get more sales. Since this is her actual comment I don’t think she’ll mind me sharing with the class ~ since she was gonna anyway.

10 Things She Could Do Differently

1 Let’s start with the comment itself. If you’re going to share your niche/product you might as well get a quality link out of it! She could have used the name/url fields in the comment area to create a clickable link to her lens. She could have also used html within the comment to create a clickable link using her keywords as the anchor text.

2 Speaking of keywords. I’m assuming the keyword you are targeting is the one you’ve used in the url. The keyword “delonghi esam3300 esclusivo magnifica super-automatic espresso coffee machine” has NO search volume. This is the exact point I was trying to get across in the how to find product name keywords post.  You don’t want to use the whole product name as given on Amazon if it doesn’t have search volume. There are plenty of related keywords for this product that would have served your search engine optimization better.

3You’ve got the related pages still showing (the box in the sidebar that talks about other delonghi lenses) you want to take that out. You want people to click YOUR links, not onto someone elses lenses. (This is true for product lenses ~ there are times the related pages is useful and I would leave it on, but not for this purpose.)

4You have no title in your intro module. It’s one of the most important places Google will look to figure out what your lens is about. This is called on page SEO. It’s what Google looks at to see if it wants to pick YOUR lens to be a source of information on the first page of the search results when someone puts that keyword in as a query. You’ve GOT to tell Google exactly what the page is about, and that’s easiest done by using your keyword in your module titles.

5Don’t ask for marriage on your first date. The first piece of content you have is the best place to buy your product. It’s best to provide some information/content before you go in for the sale. At least a little bit. This is where it’s good to talk about features this product offers. It’s a $750 coffee pot. What makes it worth me spending that much instead of $25 on a Mr. Coffee machine?

6 You’ve got the price showing on your buy now area. If I’ve heard some cool stuff about this coffee maker, say on TV or in a magazine. You can BET they didn’t tell me how much this sucker costs. I see that at the very top of your lens, before I know why this thing is so very good I’m like “oh hell no” click. Bye. I’m gone.  Talk about how much they are saving instead of how much they’ll be spending. They will at least click through to amazon to get the price. They still may say “oh hell no” to this $750 coffee pot, but Amazon may have a “you might also like this” pointing to a $200 coffee pot which is more in their price range, they buy ~ you still get credit for the sale. GET THEM TO AMAZON.

7 You’ve got most of the elements of the lens here ~ but no content. Your video is there, but it’s just there ~ you don’t say anything about what they’re going to see, or learn or why they would even want to click the watch button. You’ve got to take them by the hand, and talk to them ~ like you would talk to a good friend. Would you send this video to a friend for them to watch without any reason why they should watch it?

8 You’re not using your keywords in your lens titles.  It’s very important to use the keyword you are targeting in your lens module titles. This is one of the big ways Google learns what your lens is about and decides it’s a great resource for someone who wants to learn more about this coffee maker.

Check this post on the 6 things you should be doing to get google love.

9 The content you do have sounds like it was copied directly from Amazon.com.  It’s really important to write these the way you would talk to a friend.

I happen to have a lens on a similar delonghi coffee maker ~ let’s see the differences between our features module content ~ just to compare. We can of course talk about this element of content writing in the comment section:

Here’s yours:

Here’s mine:

Two key points to get from this is

1. Speak conversationally, people want to feel like they are getting a real recommendation from a real person.

2. Don’t give them everything ~ you want them to click through to get more information.

10 Your lens is really pretty ~ you’ve added some additional elements that make it look nice.  Here’s the thing. You don’t want people to stay on your lens. You want them to click through.  I wonder how much time you spent on the testimonial graphic, and finding the other pretty graphic pieces you’ve added?  I wonder if that is time best spent?

While the testimonial thing is nice to look at ~ it’s kind of difficult to read and there is no place where you’ve encouraged them to read any more of the 56 testimonials for this machine.  I can’t stress enough how much reading testimonials will push a “maybe” into a “yes”. Use them ~ and use them to get people to the sales page.

11 Lacking a strong call to action ~ whether it’s a visual call to action with the orange box or the big arrow module at the end. You want to have a strong call to action ~ click her to get this.  Click here to save over $500.  Click here to get free shipping.  It’s nice to have one toward the top of the lens, and again at the end. I see the spotlight modules not really as a call to action, but as a great place to features something really cool about the product.

10 Things I like about this:

1 You’ve taken action.  All the little stuff can be tweaked and fixed and this lens can do fine.

2 You’ve chosen a great product ~ good price point, lots of good reviews.

3 You’ve started your blog ~ I love the theme by the way.

4 You’ve used the table of contents ~ there are some new advantages to this. (better if you have kw in the module titles)

5 You’ve used your tags well.

6 You’ve used video to really let them get a taste of what this machine can do.

7 You’ve used the subtitles quite well to further explain what you’re going to talk about.

8 You used your product keyword/link right at the beginning of the intro module.

9 The content in your intro module is good.

10 You’ve taken action ~ oh did I say that one already? It’s the most important one and deserves to be said twice. It’s the key to this. The first few can be rough, figuring out all the intricacies of SEO can be tough, but the more you do it the better you get and the easier the process gets. But you have to take action for that to happen!

