How To Pick Your Primary Tags
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:
1. Your Primary Tag wants to be the most important key phrase that you can think of. For example, if your lens is about a person or a product, stick to just their name.
2. Keep your tag to just 2 or 3 words, where possible. One word is not always specific enough (unless the subject is a strong brand like Pepsi), and more than 3 words can sometimes be too specific. Of course, it does depend on your subject matter.
3. Don’t simply repeat your Lens title again (even though this is the default when building a lens). Your title should include as many keywords as you can sensibly fit (no keyword stuffing!), while your Primary Tag is about your key phrase.
4. Format your Primary Tag nicely - keep it Capitalised, spelt correctly (!) and don’t include any special characters or quotes (”). Use spaces between words, and not dashes or underscores.
5. Make sure you repeat your Primary Tag as a regular tag too. The tags appear as the Meta Keywords at the top of the page, and you don’t want your key phrase to be missing from it.
6. Pick a Primary Tag which is popular, i.e. people will be likely to be searching for it and other lenses are might also have the same Primary Tag.
7. Group related lenses under the same Primary Tag - this creates strong links between them, and helps them all to rank well for the target key phrase.
Here are some (random) examples of good Primary Tags:
» Harry Potter :: Xbox 360 :: Dog Training :: Digital Photography
Bad examples:
» The Whole Lens Title Again :: Kee Frase Speled Wong :: lowercasewithnospaces :: “Phrase in Quotes”
Once you’ve got your Primary Tag sorted out, you will then need to pick some good keywords for the other, ordinary tags. Start with the Primary Tag, and then think of variations from there. The regular tags can be shorter or longer, but you should keep them as relevant to the lens content as possible. Single word tags tend to have poor relevance, but good PageRank. Avoid tags that are runtogetherwords, unless they are commonly used, e.g. videogames.
Happy tagging…
EXCELLENT post!
Going back to my blog right now to make sure a link to this is within the post content.
Thank you for sharing this =)
Jennifer
Great information. I’m going to make a few changes to my Squidoo lenses today based on what I learned here.
Great stuff fluff!
I’m working back through my lenses now. Its amazing how many early ones were just thrown together without key word consideration. This list will help keep me on track as I try to balance Pagerank, lensrank, and other factors.
Thank you, I gotta go and change some tags right away.
It never occurred to me that the main word should be capitalized or included on the list for meta tags. Very good article.
Thank you.. Shelina
Thank you so much very helpful. Newbie here and trying to learn as quickly as possible.
Fan-freakin’-tastic! Just the kind of “under the hood” stuph I was lookin’ for. If you’re using Squidoo for marketing purposes, you’ve gotta get the tags right and I was having trouble finding good info on this subject. I’m printing this out and keeping it for reference. Thanks so much and keep up the great work!
HI again!
So now that I’m follwoing your very helpful directions, I’ve run into a couple of questions. Searching for the answers elsewhere was in vain, but please forgive if these are is stupid questions — my defense is that I’m new. Here goes…
1) You say to initial cap (capitalized first letters) your Primary Tag. OK, cool. But what about the other tags?
2) You say to pick a Primary Tag which is popular. Uh, er… how do I determine that? I know how to find that data in insofar as regular keywords go on the Internet in general, but I assume you mean Squidoo popularity? Or no? Please clarify.
3) How many tags are optimal? 5? 8? 10? Is there a “sweet spot?” Does anybody really know? (I ask it this way because while I’m new to Squidoo, I know there is considerable debate in SEO circles over what Google really likes… I imagine there may be the same debate about Squidoo itself, too).
4) I notice that Squidoo itself throws more tags at me, some of which are just run-together versions of tags I’m already using. Do I include those too? Where do you draw the line?
Thanks much for any and all help! (:-)]
Thank you very, very much for this!
Hi Karl - here are some quick answers to your questions:
1) the other tags will always appear in lowercase, so it doesn’t matter.
2) a popular tag is one that lists a lot of lenses on it. More than 10 is good, but don’t pick one that is too popular (i.e. 100s).
3) there’s a maximum of 40, and I would say you should have at least 20. Aim for an even mix of short popular keywords as well as some “long tail” keyphrases. Most importantly, keep the relevant!
4) runtogetherwords are the most useless tags you can have, except maybe a few of the popular ones like ‘videogames’.
I hope that helps…
thefluffanutta
Thank you so much
For all the information about tagging
As per your excellent directions, I have changed the tags on my one and only lens. My future lenses will be tagged with this instruction set in mind.
thanks for the information, I’ll be making the necessary changes thanks to your tips
regards
Thank you so much. I have learned so much. Always glad for help it makes my lens better.
Really simple and helpful information on tagging which I hope also applies to keyword meta tags of a website.
I just went through my 23 Celtic Music lenses and changed the primary tag to Celtic Music. I found some lenses that could benefit from additional tags as well. And I added “celtic music” without quotes.
Thanks very much for this information!
I should review my own lens now.
Thank you. I have continued to be confused about tags since I started with Squidoo. I will re-read this a few more times and start changing them. !