If you don’t already know, the prime purpose of SquidUtils is to provide tools and utilities for Lensmasters. You can get a summary of what’s on offer here by reading the post Welcome to SquidUtils, and then come back here to catch up with what’s new.

In recent weeks, I have been building some new tools, and they range from the useful, through kinda nifty, to simply awesome. It wasn’t until today I realised how many I had ’sitting on the shelf’, so I thought I should get them out for Lensmasters to try.

Health-Check: This was mentioned at the end of my previous post, where I talked about large percentage of lenses that were not optimised for their keywords. The Lens Health-Check Tool will automatically assess your lens, and give advice on where you could improve it. It is still technically in Beta, and there is some functionality yet to be programmed into to it, but I wanted people to be able to benefit from it.

Amazon RSS Feeds: This is actually an old tool, which is was a little tricky to use unless you’re already an expert with Amazon’s affiliate program. It basically allows you to dynamically embed Amazon products directly into your lens, selected by Category, Listmania or ASIN. Finding the ‘browse node’ ids for a particular category was never easy, but the Amazon Feed Generator now has an integral node browser, that lets you drill down to the one you need.

But that’s not all of them - there’s more…

Continue reading “New Tools for Squidoo Lensmasters”

I have analysed almost 70 thousand lenses at Squidoo by 2,250 Lensmasters, and I’ve identified a number of issues that common to a staggering 80% of these lenses. Some of these issues are preventing the lenses from ranking well in the Search Engines, and many Lensmasters have posted to the forums complaining about a lack of traffic.

Here is an overview of the issues I have found, and how Lensmasters can fix them.

Continue reading “4 Out Of 5 Lenses Have Poor Health!”

One of the oldest tools here at SquidUtils is the Lensmaster Feeds. These are RSS Feeds that contain links to all of your lenses (or groups). These are perfect for syndicating - which will result in many websites linking directly to your lenses. And the great thing is, as you build new lenses, they will automatically appear on all the sites that are publishing your feed.

If you are a frequent user of these feeds, you may notice that your primary Lensmaster feed is now provided directly by Squidoo, and not from SquidUtils any more. But don’t worry, all of your links to the old feeds will be redirected, and all previous syndications will continue to work.

Continue reading “How to Use Your Lensmaster Feed”

The Amazon Link Error Report alerts you when your lenses have Amazon Links that have been changed or deleted. It will also tell you which lenses these links are on, so you can then go to your workshop and fix them. All you need to do is login, and look out for the warning message on your Advanced Dashboard. If you see it, there will be a link which will take you to the detailed report.

Continue reading “Do Your Amazon Links Still Work?”

One of the most common pieces of advice these days seems to be “write good, unique content”. While this is true, there’s a word that I seem to use a lot in my forum posts: “relevance”.

Why? Search engines love to make associations between ‘things’ that are related - this is how they work. Ultimately, they associate your search query with a web page that is related to it. They do this by finding similarities between words on a web page, and in the links to a web page.

So, how can you make your lens have “relevance”? Continue reading “Relevance is Key!”

The great thing about Squidoo is that you can sell Amazon products on your lens, without needing to sign up as an Amazon Associate first. There are 4 great Amazon modules that you can add to your lens. Squidoo handles all of that on your behalf, gets the maximum commission rate, and splits the revenue with you 50/50; this means about 4.5% for most products. This is perfect for Lensmasters who are new to affiliate marketing, and helps them learn the basics.

Now, if you’re already an Amazon Associate, you can put your own affiliate links onto your lenses, and potentialy earn more revenue. The basic rate for an associate is 4%, which is no better than what you would get if you used the Squidoo modules instead. However, if you can sell just 7 items in a month, you commission will go up to 6%! The more items you can sell, the more revenue you will make.

So, how do you add your own affiliate links? Continue reading “Being an Amazon Associate on Squidoo”

Originally posted on SquidU Forum as The Importance of Primary Tags.

The Primary Tag is the first tag you are asked to define when creating your new lens, and it is an often misunderstood and poorly utilised by many Lensmasters. Admittedly, it doesn’t seem do a whole lot, but there are some important points you should know.

Over half of the lenses on Squidoo have poorly chosen Primary Tags!

By default, the Primary Tag will be the same as the Lens Title, which is not optimal. It is important that Lensmasters choose good keywords for their Primary Tag, as it can have a significant effect on the ranking of the lens. Every appearance of the Primary Tag on your lens adds weight to that key phrase on your lens, as well as creating a relevant link from the tag page.

With the new layout for Maxed lenses, Squidoo introduced the Discovery Tool underneath the Introduction. This adds links to other related lenses, and it’ll use the Primary Tags if it can. This means the Primary Tag is more important than ever. If you have a bunch of lenses that are about the same subject, then picking the same Primary Tag for all of them will ensure maximum exposure in the Discovery Tool. If you do not have multiple lenses on the same topic, then at least try to pick a Primary Tag that has a good number of other lenses too, so that those lenses link to yours.

Here are some tips to help you pick the right keywords:
Continue reading “How To Pick Your Primary Tags”

First of all, let me take this opportunity to introduce myself. I joined Squidoo in September of 2006, and I’ve build a few lenses in that time, which I have showcased in my Lensography. I think that Squidoo is a fabulous platform, and I have been contributing my bit to its development, as well as creating separate tools on my own website, SquidUtils.com.

On this blog I will show you how to use the various tools that are available, and also share some of the tips that I have picked up in the last 18 months. Until now, I’ve never had anything interesting to write about. Whenever I have had something to say, I would post it to the SquidU forum. Now that I have (finally) setup this blog, I’ll be re-posting and updating some of my previous material, as well as adding new information for Squidoo Lensmasters.

To kick things off, here’s a quick overview of what you can find at SquidUtils: Continue reading “Welcome to the SquidUtils Blog”