image credit: koalazymonkey

It didn’t really used to matter if your lenses were in the red WIP (work in progress) status. They’d still show up in the search engines, you could still get traffic… but that seems to have changed.

I’ve noticed, and some other Kiss Club members have noticed as well that WIP lenses are being deindexed, and THAT is no good.

No worries though… it’s not too hard to get your lenses out of WIP status. Here’s a few things you can do to get your lenses back in the green. Remember, even after you do these things it will take at least 24 hours to see a difference ~ Squidoo only updates once a day.

Update your lens.

There are tons of things you can do to update your lens.

Add a new module ~ with some content.

Add some new tags.

Make sure you’ve got all your module titles changed from the default.

Add a relevant video

Add some images from Flickr.

Add the twitter module ~ use a relevant keyword to pull in tweets related to your topic.

Once you’ve made any of these changes, make sure you PUBLISH the lens… the changes aren’t seen until you republish.

Here’s a lens with tons of great ways to update your lens.

Send some traffic to your lens.

Another great way to help get your lens out of WIP status is to send it some traffic. This is pretty easy to do when you have a network you can share your lenses with. Whether that network is Squidoo community of Facebook or my Focus and Action Mastermind Group on facebook… or even the SquidU forum.

Traffic helps lenses.

Create some new links to your lens.

Links help as well…

You can create links by adding the featured lens module to the sidebar and adding your lens to some of your other related lenses.

You can link from a blog post back to your lens.

You can also tweet your lens ~ links from twitter count as well!

These are all simple things you can do to help get your lens out of red WIP status. Once you see the green check mark by your lens it shouldn’t take long for it to get reindexed, and if you’re following a quality plan for building lenses you should see traffic pretty soon!

I received an email from a subscriber today. He wanted to know if I had a “newer list”  for Squidoo because he felt this list was pointless to be on as  he was being sent to posts that were from 2009, and with all the changes at Squidoo and Google he couldn’t believe they would be at all relevant.

This was a little disturbing to me, because I strive to provide good information that works if you work it. I went back through my list emails and have to say I don’t really agree.

What I provide links to in the email series you get when you subscribe (and get the Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint) are basics. The basics don’t really change. It doesn’t matter how many things change at Squidoo, or how many times Google changes their algorythm… the basics will stay the same.

In fact, the basics for making Squidoo work, are pretty much the basics for any strategy you plan to use to make money online.

You need to figure out what people want (not necessarily what they need). You have to figure out how they are asking for what it is they want. You then have to give it to them.

What this means in internet marketing terms is this: You find a product, find a keyword people are using to find that product, then you create great content that leads people to the product, and then build links to the content to get it ranking on Google.

That is it.

So, is that what I did in 2009? YEP.

Is that what I do today? YEP.

The basics don’t change. The only thing that changes are some of the tactics and tools you can use to implement the basics.

So many people online are continually searching for the latest and greatest thing, the one thing that’s better than the last thing. The thing that is going to be IT for them.

Let me tell you right now… there is no such thing.

There are the basics. The basics done over and over and over again. Internet marketing… especially on a free platform is all about the basics. You can spiffy up the basics a bit, but when it comes down to it, there’s only 3 little things.

1. what people need

2. how they’re looking for it

3. them being able to find YOUR solution to what they need.

Don’t make it any more complicated than that… at least in the beginning. There will be gurus and others who will tell you you have to do this, and that and of course that other thing or you will fail. This is a lie. It is not true. The basics will get you started. They will create an income for you (if you do the work) and they will allow you a little breathing room to grow.

So, don’t knock the basics. They’re what your business is built on.

This morning I received an email from Giant Squid headquarters, it was not such a happy email to receive. The email stated that too many of my lenses were not original enough, or contained too much “duplicate content”, otherwise known as content that could not be found anywhere else online.

I’m thinking that what they are referring to is the amazon reviews on my Squidoo Christmas cash lenses. The email went on to say that it would be likely that lenses with such duplicate content would be locked within the next few days.  I have gone through my best lenses that are ranking well, and making me money and taken out the review module. I suggest you do the same.

I’m pretty sure this change (or crackdown as it were) is due at least in part to Google’s changes over the last couple weeks.

As I was looking into this a little bit I came across a new blog post on the Official Squidoo blog that would be worth your time to read. The Scroll of Originality.

I will be working on revamping the Squidoo Christmas Cash Blueprint, but wanted to give you the heads up before you found any of your lenses locked.

This is just my interpretation of the situation, I could be right on, or totally off, but I did want to let you know. I will continue to bring you updates as I hear them, but for now, make sure you continue to write original content on your lenses, and take out any of the reviews from Amazon that may be considered duplicate content.

I followed a few more links to the new Original vs. Duplicate Content lens and found this:

Q: Can I post other people’s Amazon reviews on my lens?

