I was surfing around some of my favorite Squidoo Blogs this morning and found this link to a gem of a forum post by Fluffanutta.

The tags on your squidoo lens let people know what your lens is about, but they do more than that. They can provide you great backlinks and drive even more traffic ~ if you’re doing it right.

Here’s Fluffa’s post on the Squidoo forum ~ and make sure you go check out the actual post, there is a lot of specific examples provided by real lensmasters.

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The Primary Tag is the first tag you get to define when creating your new lens, and it is an often misunderstood and very under utilised by many Lensmasters. Admittedly, it doesn’t seem do a whole lot, but there are some important points to note:

- In some lens formats (e.g. Ever.com and SquidWho) the primary tag appears at the very top of the page, next to “Explore more:”.

- Most lenses (maxxed) have a box in the side bar titles “Explore more…”, containing links to the Category and Primary Tag of the lens, plus all the groups it belongs too.

- Another feature of the sidebar (which is not always present) is the tag list, which is usually headed by the Primary Tag (on un-maxxed lenses), and then the first 5 regular tags (in alphabetical order). The remaining tags are hidden, and search engines may ignore these ones.

- Every appearance of the Primary Tag on your lens adds weight to that key phrase on your lens.

In addition, I am working on a new project that will make these Primary Tags even more important! So, you need to make sure that your these tags are as optimal as possible.

Here are some tips:

1. Your Primary Tag wants to be the most important key phrase that you can think of. For example, if your lens is about a person or a product, stick to just their name.

2. Keep your tag to just 2 or 3 words, where possible. One word is not always specific enough (unless the subject is a strong brand like Pepsi), and more than 3 words can sometimes be too specific. Of course, it does depend on your subject matter.

3. Don’t simply repeat your Lens title again (even though this is the default when building a lens). Your title should include as many keywords as you can sensibly fit (no keyword stuffing!), while your Primary Tag is about your key phrase.

4. Format your Primary Tag nicely – keep it Capitalised, spelt correctly (!) and don’t include any special characters or quotes (“). Use spaces between words, not dashes or underscores.

5. Make sure you repeat your Primary Tag as a regular tag too. The tags appear as the Meta Keywords at the top of the page, and you don’t want your key phrase to be missing from it.

6. Pick a Primary Tag which is popular, i.e. people will be likely to be searching for it and other lenses are might also have the same Primary Tag.

Here are some examples: Doctor Who :: Discworld :: Digital Camera Accessories :: Smart Phones

Bad examples: The Whole Lens Title Again :: Kee Frase Spelt Wong :: lowercasewithnospaces :: “Phrase in Quotes”

I hope that people remember these tips – I need to go and change a lot of my own Primary Tags having just looked at a few of them. And remember – I’m developing a project that’ll bring these tags in to their own…

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So, have you gone and taken a look at YOUR primary tags? I know I’m running over to squidoo right now to take a look at mine.

It’s my goal for this month to apply for giant squid, so I have already been going through all my lenses, cleaning them up, adding, making them a little better and a little more shiny. I’ll make sure to check those primary tags while I’m there.

Thanks Fluffanutta for the great information!

[tags]primary tags on squidoo, how to use squidoo tags, driving traffic to squidoo lens, fluffanutta[/tags]

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