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 King!”

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”