Archive for the ‘Google juice’ tag
How Smojoe Uses Squidoo Lenses
Squidoo Lenses have purpose. They’re a great way to mashup multi-faceted client goods and services (and ideas) together, all in one place. Any products sold on eBay or books and videos on Amazon can be seamlessly integrated into rich text stories and spiced with YouTube videos and Flickr photo slideshows where everything is reinforced with Google or MSN news bots and Delicious bookmarks that actively scrounge up the latest information to add to the mix.
More importantly, these pages can become powerful Google juice batteries for client links. Some veteran SMO people here in Toronto still believe that sharing Squidoo mashups with seven or eight premier web services transmits some of their relevance onto your target website , and the lens itself will easily rise in page rank with just a few simple tactics, which I’ll detail later.
After reading all these positives, I understand when newbie social marketers get so frustrated with Squidoo, because their lenses GET NO TRAFFIC WHATSOEVER.
Hahaha I’m still laughing. Imagine spending days or a week building a Digital Acropolis showcasing all of your clients good and services, only to find that nobody and I mean nobody visits the attraction. I know from experience that’s usually what happens, here are my Squidoo lenses listed in order of popularity,
Where in the World is Osama Bi…
Why does Smojoe build these Squidoo lenses?
Because it’s easy and it looks great and nothing says multi-platform brand storytelling better than a Squidoo lens, because its one of the few places where readers can get all the elements of the story at once.
Squid U: Learning how to properly create a beautiful lens on Squidoo.com is the first step to success, and that can be accomplished with one day of intense trial and error. It’s recommended that you enter Squid U at least once while your password is still fresh in your browser so its cookied, and then the path is paved for your future and inevitable return (Squid U requires a separate login wherein users must remember their name and password). Make the connection. Inside this sub destination you will find a discussion forum, and you will see another dimension of Squidoo as ‘lensmasters’ help newbies and post links to their own material in their signature boxes below each post. You will also find links to awesome lenses; check out this one on digital cameras for under $200. This is a perfect example of a useful lens that makes money.
Also of interest is a sub forum displaying all of the Squidoo lenses that for sale. The prices are laughable at about $10 each – is it worth it? If these pages were like the one on digital cameras it would be (that person is an Amazon affiliate, and I’ll bet that lens sells ten cameras a day for about $100 daily profit).
What does Smojoe do with Squidoo lenses?
I don’t think it makes much sense to promote a Squidoo lens which in itself was built to help promote a client’s goods or service. It’s a little counter productive. In each campaign, I barely have enough time to seed backlinks to my client’s pages let alone conduct link building exercises on my own promotional material. So I’m not going to waste time building fantastic internet works of art unless I can make it pay dividends beyond backlinks…
Seven tactics that Smojoe uses to funnel traffic into Squidoo lenses:
- Bookmark it! The very first thing Smojoe does upon publishing a lens is proclaim its existence on Twitter, and then Stumble it, Reddit, Digg, Delicious and Kirtsy the world. Make catchy headlines in these bookmarking services and be sure to leave lots of tags.
- Article Marketing - Smojoe writes articles for clients anyway, and in the author resource box or sometimes right inside the text, I’ll leave a link to a related Squidoo Lens. This would be positioned as ‘more pictures here’, or ‘Lots of Items for Sale on Ebay’, and they would link to the Flickr and eBay components of the target lens respectively. Depending on the quality and originality and overall appeal of the title, links in articles can be a powerful way to promote any business. These articles become a trail of breadcrumbs back to you client or your Squidoo lens all over the internet, as they are replicated and published on 3rd party niche ezines, hungry for content.
- Niche Discussion Forums – For Smojoe its counterproductive to promote a Squidoo lens and a client’s brand in the same discussion forum. The only advantage for Smojoe here is that sometimes it’s not possible to leave links to commercial websites outright, and so a circuitous Squidoo detour becomes the only viable option.
- Squidoo Community – Although it demands a lot of time, there’s something to be said for commenting on other people’s lenses and leaving valuable feedback. Go to competitor lenses and ask questions or offer advice. In many cases you don’t have to leave links to your lenses, the other lensmasters and even Joe Public will be able to find you, and perhaps even more motivated to do so. Get out there and socialize! Visit other lenses. Leave valuable feed back. Squidoo is a social site after all, be social!
- Squidoo Groups – The Stone Angel movie is my most visited lens because 1) it competes on SERPS, 2) I added it to a group called ‘Canadian Movies’ and another called ‘Canadian Authors”. Add your lens to some relevant groups here on Squidoo and you will see increased traffic, especially if your lens has a catchy title.
- Craigslist – This free online classifieds is a powerful tool. It can be used very effectively to bring a massive amount of traffic to your target if you are super creative and… a little devious. I intend to publish an entire post on Smojoe’s Craigslist Strategies in the near future wherein I will outlay all my techniques. Suffice to say that Squidoo can be used here to funnel clients down the chain of interest to the client, where it would be impossible to link to the client directly. For example, the previously mentioned Digital Cameras for under $200 URL could be hyperlinked as a resource in a Craiglist posting designed to sell an unrelated piece of used photography equipment.
- Lensroll. Smojoe just discovered Lensroll last week. Here’s a place to showcase your lens in category, free. Its also a great place to find other high quality lenses from which to learn advanced tactics. Look here ate the ones that have more than one view – these are usually the best of the best niche lenses.