10 Things you can do now!

Is this lens a total loss? OH HELL NO!! This lens is far from a loss.  Here are some basic steps you can take to tweak this lens and have it in tip top shape in no time.

1 Identify a better keyword. One that has plenty of search volume and minimal competition.

2 Use the new keyword in your module titles, and within the content of your lens and the other on page seo stuff that’s necessary.

3 Tweak the features content ~ make it a little more conversational. Think girlfriend over coffee kind of chat.

4 Add at least one  call to action. It’s best to include 2. One toward the beginning and one at the end. You can use the visual call to action and then the “big arrow” module for the bottom works well.

5 Make sure you link back to amazon encouraging them to look at more features and more reviews.

6 Try to make your links to the product WITHIN the content you’ve got, not right at the top of the module. That’s both for Google and for  your reader.

7 Add a little more content around your non text modules ~ reason why to watch the video or what they’re going to see etc.

8 Add a guest book!!! It’s like a wrap up area, where you can say thanks and ask for input about the product.

9 Turn off the related lenses. (it’s in the intro module, there’s a tab you click and then click the off button)

10 Start linking to the lens using the new keyword as your anchor text in the link.

I’d love to see the newly modified lens ~ please feel free to share it if you want.

The top half of this lens is very similar to what I do when I do lens reviews. Of course a personal lens review is more in depth, and I give suggestions to help solve issues as well, and it’s specific to your lens, topic and keywords. If you think this might benefit you,  you can order a lens review by clicking here.  The 2 for the price of 1 deal is still on.

Related posts:

1. Super Affiliate Handbook Review
2. Keyword Lists for Sale

I’ve been getting quite a few questions about how to work better/quicker/faster/easier with a blog. I thought I’d cover a few tips and tricks about blogs today. If you have any questions I haven’t covered please ask them in them in the comments section ~ that way this will be a great place you can come back and reference for blog related questions.

So here we go.

Where can I build a blog?

I know I recommend blogger, but there are lots of places you can build a blog very easily for free. Each has their own way of doing things, but they will all work.  Here’s a few options you can choose from ~ if you want more options google free blog platform.

Tumblr Probably one of the MOST simple ways to get started ~ very straight forward, fill in your name and email address kind of simple.

LiveJournal ~ This is a very community oriented site so do not create a “spammy” type blog here, you really need to create a blog that has some good content here.

Blog.com ~ this one is very similar to blogger.

tblog.com ~ Another free blogging platform, with plenty of control over your blog

Here’s the deal ~ right now you can start a blog at blogger, but at some point in the future, when things start getting bigger you’re going to want to create a “network” of your own sites across a variety of platforms so you will always have some place to link from.  Don’t let that overwhelm you, just know there are more places out there than blogger to start a blog.

How do I start at Blogger?

Blogger was recently taken over by Google. Now all you have to do to get started at blogger is put your GMAIL address AND PASSWORD in the sign in area ~ this will get you started. Remember, it’s your gmail address and your gmail password now. Once you get logged in it will walk you through the steps. Here’s a video on how to start a blogger blog.

Here’s the video in text:

1. Enter your gmail email address and password.

2. Choose a username for your blogger account. (doesn’t matter what it is)

3. Choose a url and name for your blog (something general)

4. Choose a template for your blog (doesn’t matter ~ just pick one)

5. Start blogging

Why am I building a blog?

For our purpose today your blog is a place to be able to create links back to your “money” sites. This blog is going to be part of your “linking network” someday ~ we are not expecting traffic to this blog. It doesn’t need to be beautiful. It doesn’t need to be fancy. In other words DO NOT OBSESS over this blog. We’ll make a blog soon that you can obsess over, but for right now this one ain’t it.

What do I title my blog?

Whenever you make a blog you will be asked for 2 things, the url and the title. I suggest for these linking blogs you create something very general. If you know you have a propensity to promote kitchen stuff ~ hey do a kitchen related blog. If you are promoting products feel free to do a “deal” or “gift” type blog. What your url is and what you name it is really NOT that important right now ~ just pick something and put it in.  I choose general themes for my blogs because then it’s easier for me to have a wider variety of relevant things I can link to from that blog.

For example I love to cook. I also promote a lot of family related stuff, cooking, kids, etc. I could set up a kitchen or cooking related blog and all of those things would be appropriate to link to from there.

For the random products I promote for holidays I have created a few deal blogs and holiday blogs. Deal blogs are just a place you can tell people about a great deal you found on an item ~ they’re perfect for product promotion because part of looking for a good product to promote is finding one there’s a savings on.

So you see the topic/url/name is not all that important, what’s important is what you put ON your blog.

What do I write in my blog?