A: Let’s look at an example. Here is the list of Amazon reviewer comments about the Marx Brothers DVD collection. No, certainly you cannot copy and paste full reviews that other people have written and post them on your lens as your own content. But yes, if there is a review you particularly agree with, I don’t see why you couldn’t quote a sentence from it, attribute it to the Amazon reviewer, and link to his or her post. Just do this very sparingly.

So there you have it… that’s a no no.  Everything changes, and as times and policies change so must we. I’ll see what I can figure out as a different strategy to create social proof, and maybe rethink the entire process of the Christmas Cash lenses… until then, if you have questions please feel free to ask. I have no idea if I’ll be able to answer them or not, but I’ll be glad to try.

Quite a while ago (back in 2007)… when I was relatively new to Squidoo I put together a lens on backlinking. I talked about a bunch of different ways people can create backlinks to their lenses to help them rank in the search engines.

I did a little bit of checking on keywords at the time (but like I said, I was relatively new to the game). Well, this lens has done really well. It gets a lot of comments, and a lot of thumbs, a lot of tweets ~ all of which have helped it rank not only for the original keyword, but for many many others as well.

Seeing how well this lens has  done  in the search engines, made me think about all the people who were slipping through my fingers.   I was not doing anything to connect  with all the people going through this lens. I was totally dropping the ball. They stopped by once, and then I could never contact them again.

As you probably know, I’ve done a lot of posts on my other blog about backlinking, and I knew I was going to create my own backlinking product so I decided to start a new list… a backlinking list and start collecting the names and email addresses of people who were interested in learning more about backlinking.

Now this is easier said than done, since Squidoo has taken out the module that allowed you to put an opt in box right in your lens. But that’s ok. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, right?!

How to add an opt in box to a Squidoo lens

I created an opt in box in my get response account. I then did a “preview” of the opt in box. Using Jing, I took a screen shot of the opt in box.

Then I created a squeeze page that had an actual opt in box on it ~ where people could sign up and they could see the benefits of signing up on the list. (I am giving away some backlinking tutorials ~ which are some of my best backlinking posts I’ve written).

Once I had the squeeze page done, I added the opt in image to a text module at squidoo ~ but then I didn’t like how it looked (couldn’t center it), so I tried a “big black box” module and that looked much better. In the big black box module I created a clickable image using the image of my opt in box, that when someone  clicked in the space to put their name in they were taken to the actual squeeze page to sign up. (Make sure you open it in a new window so they can get back to your lens again.)

How’s it working?

Generally I get about 5 new people a day. I’ve grown that list (without doing any additional work) to over 850 people. It’s working pretty well.

Why bother?

Being able to contact people once they’ve left your site is huge. Now I can send these people emails ~ which generally lead them back to my blog (for the tutorials they asked for), and they get to know me better. I get to help them out, they get to learn about products that might help them out in their backlinking journey, AND when I put out my new backlinking product I had over 850 targeted people to invite to check it out.

Who should try this?

I’m not going to advise you to start sticking opt in images on every one of your lenses. In fact, you probably won’t use this technique on many at all… I have, I think this one and maybe one other out of all my lenses. But, when you have a lens that’s stable at number one for a rather general topic, and it’s getting quite a bit of traffic, and it has multiple products that could be recommended, it might be worth it.

Having a way to connect with your lens readers even after they leave your lens can be priceless.

What do you think? Do you have a lens that might be worth adding an opt in box to?

You may or may not be aware that Google has recently made some changes to its algorithm. (that’s a link to the actual post by Matt Cutts on the Google blog about the changes) They are trying to get more and more junk sites out of the index.

It didn’t take long before I got my first concerned email, wondering if the Christmas Cash lenses would be considered junk sites.

Here’s what I think and what I’ve seen so far.

No. I don’t think they will be considered junk sites at all. Provided you are using the blueprint correctly. If you are creating unique content for your intro module, your benefits module (and not just copy/pasting the product description), you’re adding your own two cents at the top of your other modules. If you’re adding in the interactive modules like the poll and guestbook. Even with Amazon reviews you’ll be fine.

The key here is you are not just copying and pasting content that is found elsewhere. You have plenty of unique content of your own creation. You are also helping people make buying decisions.

I think the real concern will come in, not with Squidoo lenses, but for people (like me) who are using wp robot to pull in content for their Christmas blog. Although, at this point my Christmas blog is still sitting on page 1 for its main keyword. I think my wp robot sites will probably be dropped at some point soon, unless I take some time and go in and do a real review of the products… like recommended in the Amazonian Profit Plan. Pulling products in with software probably isn’t going to cut it anymore.

Again though… think about the purpose of your site. My Christmas blog (though it does get traffic around the holidays) serves the purpose to give me a place to link to my lenses. It’s main purpose is NOT to rank on the first page of Google.  So unless it ends up getting completely deindexed it’s not going to be a problem, Google will still be able to find the links from my site.

