Changes to Squidoo Modules… what do you thin...

I noticed this week there have been some changes made to some of the Squidoo modules. Mainly to the modules we use as call to actions… you know those modules we use to tell people what to do next.

The two main changes have come in The Most Important Thing module and the Big Arrow module.

You may remember the old version had a large orange box around the module, which made it really stand out… and we generally used it to add a visual call to action. It used to look like this:

Well it doesn’t look like that anymore. It is now much more subdued, with a grey border, and a small tab at the top that says important. It also has an off white background, so you can see the image now, it doesn’t just blend into the background. Here’s what it looks like now:

It’s a pretty big change, especially when you’re trying to use it to call attention to something really important… I’m not sure how well the word “important” is going to do that, but we’ll see.

Let’s look at the second big change this week. This one is a much bigger change in my mind. The Big Arrow Module:

It used to feature two large arrows pointing at text that said “here’s my favorite link” and then your anchor text was below it. I know a lot of people hated this module ~ felt it was too big, too pushy, too over the top, but I think it worked really well as a last minute call to action. We’ll see.

Here’s what it used to look like:

Now it is much more subdued. It’s just your link anchor text in blue with a grey arrow pointing to it from the side. When someone scrolls over the link the arrow turns orange, and the words become underlined. It looks like this in action:

I’m sure there will be people who are really happy about these changes, and there will be people who are not so happy. I know that Squidoo does a LOT of testing on things before they make big changes like this. It is their business, and they’re in it to make money as well…. so I’m holding out to see how things go with these new looking modules.

What’s really important to remember is this: just because they look different doesn’t mean you have to do anything differently. The modules work exactly the same as they always have. So just keep with the program… keep building lenses, keep using the modules and we’ll keep an eye on it and see how things go. If we start to see a huge decrease in conversion then we’ll take a look at what else we can do to increase it. However, I don’t think Squidoo would make such big changes that would affect the site negatively.

What do you think of the changes? I’d love to hear… tell me in the comments.

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Tons of New Squidoo Categories

Well, Squidoo is up to their tricks again. This time they’ve created scads and scads of new categories (which they are interchangeably calling topics). This is very cool. Let me tell you why.

1. Relevance

You know how I’m always talking about how you should make your product, and you keywords as relevant as possible. That goes for your tags as well. Each time you put a lens into a category it creates a tag. Now you will have more tags that are even MORE relevant to your lens. That’s a good thing.

2. Size

Food and Cooking is a category on Squidoo. I’m sure there are literally thousands of lenses in that category. The top 100 lenses have probably been there for a while, and my guess is it would be pretty tough to bump them out of that position. (while we don’t really spend a lot of time trying to make Squidoo’s top 100… stick with me). As the categories get smaller, there will be fewer and fewer lenses in each category. So, while it may be impossible to make the top 100 in food and cooking, it may be quite easy to make the top 10 in tv cooks and celebrity chefs. This will get you more traffic from squidoo, as well as set you up to be on other lenses that are super related ~ which can also drive traffic to your lens.

3. Relevance:

Yeah I said this once before, but this time it’s relevance in a different way. They talked about this on the Squidoo blog when they announced this change, and it’s a big deal:

Once we release this project, you will have 3 levels of categorization available to you.  In the example above, you could pick the top level topic which will be renamed to Pets & Animals. Then you can pick a subtopic, Dogs. Then a subsubtopic, Large Breed Dogs. That’s 3 levels of topical focus for your lens.

In this new scenario your lens will now sit next to other lenses about large breed dogs. That’s better for you and better for people who are looking for the information you have to provide. It means there could also be new rankings and conversations within a topic you really care about.

As you can see there are some huge benefits to this change. Now all you have to do is run over to Squidoo and change all your categories!

Now, don’t worry. For the next couple weeks they are going to make it really easy on you.They have a “bulk categorizer” in your dashboard right now. If you click the link to recategorize your lenses (you can’t miss it ~ huge ~ at the top of your dashboard) it will bring up all your lenses, with drop down menus to choose your new categories. Just click ok at the end and you’ll be good to go. No need to go to individual lenses etc.

They mentioned this tool will only be available for a couple weeks so I’d get on it. It’s going to be a bigger pain in the butt to have to go to each lens individually to do this (which you will always be able to do).

Hey guess what…

You get points for recategorizing all your lenses. So if you’re still trying to unlock the sidebar widget or other tools that are now off limits until a certain point range ~ this could do it for you. WIN.

I made a quick video to show you how to do what I just explained above. Here it is:

Well there you have it.  New categoris. Head on over to Squidoo and get yours changed today. I’ve got my work cut out for me lol. If you have questions or comments feel free to ask them in the comments section below.

Adding Tags to Your Lenses

Tags. What are tags? Tags on Squidoo are basically short words or phrases that tell people what else your lens is related to. When you add a tag to your lens one of two things happens. If the tag is already present in Squidoo your lens will be added to the current “tag page”. If it is a new tag to Squidoo a new tag page will be added and your lens will be listed there.

Why are tags important?

1. Each tag creates a link back to your lens from the tag page. (backlinks are always good)

2. The tag pages themselves can get indexed and ranked in Google so if you are on a popular tag page you can get additional traffic that way.

3. Keywords in the anchor text of a link is a good thing in Google’s eyes. It lets them know even more what the page is about. Each tag turns into an anchor text link pointing to the tag page on your lens.

Let’s take a look…

When you’re creating your lens you’ll find the tags area in the right hand side of the workshop.

Your primary tag should be your targeted keyword. You should also add your targeted keyword to the “other tags” list as well.