You can write whatever you want ~ did you hear me? You can write whatever you want! This is YOUR space. You can do it any way you want. You can write anything you want. I suggest you write it in your own words, but other than that ~ it’s open.

Here’s some ideas:

You can share stories ~ and link to a product in the story.

You can write a review of the product ~ and link to the product

You can talk about a specific feature you like ~ and link to the product

You can talk about a reason you would use the item ~ and link to the product

You can give a great recipe ~ and link to the product (if it’s relevant)

You can do a tutorial on something ~ and link to a product

You can make a list ~ and link to a product

You can state an opinion ~ and link to the product

As you can see there is a million things to write, and what’s really important is that you link to the product. When you’re linking to the product make sure you use the keywords for your anchor text. That’s why we’re doing this blog.  You see it’s not the content that is super important ~ remember we’re not really expecting people to read this bad boy ~ it’s the LINK that we’re looking for.

Here’s a quick video where I create a blog post from scratch:

Now ~ this DOES NOT mean you can just go in and create a keyword anchor text link and call it a post ~ NOPE. This is a blog ~ it is part of a community, and Google is expecting some content.

If you just do links in your posts you will probably get your blog closed for being spam.

Google will not like it because it’s spam.

Remember ~ blogs are short for web log or in other words, journal, online diary ~ think of it that way and you’ll be fine.

A whole other way to look at it:

If you don’t want to create the content for your blog there is a way you can still do this ~ and it won’t cost you anything. You have to use a wordpress (you host) or a blogger blog. Unique article wizard provides a service where they will publish articles on your blog. Yes, all the articles will have links to other people’s stuff in them ~ you don’t really care about that.

What you get is free content filling up your blog.

What you also get is a SIDEBAR to put your links in.

This blog will keep growing, and you will have new, fresh content and you can easily put your links in the sidebar of the blog.

If you decide to do this make sure you limit the kinds of posts that come to your blog. You can choose categories etc. It’s best if your articles are all on relevant topics, then your links will be relevant as well.

If you want more information on this let me know and I’ll do a whole tutorial on it. If you want to look yourself go to Unique article wizard. Go to the bottom of the page and look for the “blogger login” link. You can create an account from there. Once you get to dashboard there will be a link to learn how to set up your blogspot blog (that’s blogger) read that and check it out.

How do I effectively use this blog?

1. Create posts pointing back to any lenses/sites you make. Here’s an example of one of my posts from a linking blog:

As you can see this doesn’t have to be tough ~ it doesn’t have to be complicated. Just make something up. I didn’t go study something somewhere to make up this post ~ I just made it up. I have a dog. I have a new sofa and I have a BUNCH of dog hair on it. Make something up that is relevant and then add a link. It really is that simple. Don’t let the blog get in your way. It’s just a place to build one more link from. Really ~ that’s it. Just a place to build a link. So don’t let the idea of having a blog get you overwhelmed and in panic mode. Ok??

2. Create links pointing back to your sites/lenses in the sidebar. Here’s an example of some (old) links in my sidebar:

3. Use the RSS feed for your blog in your lenses.

4. Submit your RSS feed to RSS directories to give your blog some links pointing to it. (the more links you have pointing to your blog the more your links pointing to other things will count as well)

I think I’ve covered most of the questions I get about blogging, but if I’ve missed your question feel free to ask it in the comment section below. I’ll be glad to answer it, and do a video if that better illustrates the answer. Now go out there and get blogging.

Related posts:

1. Getting Yourself Organized to Start Content Creation
2. What’s the 1 Thing I Can Do To Start Making Sales?
3. How to Write a Blog Post ~ My Top 5 Tips

I hear it just about every day now… “How did you do this so fast??”. The first answer of course is practice practice practice. After you do 2, 3 or 400 lenses you’ll be doing them quite fast too. Especially if you are doing lenses that follow the same template.  (meaning they have the same or similar modules and outline)

The second part of that answer is getting organized. My little organizational system (which YES! I’m going to share with you today) cuts tons of time off creating a lens. I’m not very organized around the house, but when it comes to work, I love to build little cheat sheets, and templates that help keep me together. I only have a few quiet hours a day to get this all done!!

1. Identify all the html code you’re going to need for your lenses.

For the lenses I do I usually need 3 pieces of code.

1. my affiliate product link.

2. the code to make the boxes for the reviews

3. the code to make the visual call to action.

Hunting down code doesn’t take very long ~ but when you have to keep doing it over and over again, it really adds time to any project. Especially if you have to go hunting down the website to find the code each time. I don’t do that anymore.

I have now created a text document. (I just go to my screen with the icons (desktop) and right click my mouse and choose “new” then text document and it opens a new one ~ then I save it right on my desktop to get to it quickly and easily.

Now I just use this one doc for all my product based lenses. I have the html for the reviews and CTA at the top and I just add in each new product affiliate link as I go. I now only have to open one document ~ it just stays open but minimized at the bottom of my screen and I have all the code I need ~ no more hunting around.

