Lens Frequently Asked Questions

Since the primary focus of Squidoo.com is creating lens pages to promote your products and services, lets learn more about creating exceptional web pages. In this section you will review some of the more common questions consumers have about lens pages.

Q. How many lens pages do I need to effectively promote my sites?

A. Most savvy Squidoo.com users recommend trying to build 25-50 lenses. You can do this in just a couple of weeks. Having enough lenses is important for increasing your traffic. Remember, you will not make much money using Squidoo.com alone as your primary source of income. Each lens page may generate up to $100 in revenue through Adsense and related advertisements. What you want to do is increase the traffic clicking through to your links to your affiliate and product sites. This is where you will make money, provided the copy on your site is good and the product is worthwhile and of value to visitors.

Q. I created a lens page that ranked well but then disappeared from Google. What happened?

A. Many times lens pages fall out of rank with Google. This may be because you had backlinks in your lens pages to places like Digg only, and Digg deleted your lens for some reason. Other times, you may find someone with competitive products took over your rankings. To fix this, you can log back into Digg and create your lens again using different tags and information. You can also promote your lens site to OnlyWire.com, a site like Digg providing multiple backlinks to your product pages.

Also make sure you have backlinks to other services including Craigslist, which will help maintain your page ranks.

Take some time to provide fresh content or material especially in the introduction paragraph of your lens page. This will help improve your rankings. You can also try adding an RSS feed to your lens, which will automatically provide fresh content to your lens page on a time frame you designate. Last but not least, do not forget to take time to ping your lens page with multiple sites.

You can also review your keywords consistently and update them as needed to make sure your lens pages and web pages are SEO. This is one of the simpler ways to ensure your sites stay at the top of Google’s page ranks.

Q. How can I use Craigslist to promote my lens page?

A. Craigslist is a wonderful tool for promoting lens pages and web pages. Simply visit Craigslist.com and post your lens page ad in the small biz ads section under products or services. Just make sure you create an ad that isn’t too over-the-top. As with any directory, if your ad sounds to self-promoting, you may be tagged as a spammer. Any links you provide in Craigslist should direct people to your Squidoo.com lens page, where they can find more information and links to your products and services. You will have to repeat this process many times, as Craigslist advertises for only a week at a time.

Q. How can I promote my lens pages using online communities?

A. There are many online groups, like Yahoo groups, that allow you to post links in your signature when you respond to forum posts. Join as many groups as you can that share information about content relevant to your lens page. If you know a group wants information about products or services you provide, make a point to join the group. Rather than direct them to your main site, link to your Squidoo.com page. This will give visitors the opportunity to learn more about you and view you as the “expert” in your field, so they are more likely to click through and buy from you. Just make sure you take some time to become an active member of the communities you join before you start advertising, or people are less likely to see you as a trustworthy member of the group.

The simplest way to do this is as always, by providing helpful information and answering others questions and posts as often as you can.