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.
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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!!
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[...] Step 9. If the competition fits my requirements I call it a good keyword and start making a lens. I will use the new keyword as the lens url, title and do all the other on page seo I need to do to get some google love. [...]
[...] Step 9. If the competition fits my requirements I call it a good keyword and start making a lens. I will use the new keyword as the lens url, title and do all the other on page seo I need to do to get some google love. [...]
[...] Remember the SEO stuff we’ve talked about for lenses is true for everything. Try to check keywords when creating [...]