To help you out ~ I’ve put together the code I use in my text doc  here. It has the review box code and the CTA code in it.  You will have to copy/paste it into your own text document, but it’s all there in one place.

2. Determine which modules you’re going to use in your lens.

I figured out which modules I’m going to use, and I made a list in alphabetical order, that way I can go to the all modules area of the “add modules” section and just grab what I need very quickly from the right letter area.

Here’s my list:

1 big arrow module
1 Guestbook module
1 Poll module
1 RSS share your blog module
2 text modules
1 The most important thing module
1 Youtube module

Once I have added them all in I go to the sidebar and rearrange them in the order I want them in.

Intro ~ but it’s already there and you don’t see it in the sidebar.
text
the most important thing
poll
text
youtube
big arrow
RSS module
guest book (sometimes I switch those last two around)

Now listen ~ just because this is the order I do my lenses in, and the modules I use doesn’t mean you have to do it just as I do, the point here is to create a system. Once you have  a system you can begin moving through the steps quite quickly without always having to think “umm… what do I do now.” You have a system, you know exactly what to do next.

(also ~ not ALL of my lenses follow this template ~ but it is my affiliate product based template)

3. Start at the top ~ don’t make it complicated.

Intro module: I just want to let people know the product I’m going to be talking about. The fact it will make a great Christmas gift, and the fact people will be really happy to get it as a gift.

This does not take research, this does not take a lot of time and effort. Really ~ it’s 3 or 4 sentences. Just make it up.  You can certainly imagine why someone might be happy to get whatever it is you are promoting as a gift right?? You can think about what kind of person on your gift list might like the product you’re promoting. Right? Don’t make this complicated ~ it’s a few sentences, made up by you.

Click the discovery tool tab and turn it off. I do not want other lenses very related to mine coming up on these product pages. I leave the discovery tool on if I have more than one lens on a related topic, then I can put my own lenses in as well and that makes it worth it to me ~ especially now that they have moved it over to the sidebar.

First text module: This is where I usually talk about different features of the product. DON’T just copy the bullet point list of features off amazon ~ seriously. I do this a couple ways ~ sometimes I ask a question and then answer it. Sometimes I just point out features of the product. Again ~ this is NOT complicated. The best place to get this information is in the PRODUCT REVIEWS. They will tell you exactly what ROCKS about this product. Read them ~ but don’t spend all day.

When I do the question type feature area I like to bold the questions. You can do this by adding <b>before your question and </b> after ~ that will make just that sentence bold. (it’s not working here because I’m in text editor to be able to show you the actual code) So for the Ironman lens I might have done something like this:

How much weight can it hold? The Ironman Gravity 4000 is made of a tubular steel frame. It can hold up to 350 pounds, so it’s great for even larger people.

This information was in the product info area ~ but I’ve made it unique content by making it conversational and in my own words. If I am a big person with a back issue I will probably be asking that questions so it speaks directly to the reader/purchaser.

I do 3 or 4 of these type questions and then link back to the product telling them they can find more features there.

The most important thing: This is where I put my visual call to action. I like to have it near the top of the lens because it really gets people’s attention and calls them to action. You’ll find this can be a great way to get people to click. If you put this all the way at the bottom of your lens you’ll risk it not having the power it has up near the top. But make sure you have some content before it, you dont’ want to yell take action at the VERY beginning.

Poll module: I like to have a poll module in my lens because it takes off some of the “sales edge” and it also helps people get involved with you and the lens. The more involved they get the more likely they are to click through. You can do a poll about the “must have feature” people look for when buying your product, who this product would be best for on their list, etc etc ~ again ~ you’re just making this up. Use your imagination. I used to make clickable links in the poll module ~ I don’t do that much anymore, but you still can if you want. If there’s one feature that really stands out for the product in the poll I may link that one answer to the product page, but no more than 1 anymore.

2nd Text module: This is where I do reviews. I will grab the code for 3 boxes out of my text document. I will paste it into my lens after a paragraph talking about why reviews are great to read when you making a buying decision. Then I go to amazon and find 3 reviews that I like. I usually try to go to a later page of the reviews so people don’t see the same ones when they come to amazon from my site. This is why it’s great to choose a product with many many reviews.

I then highlight the “your text goes here” in the code and then paste in the review. You can get fancy and add a little something at the beginning of the review ~ like the title of the review at amazon or the person’s name. You can use the <b></b> inside the area you’re putting the text to make the beginning sentence bold if you want.

Youtube: Here I like to add a video ~ a video that reviews my product, or is directly relevant to helping my reader make a decision about buying the product. If there is a website in the description I usually go to the edit area and take it out. For some reason it doesn’t always “stick” so I have to do it a couple times for it to work. Just one of those things.  I don’t worry about addresses in the video themselves, or them saying a website address ~ it’s much easier to click a link on the page you’re on than it is to open a new window and put in a whole new address that you have to remember.Key here is relevancy. It MUST be relevant.