I also think the other sites that will be nailed in this new change are RSS scraper sites. You know the ones. You’ve spent all this time writing this awesome unique content only to get a pingback saying you’ve got a link from another site. You hop over to check it out and realize it’s your exact content, copied right out of your RSS feed. I do not think those type of sites will make it through this change.

Your Christmas Cash lenses? I think they’ll be fine.

I checked my Ironman lens this morning, as well as other lenses I have that are ranking well and they are all right where they were a few days ago. I haven’t seen any movement.

I suggest you keep doing what you’re doing. Keep creating unique content for your lenses. Keep making them with your user in mind… thinking about how you can help your reader make the best buying decision, and give them the information to do that. You’ll be fine.

We all know, by now that there’s more to making money with lenses than just making a bunch of lenses. You have to have a linking plan as well. This can really trip people up because there are so many different ways you can create links they don’t know how to put together a plan, what goes where, or when.

I get that.

Let me run through a couple possibilities with you.

1. Article marketing.

You could create your lens, and then write another article and submit it to Ezinearticles.com, and as many other article directories as you could find. You could use software like Unique Article Wizard to automate this process.

This is one backlinking strategy, and it works… if you do it.

2. Creating content on web 2.0 sites.

You could create your lens, and then go to other free sites and create content there as well… including a link back to your lens of course. There are hundreds of sites you can add your own free content to, you just have to find them and use them.

This is a very valid backlinking strategy, and will work if you work it.

3. Bookmarking

While this is not as powerful as it used to be, you can take your lens and submit them to bookmarking sites. You will get a link back to your lens from each site you submit it to. You can find a long list of sites at socialmarker.com. You could automate this process by using a service like Traffic Bug.

Bookmarking is definitely not the BEST backlinking strategy all by itself, but it definitely adds momentum when used in conjunction with article marketing, or web 2.0 content creation.

4. RSS submission.

You can take your lensmaster feed and submit it to all the RSS directories you can find. You will only have to do this once for each squidoo account, because as you create new lenses the feed will update itself automatically at each directory ~ which is super fun. You will get a new link each time you create a new lens, or update an existing lens in each of the RSS directories.

This is yet another valid strategy to create links to your lenses. It is not as powerful as articles, or web 2.0 content, but it is especially powerful when you use it in conjunction with those strategies.

5. Linkwheel

The best possible backlinking strategy is to use all 4 of the above methods strategically with one another. This is called a link wheel. It can be a little confusing, because it has a lot of steps, and you have to be sure you know where your links are pointing and from where, but when you get the hang of it, it is a very powerful system to create links to your lenses and get them ranking on the first page of Google.

You may or may not know I’ve created a program called Backlinking 101. It will walk you through each and every step of creating a linkwheel, and thus help you create hundreds (if not thousands) of quality links to your lenses. I’m going ot be launching the program on March 1st.

There will be a bonus available for the first 25 buyers… it could be a seriously life changing bonus if you take advantage of it… but the full details I’m saving until Tuesday.

I’m going to send out an early bird email to my Backlinking Tutorials list when the product goes live. So if you want a chance at the first 25 spots and you’re not on the list, you might want to get on it. The list consists of backlinking tutorials once a week… I don’t send out post notifications or anything else to that list, just the tutorials ~ well and the advanced notice that Backlinking 101 is live.

Not having a clear backlinking strategy in place is one of the things that keeps most people I see from succeeding. It’s such an important element of the puzzle, but it’s confusing and boring and tedious ~ and people just don’t do it.

Let me walk you through it…3 assignments a week. One step at a time. See you Tuesday.

I hear from a lot of people… many times I hear something like this:

I have built a bunch of lenses, but I’m not making any money.

My first question for them is this:

Are you just building lenses or are you doing the rest of the work?

The thing is, you can build lenses until you’re blue in the face, but if you don’t do the follow up work ~ which is really like 80% of the work you should be doing, you’re not going to make money. Lenses alone do not a business make.

Here’s a question:

What if you decided to set a goal to have 1 new keyword (lens) ranking on page 1 each month for the next year?

What would that kind of goal do for you? Would it make you focus on one lens at a time? Would it get you building links to get your keywords ranking? Would it help you stop doing incessant keyword research? Would it help you stop checking your stats multiple times a day? Would it help you figure out what the “right” actions are for you to be taking during the day? Would it move you to create a plan of action?

When you change your goals, it changes your actions. When you change your actions (depending on those changes) you begin to change your results.

If you are wanting to create a primarily passive income from Squidoo you need to stop focusing on making lens after lens and start focusing on getting your keywords those lenses target to rank on the first page… top 5 would be best.