You can have up to 40 tags for each lens, however, I suggest you start your lens with 5 or 10. You want to pick a few “big” topics to get your lens on a well established tag page, but you also want to add tags that are other keywords people are using to find information on your topic. These could be more competitive keywords, keywords that don’t make perfect sense in a sentence. Don’t do research on this ~ just grab some related keywords from the keyword tool.

I say only use 5 or 10 of your tags now, because once you start getting traffic you’ll be able to see what keywords people are using to find your lens. You want to add those keywords to your lens as well ~ which you will need space for.  Adding these keywords as tags will help you rank even better for that keyword, because you will have the exact keyword on your page.

Where do I see the keywords people are using?

1. Hover over the lens you want to work on. Links will pop up under the listing. Click on the “stats” option.

2. Once in the stats area you’ll see some tabs. Click the “traffic” tab.

3. Scroll down past the graph and you’ll see a pie chart with information about where your traffic is coming from. On the right you’ll see a list of keywords that have been used to find your lens in the search engines.

The keywords will have a + next to them if they are not currently being used as a tag on your lens.

4. Click the plus sign and the keyword will be added to your lens tags. You will need to go to your lens, click the edit button and republish for it to show up.

5. Only add keywords that are relevant and discussed in your lens. As you can see in the above image someone found my lens by entering “exersise postural scolioza” while they may have found the lens with that keyword, it’s not something I want to target because it’s not what my lens is about ~ nor is it mentioned in the lens. So I would not add this keyword to my tags.

Check in every so often and see if you have new relevant keywords in your list and if you do add them to your lens. This is an easy way to update your lens.

Once you’ve added your tags to your lens you’ll see them in the sidebar under “related topics”. These are actually the tags you’ve added!

Adding tags is an important part of your lens, but don’t make it into a big thing ~ it shouldn’t take more than a minute or two. Just think about other alternatives to your keyword ~ pull a few from the keyword tool, and then leave the rest available for updating.

If you have any questions about Squidoo tags ask in the comments section and I’ll do my best to answer them.

Making Images Clickable in Your Squidoo Lens

It’s a great idea to make your images clickable in your lens. When someone clicks on the picture they go directly to the product page through your affiliate link.

This used to be much harder ~ and used to entail knowing and using html code. But no longer. Squidoo has made it very easy to link your image with your affiliate link to the product page.

It only takes a couple steps.

1. Save the image you want to use to your computer.

2. Open the module  you want the image to go in (it will not work for the intro module ~ but does work for any of the other modules that accept images.)

3. Scroll down to the bottom where it says “People like pictures”

4. Browse your computer for the image you want to save and choose it.

5. Next field is a description ~ use your keywords there (you can get some great traffic through Google images this way)

6. Next field is the your affiliate link. Go to amazon and get your affiliate link ~ just the link now. Make sure you are in “text only” mode and just grab the link starting right after the first quote and with http: to the second quote. But don’t include the quotes ~ see video below.

Copy that link and then paste it in the last field in that section.

7. Click upload.

Your image will be uploaded ~ you will be able to see it in the module and it will be clickable and point to the product page via your affiliate link.

Here’s a video that will walk you through the process:

How to Link Your Lens Images

It used to be much harder to make your images clickable, now Squidoo has made it much easier.  In fact, all you have to do is add the link to where you want it to go and Squidoo will do it all for you.

Let’s take a look.

1. You can not link up your images in your intro module, but you can in other modules.

2. At the bottom of the module you’ll see a place to choose an image from your computer.

Just click the browse button and look on your computer where you save your images.

3. Just under that you’ll see “label this photo”. You want to add your keywords there (this is the alt tag)

4. Link the photo to this url. This is the BIG thing here ~ you ONLY want the url. If you’re grabbing your link from Amazon they give you the whole html code for the link: you want only the url ~ the part that starts with http:// and is between the quotes. (You also have to click the “text only” option to get the right type of code to get the url)

If you use the whole html code it will not work. At all.

Once you’ve added just the url click upload photo and it will automagically be clickable and linked to where you want it to go.

If you have questions please feel free to ask them in the comments section… I’ll do my best.

Using The New Sidebar Widgets

If you haven’t heard or noticed there are some new sidebar widgets you can use on Squidoo.  There are only a few options currently, but rumor has it there will be even more options for our sidebars in the future. YAY.

Right now the only sidebar widget I really use is the Amazon spotlight module. I thought I would walk you through how to choose and use the amazon spotlight sidebar widget.

A quick note before we start:

If someone clicks through the sidebar widget you will share the profits with Squidoo ~ same as any other widget. However ~ it’s a better deal than someone clicking out via an adsense ad and you get basically nothing ~ unless the specific lens is in the top 10K of all lenses.

The money from adsense and other sidebar widgets goes into the pot where it is divided among Squidoo users using the tier system ~ so if you’re not in tiers one, two or three, you’re not going to get paid at all.

How to find and use the sidebar widgets:

1. Click manage widgets to get to the area where you can choose.

2. Choose the widget you want to use. Click the + and it will be added, then click add at the bottom.

3. Click back over to manage widgets and you’ll see your new widget you can edit. Click the pencil to edit.

4. Find the ASIN number for your product (at amazon.com) and add it to the pop up box.

5. Add keywords in title.

6. Save and Publish

I don’t add in a reason it should be featured, I like just the product in the sidebar. Save the widget ~ you’ll see it show up in your sidebar. For everyone else to see it you have to republish your lens.

Once you’ve published take a look. You’ll see your new widget in the sidebar. Here’s the one I just did in this example for the Ironman Gravity 4000 Inversion Table lens.