Big arrow: This is my last call to action. If they’ve made it this far I want to have something seriously encouraging them to click out to my sales page.  Big arrow does a nice job of that.

RSS module: This is a last ditch effort to get them to click through to one of MY pages instead of on a google ad or another ad on Squidoo  that doesn’t make me any money.

Guestbook: This is one more place to get your keywords in the title, get some conversation going on your lens, and one last place to put a link to your product page. If you don’t have a guestbook you can’t get an angel blessing. I’m not sure how big a deal that is, but I’ve gotten a few and my rank goes up a bit. It’s worth it to just add the guestbook.

Don’t leave the default text in your guestbook. Talk to them about their decision ~ did they decide to buy the product? Are they giving it as a gift? If so, come back and tell us how much the person liked it, or what their response was or something ~ you want to create a relationship with your reader ~ engage them.

4. Final touches.

Fill in your bio area ~ make it specific to each product, and have a link to the product in your bio area. It doesn’t have to be complicated. My favorite thing about the holidays is finding just the right gift for everyone on my list. the yada yada would make a perfect gift for the “whomever” on my list this year.

Make sure you have an image of your choosing in your bio area and not the default squid.

Add tags to your lenses ~ you dont’ have to research these, but if you noticed when you were doing kw research some related keywords that are relevant to your lens write them down and throw them in as tags. Otherwise just look through your lens and write down related words. Use smaller versions of your product name ~ so I used these for the Ironman lens:

Don’t spend a bunch of time on this ~ use commons sense. You shop, what might you look for if you were looking for this product?

If you save your payout settings in your main profile area you don’t have to worry about that on each lens and it saves time there as well.

That’s pretty much it. Click publish and then “view lens” and check it out. Go through all your links, hover over them and make sure your Amazon url shows up at the bottom of the page ~ if it doesn’t the link’s not working and you need to go back in and fix it so it does.

The keys to getting faster at this is pretty simple.

1. Have a system.

2. Stop making it so complicated. There’s no need for tons of research or anything. If you’ve chosen a product with some reviews and good product description you’ve got everything you need right there. Just use it to get your ideas flowing.

3. Loosen up and have a little fun ~ you’re really just making this up and you can’t do it wrong. You CAN do this!! Believe it and you will be surprised how quickly you prove yourself right.

As always if you have questions feel free to ask them in the comment section. I’ll do my best to answer them.

Have an awesome day and keep taking ACTION!!!

Related posts:

1. Building Relationships and Community with Forums
2. Q and A ~ Reader’s Questions Answered
3. Content Creation Series: List Post

I recently had a reader ask how she could use the Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint to promote her Zazzle store. It’s a great question and you can easily transfer the information in the blueprint and use it to promote stuff in your own store instead of Amazon.

I created this video to show you how I would go through the process. I’ll outline the process below for those who don’t want to watch the video.

So my reader wants to know how to promote her own stuff with using the Christmas Cash blueprint.  Her store offers quite a few unique t shirts as well as many other products. I decided to begin my keyword research in the t shirt section thinking I would have plenty to choose from ~ and I was right!!

Before I get to that just a couple things.

1. Remember the SEO stuff we’ve talked about for lenses is true for everything. Try to check keywords when creating your product lines, your categories, product names and titles on your site. This will help in getting search traffic to your site. It’s fun to be cute, but it’s better to get traffic. So instead of Wit -Tee I might have chosen to use the keyword “humorous t shirts” which has a search volume of  2400 month and very low competition. A few links to your main humorous t shirt page could get you ranking in the search engine for that page bringing people to look at your t shirts.

2. When you create a store try to put keywords in the url ~ this will help draw search traffic. (this usually means thinking about your user name beforehand, since your url is usually made up of your username)

Ok ~ so I went to Sema’s Reflections Zazzle Store and took a look around. After seeing what products she offers I decided on the following strategy.

1. Open Micro Niche Finder, and take a look for keywords related to t shirts. She has some unique t shirts I thought would be pretty easy to find relevant keywords for. Remember, you want your keywords and your product to match exactly. (You can also use the google keyword tool to look for keywords)

2. Put t shirts in the search box of Micro niche finder.

3. Look through and see if I can find relevant t shirt keywords that have good search volume and not much competition. I found quite a few:

I also found some keywords that might be great for her to create more products around.

4.. From here I would begin creating a Squidoo lens targeting the keywords I found.

So I would do a lens on Unique T Shirts or Funky T Shirts ~ or any of the other good keywords I found. I would feature some of my favorite t shirts from my store on these lenses.

There is a Zazzle module at Squidoo which makes it really easy to pull your products into a lens. (I believe there is a cafepress module as well)

5. Once my targeted lens is finished  I would do the backlinking for the lens just as outlined in the blueprint and the mind map.

6. When that’s done I’d start building another lens on the next good keyword.

7. When I’m done with the t shirt keywords I would begin looking for keywords for each of my product categories and start building lenses with specific good keywords that point to the products.