Are you willing to shift your focus? Are you willing to start taking the actions that need to be done to get your lenses ranking for your keywords?

Do you know how to do that? Can you create a plan to get it done?

Let me know. If there’s things I can help you with to make this happen I will be glad to do it, but you have to make the decision. You have to decide if you’re just going to keep building lenses or if you’re going to build a business.

Finding a product to promote, is key. However, finding a product that has keywords with search volume is even more important. If your keyword doesn’t have search volume, you get no traffic. Period. In the Christmas Cash Blueprint I suggest you go directly to Amazon to find a product.  The purpose of doing this is to find a place to start doing your keyword research. This will give you an idea, and from there you can look for a good keyword. A good keyword being a keyword that has over 1000 searches a month and low competition.

I understand all this can be somewhat confusing, and let’s try to get a little clearer about it.

Yes. You want a product specific keyword. But it doesn’t have to be exactly the product description posted on Amazon. I have looked at the same product on multiple sites and the product name/title is different on each site ~ so this is not a hard and fast product name ~ it’s a place to get you started.

Here’s a video that walks through finding a product at Amazon, realizing it had no search volume and then finding a keyword that would work to still promote that product.

Here’s the video:

Here’s the text version of the video:

Step 1. Go to amazon and find a product. I went to the watches category, and just looked around. I’m looking for a product with a price point over $200, and some GOOD reviews ~ more the better.

Step 2. I found a watch I wanted to check out. It only has 3 reviews ~ I usually like to have more reviews than 3, but you can’t beat the price point, so I decided to test it.

Step 3. Take the whole product name and put it in the google keyword tool (or micro niche finder). Click the exact match button (top right hand side of the screen of google kw tool ~ mnf is set to this as default), and check how much search volume the exact keyword gets.

Step 4. The keyword has not enough info ~ which means not enough search volume.

Step 5. Start looking through the other keywords that came up with it for keywords that are related to your product and have over 1000 searches. Look for something with the brand name, or specific model in them ~ the more specific the better. ** This may end up taking you in a completely different direction than the one you came from and THAT’S OK!! Go with it ~ this is research, go where the facts take you.

Step 6. Found another possible keyword ~ went back to Amazon to look and see if I could find a decent product to promote with the new keyword. Looking for price point over $200 and good reviews ~ the more the better. If you’re doing this on MNF ~ click the new keyword and then click the search amazon link and it will take you right there.

Step 7. Found a produc that fit my requirements and matched the keyword I found.

Step 8. Go to Google and check out the competition. Using the SEO for firefox tool to show me the PR of each site on the first page, I add up the PR ~ 30 or less total 3 or less average is a go. If you are using Micro Niche Finder click the SOC button (far right) and see what comes up ~ I look for SOC of 20 and under, but anything up to 30 or 40 will probably work. Just remember, the lower this number the easier it will be to get your lens ranked in Google.

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.

That’s it. The key here though is to find keywords that HAVE SEARCH VOLUME. It’s pointless to grab the words written on Amazon for the product name and use them if no one is searching for them.  Rearrange them, try different portions of the keyword, check other words that come up in the search ~ find something completely related to a product, but it MUST have search volume.

If you have any questions please ask them in the comment section ~ I hope this helped clear up some confusion surrounding product related keywords.

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.

How are your lenses doing? Are they getting traffic? Are they getting to the first page of Google? If they’re not doing well, and they’re not getting to the front page part of the problem may be your SEO. What is SEO? Search Engine Optimization. This is  big term but simply means, creating a lens that tells Google very specifically exactly what it’s all about.  You want Google to know exactly what your lens is about because it’s their job to find the best matching site to searchers queries, and if they don’t know what your lens is about ~ they can’t pick you.

There are 2 types of SEO. Onpage SEO and off page SEO.  Off page SEO  includes things like backlinking. If you’re onpage SEO is right, then it’s probably your off page SEO you need to work on.

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. These things, if you haven’t done them, are worth going back and adding or changing on your already published lenses.

1. Use your keywords in the url.

When you’re creating 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.

So what if you go to make a lens and someone already has your exact keyword? I would look at the lens that’s already on Squidoo ~ check it out, see what it looks like. Is it any good? Check Google and see if it’s ranking on the first 2 pages for the targeted keyword.

If it’s not a great lens, and it’s not ranking mess with the dashes in the domain. Either take them out or add them in, so you can get your exact keyword in the ulr.

If it’s a great lens, and it’s ranking in the top 2 pages I’d personal reconsider targeting that keyword. I’d probably find something else. Google is not going to put multiple lenses on the front page for the same keyword. If that lens is already there, it’s going to be tough to knock it out. Find a keyword that doesn’t have that kind of  Squidoo competition.

Dashes – 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.

******

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,  they  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.

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,  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 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.

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  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.