I Can’t See the Sidebar Widget!

Since I did the post on the new sidebar widget I’ve had a few people tell me they can’t see it. This is especially true from people who are going through the Squidoo Christmas Cash Video Series and can see it on the video that outlines this step, but can’t see it on their lens page.

Well, here’s the answer:

One of the video series students sent in a report to Squidoo about this, and got an answer back. (Yay Squidoo). Apparently you don’t have access to the sidebar widgets until you have published 3 lenses (and they are live on Squidoo ~ not a WIP) When you have those three live then the sidebar widget will become available on those three as well as any new lenses you do.

So if you can’t see the manage widgets area ~ no worries, just make a few more lenses.

** This is a good example of why you CAN’T let little things like not seeing what I see slow you down. If something’s not exactly the same just work through it and move on. If you spent a whole day trying to figure out why the manage sidebar widgets thing didn’t show up for you it would seriously have been WASTED time ~ if you had just kept going, built a couple more lenses you would have opened it yourself.

This is not a science.  In fact, it could be called an art. Don’t let little things get you stuck.  If you keep finding yourself stuck why not join the KISS Club ~ we’ve got a LOT of squidoo folks and we’re helping each other get through it and keep taking action.

My Lens is Still a WIP What do I Do?

When you create a lens it automatically starts out as a WIP or work in progress. It will be colored red and land at the bottom of the list of lenses you have in your account.

Lensrank is updated once a day ~ so it can take a day or two maybe three for you to get a new lens out of WIP status.

Here’s the deal though…

It’s not that big of a deal to us. Google can still see, index and rank your lens whether it is a WIP at Squidoo or not. People who go to your lens can still see it, click the links and buy from it. The WIP is a Squidoo label ~ it has nothing to do with Google. We will be getting our traffic from Google mostly so Google is who we need to worry about.

The process of getting Google to see your lens is the same whether your lens is still in the pink or not. In fact, Squidoo has given you quite a few tools to get that process started.

If you are on social media you can tweet your new lens, you can add it to your facebook wall. You can share it with a friend, you can stumble it. You could lensroll it to another related lens. These are all ways to help get your lens indexed and noticed by Google, as well as get them out of WIP.

My Lens was live, now it’s a WIP again?!?

Don’t worry… this has happened to me as well.  The same thing stated above, still applies. Google can still see your lens, if you were indexed, you probably still are. It doesn’t affect your life in Google.

However, it is nice to get the internal links from Squidoo which happens when you’re live within Squidoo.

From what I understand the problem that has sent your lens back to WIP is a lack of love. A lack of traffic, updating, sales ~ all those good things Squidoo loves to see from your lenses. They put them back in WIP to get your attention, basically say “Hey Lensmaster! This lens needs some love. Now get on it!”

To get your lens out of WIP seems fairly simple, from what I’ve read. Give it a little love. Add some content. Build some links to it. Get it a little bit of traffic and it should be out of WIP in no time. Basically all the things you would do to get it out the first time will work to get it out again.

Something to think about:

If you’ve already done a bunch of work with this lens. You’ve built your links, you’ve done the work and you’ve never gotten any traffic, or never made any sales. (you did see I said you’ve done all the work for it, right?) then you might want to weigh whether time spent on this lens to get it out of  WIP is going to be profitable or worth it.

There will be lenses that just flop. No matter how much research you’ve done, no matter how much linking you’ve done, no matter how much time you spend. They flop. It happens.  Don’t delete them you can use them for other things, but really think about whether the time spent getting it out of WIP is going to be worth the investment.

All in all… take a deep breath. Do the basics you know how to do from the blueprint and keep building more lenses while you wait for one to get out of WIP.

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.

How to Add Bold To Your Reviews

Here’s the basic steps to add a bit of bold to your reviews. Here’s what it looks like when it’s done:

So let’s see how we do it.

1. You need to code to use to make the “review box” You can change the color and the dotted line but here is the code:

You need to use this code exactly.  Say this is your review you’re taking from Amazon:

Weber Comes Through Again This is our third grill from Weber, all of which have been an upgrade. First one was their charcoal kettle grill. Overall, we’ve been using the Weber grills for almost 20 years.

Now we’re going to add it to the code: We’re going to take out the TEXT GOES HERE and put our content (review) in between the two carrots.

Weber Comes Through Again This is our third grill from Weber, all of which have been an upgrade. First one was their charcoal kettle grill. Overall, we’ve been using the Weber grills for almost 20 years.

The key to making this work is putting the bold tag INSIDE the quotes, and closing the bold tag where you want the bold to end.

If you have more questions about how to create bold or other exciting things in your lens, just let me know.

How to Check if Your Lens Is Indexed

When you’re talking about your lens showing up there’s a couple different things you are going to want to look at.

1. If your lens has been indexed ~ which just means has Google found it.

2. Is your lens ranking for your targeted keywords.

Here’s a video that will walk you through both things:

Here’s the steps in readable format:

How to check if you’re indexed or not:

1. Get your lens url.

2. Go to Google.

3. Enter site:http://squidoo.com/yoururl in the search box.

4. If your lens pops up you are indexed. If it says we couldn’t find anything you’re not.

How to tell if you’re ranking for your targeted keywords:

1. Get your targeted keyword in your head.

2. Go to google.

3. Enter your targeted keyword in the search box.

4. Look through the listings for your lens.

5. If it’s not on the first few pages, quit looking and build more links.

6. If you find it on the first couple pages you are ranking well for your keyword ~ build more links.

Hope that helps clear up these little steps. If you have any more questions feel free to ask them in the comments section.