This is going to take some time and effort, but it is a good way to get many different streams of traffic flowing to your store.

Related posts:

1. Christmas is Over ~ Now What?!?
2. Jimmy D Brown is Retiring All His Products
3. The Sales Funnel Simplified

I’m hearing that people are still having a hard time getting their lenses created. If you are one of those people make sure you keep reading.

I have decided to spend some time over the next week building lenses for those who want/need some help in that department.

I’m going to give you a huge discount ~ 50% off my normal custom lens creation price.

The price will depend on whether you do the keyword research or if you need me to do it, but either way it’s a bargain price.

Here’s what you’ll get:

• 1 highly targeted lens.

• Optimized for 1 keyword/keyword phrase.

• 8 modules, content included.

If you send me your amazon link to the product I’ll add your links in and all you’ll have to do is build links.

If you don’t have an amazon account I’ll use Squidoo amazon modules to feature the product.

If  I do the keyword research you can either swap out your own links when I’m done or you can create the link and I’ll add it in as I go ~ up to you.

• Once your lens is done I’ll send it to whatever account you want it sent to. From there on the lens is yours. You can change it/add to it whatever you want.

Clarification point:

If you choose the option where I do keyword research I will do the research, find the keywords and choose a product for you. I will send you a link to the product I’ve chosen so you can create the affiliate link for it.

• Keywords chosen will have more than 2000 search volume/month and minimal competition.

• Products will be very close to or over $200.

If you’ve already chosen a product you’d like to promote you can send me the product url with your payment ~ however, if it’s not a product I can find good keywords for, and it doesn’t have some reviews for it, I won’t be able to do it. I will still find a product/keywords for you though.

You  need to do the link building for it to help it get some traction in the search engine rankings.

If you have questions about having me build a lens for you ask in the comments section below.

If you’re ready to go hit the right button below, pay via paypal and I’ll get started first come first serve.

Oh yeah ~ I’m only going to do 10 lenses at this time.

Update: This offer is CLOSED
(This offer may open again the last week of the month.)

10 means 10 ~ if the first person asks for 10 lenses ~ then those are the 10. So if you’re on the fence I’d say jump on or off, and make a decision quick.

Again there are only 0 spaces left.

1 custom lens built~ YOU do keyword research:

$50

1 custom lens built ~ I do keyword research for you:

$75

Related posts:

1. Christmas is Over ~ Now What?!?

If no… maybe you better start.

Relevancy is a HUGE issue in a couple different ways. It’s something that can make or break a web page and it’s something that can seriously block the flow as people are careening down your waterslide toward a sale.

Everything needs to be Relevant.

When I say everything I mean everything ~ your product needs to be relevant to your keywords., your content needs to be relevant to your keywords, your links need to be relevant to your keywords ~ it all has to fit together, make sense and be relevant.

Let’s dig into relevancy here for a bit.

Product relevancy

You must must must choose a product that is completely relevant to your keywords. This is a make or break issue. It’s pretty easy when you’re doing product based lenses/sites, but when you get into more murky waters, this is a must.

Let’s say my keywords are how to “protect yourself in a bike crash” ~ just made that up, my bike gloves are sitting here on the desk and I just got a racey new bike yesterday ~ there’s some concerns of crashing this sweet machine.

So a relevant product might be something that teaches me how to fall off my bike ~ or protect myself during a crash.

A not so relevant product would be something like selling me great wheels ~ because if you have good wheels you won’t crash.

I’m not looking for ways not to crash ~ I’m looking for information on how to survive if/when I do.

See the difference? It’s huge. You may have killer content and people may be clicking through but if your product does not give them what you said it was going to teach them ~ then you get NO sales. period.  People want what they want, that’s why they’re out there looking for it!!

Another example: How to cure dry skin (again, just an example, there’s lotion sitting her on my desk too lol)

You get people to click through to a product that teaches them to cure dry skin. GREAT.

You get people to click through to a product that says “drink more water so you don’t get dry skin”. NOT GREAT.

Obviously the people looking to cure dry skin already have it, they don’t want to know how to prevent it, they want to know how to fix it!!

So it is crucial that your product is relevant to your content and your keywords. If you lead them to exactly what they’re looking for  they will buy much more often!

What if I can’t find a product to fit my keywords?

Great keywords don’t mean anything if you can’t convert them. If you seriously can’t find anything that is completely relevant to your keywords ~ then I’d be finding different keyowrds. It doesn’t matter how much search volume or how easy to rank keywords are if you can’t make a sale with them then they aren’t worth a penny.

Content Relevancy

This is a big one. Your content is what is going to get people to click through to buy your product. It has GOT to be relevant to what you’re trying to sell them.

Ex. You’re selling diamond earrings.

On your lens you’re talking about diamond earrings. Good. Then you get to your video and choose a Marilyn Monroe video of  “Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend”. YIKES. Not so much.

