Archive for the ‘General Squidoo Info’ Category
Viewing Google Pagerank For Your Lenses
I don’t often worry about Google Pagerank for my lenses, but once in a while I’m curious and I like to know. Usually this curiousity rears it’s ugly head when I’m in one of my time wasting modes which get me absolutely nowhere, but I digress. There are two ways to view the Google Pagerank on your lens that I’m aware of and if you have more please feel free to comment below.
The first way is to download and install the SEO Toolbar for Firefox at SEObook.com and visit each of your lenses, take a look at the PR indicator within the toolbar and see what your PR is. You can also do this with the Google Toolbar, but I choose not to use it because my screen is only so big and the SEO Toolbar is better.
The second way to view the Pagerank for your lenses is much easier and only takes 5 seconds once it’s all set up. The first thing you’ll want to do is download the Webmaster2 Firefox extention at 3n9.org, make sure you install it or you won’t do any good. Once you’ve installed this Firefox extension, visit Squidutils.com, login and then go to the “Advanced Dashboard”. Once you’re in the dashboard, click the W² in the lower right corner of your browser and the PR will show for all of the links on your page including your lenses. That’s all there is to it.
One thing you’ll really want to watch out for is getting into a rut of worrying about PR. Just worry about getting traffic that is interested in what you have to say to your lens and money, fame, or whatever you look to get from your lenses will follow.
Tags: Google Pagerank, squidoo google PR, squidoo pagerank
Beware of Tweeting a New Squidoo Lens
I am a huge fan of One Week Marketing by Pot Pie Girl and have just recently gone back to working through her step by step instructions once again. I can delve more into what else I’ve been doing later on, but that’s not what this post is about.
One thing I have noticed is that it’s becoming more difficult to get a new lens indexed. I can go more into this later, but I believe that part of my problem may be due to my auto-Tweeting of lens updates. About six months ago when I signed up for Twitter, I had set up an auto-feed to Twitter by generating a lensmaster feed at Squidutils and then importing the feed at twitterfeed so Twitter would update every time I published a new lens or updated an existing one. You would think this is good, but lately it has been backfiring.
In One Week Marketing, there is a warning about leaving a link to your new lens on a guestbook before the lens is indexed because the lens you left your link on may become indexed instead of your lens. I noticed the other day when I was searching for one of my new lenses, that my Twitter update was ranking on page one for my lens URL and the lens URL was nowhere to be found. This is the same sort of phenomenon as it seems that Google has been crawling Twitter updates and found my update before the lens, so my “Tweet” was indexed instead. Not good.
Starting today, I am turning off the auto feed at Twitterfeed and only Tweeting lens updates on those lenses which are aged and indexed already. I hope this will help the problem I’ve been having and I’ll keep you posted on the results.
Meanwhile, I have a lot of work and catching up to do. For me, April is all about back to basics, starting with this post.
Tags: indexing a new lens, tweeting squidoo lens, Twitter
Give a Fellow Lensmaster a Little Boost
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but cash earned from a sale on Squidoo seems to give a lens a little boost in lensrank for about a week. Squidoo isn’t just about making money, but it’s also about community and helping others. So, if you’d like to help a fellow lensmaster out next time you’re going to make a purchase at Amazon
- Find a lensmaster that you like and hopefully they have a lens supporting a charity you like.
- Click through one of their Amazon or other Squidoo module links. It doesn’t matter if they have featured the item you are looking for, just click through one of the links.
- Find what you are looking for and complete your purchase.
- The earnings will show up on the lensmasters dashboard within a couple of days from shipment and they will experience a boost in lensrank for a short period of time and a little extra cash when Squidoo pays out.
That’s all you have to do, it’s simple, easy to do and a way to give back to your favorite lensmaster, charity and the whole community.
Tags: helping others, lensrank, Squidoo
Blogging My Online Activities
A couple of posts ago I wrote about keeping track of my lens changes in a spreadsheet format; of course, that night I received a Squidoo Google alert that contained a post from Susan Villas Lewis about all of the changes she did for the day right on her Squidtop blog. While writing about the changes she has made to her lens she is also linking to the lens that she made the changes to, giving the lens another important backlink. I immediately thought that this was a great idea.
I seem to be losing hours on end lately just checking stats and finding cool things to implement on my blogs, Squidoo lenses and other websites; but I don’t seem to be taking any action on anything which then comes down to lost time in my opinion. When I’m ready to take action on these things I won’t be able to find them again, even though I’ve bookmarked the link. So, I’ve decided to use my Squidtop blog to keep track of what I did online for the day. I know, nothing exciting, but at least I’ll know where my time is going and I’ll be building some backlinks. When you work a day job that you are trying to get out of desperation is not a good thing and I think my lost time has been a result of working in desperation mode.
Do you keep an online log of your activities in order to stay on track? What do you do? If you’d like to share, please do so in the comments.
Tags: lens changes, Squidoo, Squidtop, Time Management
Link to Your Own Website
If you are selling on eBay there is a good chance that you are also selling on your own website. The majority of my online sales go through eBay right now, even though I’ve had a website up since I started selling online. I’m just starting to get to the finer details of SEO so my website is not found real easily through the SERPs. Chances are you may be in the same boat as well. Why not bypass eBay all together and link directly to the products on your own site through Squidoo.
I started doing this sometime last year with my UFO Extraterrestrials lens and it has worked well for me. Squidoo is the #1 referrer to The Software Castle right after Google. So, even though Google is not picking up my product pages in the dog eat dog world of online sales, it is picking up my Squidoo lenses. I also offer products from other sellers on lenses like this for a couple of reasons:
- I’m not the biggest guy on the block so I understand why customers may not want to purchase from me.
- I may not have the cheapest price on a game.
- If they are not going to purchase the game from me then I may as well earn a commission from the sale.
Do you currently link to the products on your own website? If not, why?
Tags: drive sales, product linking, Squidoo
