Does Google Still Love Squidoo?

Someone recently asked me “does google still love squidoo?”  It’s a good question.  I think by now everyone’s heard of the “google slap”. Where google got a wee bit irritated by the amount of spam lenses being made on squidoo and cracked down on the number of squidoo lenses they would show in their search engine results.

While EVERYONE  was eager to tell tales of the “squidoo slap” not many people talked about it when squidoo came back.  I suppose because it wasn’t one day it was gone and one day it was back, like it was when it got slapped. Squidoo’s comeback  has been a gradual thing.  Although I have to tell you, I was lensbuilding back when “the slap” occurred and I did not notice any difference in my lens placement or my traffic.  So my feeling is probably it was the “sucky lenses” that mostly got slapped.

Now please hear me on this . . . I’m not saying you can go slap up a lens about just anything and expect to find yourself at the top of google in an hour. That’s just unrealistic. Just like anywhere, doing anything you are going to have to do a little research and a little optimization to get your squidoo lens found on google.

Here are a few tips to getting your squidoo lens ranked so you can see a little google love.

1. Keyword Research.  It’s such a dirty word to so many people ~ myself included for a while.  I know a lot of people take the “do what you love” philosophy to lens building. I’m all for that. In fact, I encourage it! When you build lenses based on things you enjoy the energy of that comes through, as well as better content and people can feel it.

What I am saying is take and find some decent keywords, with some traffic and low competition for whatever it is you love.

I have been doing keyword research for a while now, and for the longest time I still was not getting any decent results, even though my keywords said I should be getting traffic.  One day during the 30 day challenge Ed mentioned that sometimes there is a discrepancy between the reported traffic and the actual traffic any given keyword gets.  **ding** A light bulb went off in my head.

Ed and his brilliant friends over at the thirty day challenge even put together a tool using google trends to see what the actual traffic of keywords would be.  Once I figured out this trick I found I started getting more traffic.  Here’s the video for Ed’s super trick. (this video was originally used for one of Ed’s other programs, so don’t worry about who he’s talking to, just worry about what he’s saying) You should also stop by the thirty day challenge ~ sign up for this years challenge ~ and download the 30 day challenge toolbar.  I know I know.  Not another toolbar. This one is worth it I guarantee it.  There is a direct link to the cool tool wordtracker and Ed came up with so you can check keywords on the fly. It’s very cool and makes things very quick.

and now Rob will take you through with an example keyword and show you how it works.

I hope the first thing  you are thinking is awe! The second thing you are probably thinking is yeah, but that’s probably all skewed now with everyone using that keyword to search it’s changed things. At least that’s exactly what I thought. Here’s the thing, the tool on the toolbar uses different keywords they have not shared so the results are spot on. Just another reason to go grab the toolbar.

2. Optimizing your lens.  This is just a fancy way of saying you have to let google know what you are talking about. When PotPieGirl went through and did an Squidoo SEO Review of one of my lenses for me, I realized my titles were not talking about what my lens was about, my subtitles weren’t talking about what my lens was about, AND I wasn’t using keywords to the best of my advantage so google would know what my lens was about.

If google doesn’t know what your lens is about why would it provide your lens as the answer to someone’s question?

Make sure you are using your keywords in your titles, and in your subtitles ~ but do it naturally, so when people are reading your lenses they make sense and the person wants to read on.

Use your keywords in the beginning of your write/text modules as well as again toward the very end.

Bold your keywords in the introduction ~ it just really lets google know that’s what your lens is about.  You can bold your keywords by using <b>your keywords here</b> and they will come out bold.

Those few suggestions should help google find you and understand what you are talking about. Of course there are tons of other things you can do to get your site indexed and get traffic from google, but those are the first things you can do as you create your lenses. In fact, I would go back and make sure you have done that for all the lenses you have created so far.

I’ll continue to help you use more squidoo tricks and techniques to help google find you and share you with the world.

So back to the original question ~ does google still love squidoo? My answer is definitely YES! with a small caveat, if you build it right.

Keep building, and keep coming back for more free squidoo tips. If you just can’t or don’t want to get the hang of building squidoo lenses don’t forget I’d be glad to build them for you. Yes, I will build your squidoo lens.

[tags]squidoo tips, get traffic from squidoo, squidoo seo review, thirty day challenge, google trends, google trends video[/tags]

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