The total point of your content is to help walk people through the process of saying ok ~ this is a good decision, I’m ok, I’m smart in this decision. You want to give them information that will keep them saying, yes, this is smart, yes, this is smart. Good decision, good decision. The second they start to think, hmmm… I don’t know. BAM you’ve lost them.

Everything you put on your lens should feed into them realizing it’s a great decision to get those diamond earrings.

So for you video you might choose something instead that outlines the basics of how to buy diamonds. That will help them feel even more confident in buying those earrings. Especially if you can show how your diamonds fit all the requirements shown in the video!! It will be an easy sell from there.

Selling other stuff on your site:

This is a personal decision, but I’ll tell you from my experience I have found that it is best to feature one product, only “sell” one product on each lens.  Your lenses are optimized for 1 keyword. That’s probably how the person came to be on your lens ~ or something very close to it. That’s what they’re looking for.  Sell them what they came for, nothing more nothing less.

If you have to sell something additional on your lens ~ make sure it’s completely relevant to the original product. If you’re selling a toy that needs batteries ~ you might use a sticky note module and remind them to get the batteries. You can link that to your amazon account on a battery page. But really it needs to be VERY relevant to your product.

You don’t want to be selling diamond earrings and then by the end of your lens be selling Marilyn Monroe Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend albums or mp3s. That’s not what people came looking for ~ they wanted diamond earrings ~ SELL THEM DIAMOND EARRINGS.

There are a lot of little nuances and pieces that when put together correctly will lead to you getting sales. If some of the pieces are a little out of whack it’s possible to recover and still make sales ~ Relevancy is NOT one of those things. You need to be spot on when choosing your product and your content. It has to be completely relevant or the sales just won’t be there.

If you have questions about relevancy ask in the comments section below. If you think you’re lenses are having a problem with relevancy it might be a good time for a lens review ~ that’s definitely something I look at when I do them.

Also tomorrow I’ve got something very exciting coming up ~ if you are having trouble creating your lenses ~ stay tuned!!

Related posts:

1. How To Be Relevant In Different Markets
2. 7 Ways to Make Your Site Less Like a Salesman

Are you getting traffic to your lenses yet? Are they coming up in the search engine rankings yet? No? Well this week we’re going to take a look at some things that may be keeping your lens from getting the Google love it deserves.

When you create a site on the web, whether it’s a niche site, blog post, lens, hub whatever, if your purpose is to get free traffic from the search engines you have to do a little something called Search Engine Optimization or SEO. SEO is basically making your page the best it can be to get the attention of Google for a specific word or phrase.

There are actually 2 types of SEO. Onpage SEO and off page SEO. We’ve already discussed quite a bit of off page SEO like link building and using keyword anchor text for your links.

This post is going to focus on on page SEO.  This means the things you do ON your web page to make Google happy.

They are pretty simple to do, but if you want search traffic they are NOT optional.  If you have a lens that is not performing up to your expectations check to make sure you have done a good job with your on page optimization. If you’ve missed some of these things, changing them could make a huge difference for your lens.

1. Use your keywords in the url.

Whether you’re creating a niche site or a squidoo lens this is a huge element of SEO. This is the first place google looks to see what your lens is about. If you don’t have the specific keywords you are trying to rank for in your URL, you are putting yourself at a serious disadvantage.

Example:

My keyword for the ironman lens is: Ironman Gravity 4000 Inversion Table

My url for the lens is: www.squidoo.com/ironman-gravity-4000-inversion-table

The url is my EXACT keyword. It is not ironman-inversion-table or gravity-4000 or inversion-table-ironman.

It is my keyword, exactly and only.

Now when you get to building your own niche sites this is going to very important that you have only the keywords you are trying to rank for in your url, no extra words at the beginning or the end. For regular domain names you will get a little boost in the rankings for having the exact keyword domain. You don’t get the bonus at Squidoo, but it is still the most important way Google identifies your site, so ONLY USE YOUR KEYWORDS.

Dashes – no dashes?

In a regular domain name I’d say no dashes.

For Squidoo I don’t think it matters. Squidoo’s default is dashes so that’s what I usually end up doing.

Sidenote:

Google’s one and only job is to give searchers relevant, unique,  targeted information for each and every search query a searcher does. So think about it this way. I go to google and I put in ironman gravity 4000 inversion table. What is google going to think is the best match to my query?

www.Squidoo.com/ironman-inversion-table

www.squidoo.com/inversion-tables

www.squidoo.com/ironman-gravity-4000-inversion table.

Yeah ~ of course it’s going to be the third one. This is why it’s so important to not only choose your keywords correctly, but use them in your url exactly as you’ve chosen them.

******

2. Keywords in your lens title

Every page on the internet uses html tags in the background. This is the “title tag”. When it comes to squidoo you don’t need to know about the tags stuff, even for wordpress you don’t have to understand about the tags stuff ~ they both do it for you automatically, but what you do need to know is that you have to use your keywords in the title.

Here’s what the code to the ironman lens looks like ~ and you’ll see the “title tag” is the title of the lens.

That gives google exactly the information they need in order to know exactly what this lens is about.

Where it says Title: in the edit area of your lens you ALWAYS want to have the keywords you are targeting.

If you don’t feel like just the keywords are a good enough title for your lens (which they are), you can always add words AFTER your keywords in the title. You always add your additional words AFTER your keywords in the title because Google gives a little more emphasis on the first 3 or 4 words in the title, so you want your keywords to be up front.

If  you’re optimizing a blog post you want to make sure you use your keywords in the title of your post.  For this particular post I’m targeting the term “google love” (yeah it actually has a LOT of search volume lol) so I put it up front in my title, and then put the descriptor words behind it.

3. Use keywords toward the beginning of your intro module.

This is another html tag area called the “meta tag”. This tag provides a description of your page to Google. In squidoo this tag is grabbed from your intro module.  This is what will show up in the description under your listing in the search engine results, so you definitely want your keywords in there.  When keywords show up in the description area of the rankings they are bolded ~ this also helps bring more attention to your page.

4. Use keywords in your module titles:

In your squidoo lens you want to make sure you also use your keywords in your module titles. While your title gets its own “title” tag in html, module titles get a tag too ~ it’s called an h1 tag. This is a tag that google weighs very heavily when determining what your lens is about.

You don’t have to worry about creating that tag, in Squidoo or wordpress, you just have to remember to put your keywords in your module and post titles.

5. Use your keyword in your content.

Obviously you want to make sure you use your keyword in your content  because that’s what you’re talking about right? So make sure you talk about it ~ specifically. It’s ok to use variations of your keyword and related keywords/terms in your content, but you also need to have your exact keyword phrase in the content as well.

In the past “keyword density” (using your keyword a certain amount per 100 words) was a lot more important. Now it really is pretty irrelevant. Just talk like you would talk to a friend and you’ll be fine. You don’t have to worry about calculating your keyword usage, just use it as you would in conversation.

6. Use your keywords in outbound links.

Links in your lens/blog post are another good way google identifies what your page is about. In your lenses you may be linking to an amazon page ~ so make sure you use your keywords as the anchor text of the link. If you are writing a blog post linking back to your lens make sure you use the keywords you are targeting as the anchor text pointing back to your link.

Using anchor text pointing to your sites is important, but the anchor text of the links on your site pointing elsewhere also count when optimizing a page.

I know you some of you want to get creative, and tell a story with your lens ~ which is FINE ~ but you still have to find a way to do it within the framework of on page SEO.  You can tell a story that converts all day long, but if you never get traffic then there’s no one to read it or click your links.

If you have questions about on page SEO please feel free to ask in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer your questions. We’re going to be working on other elements of on page SEO this week so stay tuned!!

Related posts:

1. Content Creation Series: List Post
2. Squeeze Page Software Makes Life Easy

Whether you’ve got an hour a day or an hour a week to work on your Squidoo Christmas Cash lenses, the process is the same. Today I’m going to break down the steps of making this work. This will help you keep putting one foot in front of the other. (at least I hope so).

Step 1. Do the research. Find 1 to 5 product related keywords that fit the criteria. (this depends on how much time and how you like to work. If you don’t have a lot of time and get overwhelmed easily, just start with 1 keyword. Follow through the whole thing and start over at Step 1. If you have more time and can work on a few things at once pick a few keywords to do at the same time)

The easiest way to do keyword research

Step 2. Choose a product You need to make sure you have a product that is directly related to your keyword. If you’re doing product keywords this should be really easy. If you’re using Micro niche finder remember if you click the keyword you can look for products from right there.

How to find a product for Squidoo Christmas Cash lenses

Step 3. Create your lens. Put together a simple, but quality lens that tells people about the product you’ve chosen.

Intro Module Tutorial

Text and Poll module tutorials

How to Add reviews, and a video tutorial

Big Arrow Module tutorial

RSS and guestbook module tutorials

Step 4.  Get your lens indexed. Start building links to your lens to let Google find it.

Use free ad blogs to get your lenses indexed

Step 5. Build some links to your lenses. Build more links to help move your lens up the search engine rankings so you can start getting traffic.

How to build backlinks

Step 6. Evaluate, Rinse and Repeat. Check where your lenses are, and if they aren’t where you want them repeat steps 4 and 5. If they are, then start again at step 1 and repeat the process with a new product related keyword.

There you have it, a simple outline of the process of completing a Squidoo Christmas Cash lens. It doesn’t matter how you set it up, if you want to pick a day for each step, fine. If you want to pick an hour for each step fine. It doesn’t matter HOW you do it, it just matters that you DO IT!!

Simple actions repeated consistently will win this game for you. Take these 6 simple actions and run with them!!

Related posts:

1. Christmas is Over ~ Now What?!?
2. K.I.S.S. Cast Episode 1 ~ Keep It Simple So… You Can Get Started