Recently, Squidoo updated their tag pages to be more useful to visitors and search engines.

If you’re not familiar with tag pages, these are pages that list lenses that use a particular tag. Have a look at the Lensography tag page for an example. There are hundreds of thousands of tags on Squidoo, providing an additional method of navigating and linking between related lenses.

Here’s a summary of the main improvements:

• 20 lenses are displayed (it used to be only 10), with snippets from the Introductions. This will make the tag pages a lot more ‘content rich’, which the search engines will appreciate. The title of the page is also improved.

• Priority is given to the lenses that use the tag as their primary tag, so that those lenses will be listed first, followed by the other lenses that use that tag. This means it’s more important than ever to pick a good Primary Tag.

• Tag pages link to other related tag pages, based on the lenses that use them. This provides the perfect system for navigating through the tags to find the right ones to add to your lens. But, remember: less is more when it comes to tags, so choose your tags wisely – limit yourself to just 10 – 15.

• Finally, in stark contrast to my sensational post this time last year, tag pages are once again indexable by search engines. As a result, your lenses will get a share of the PageRank and search traffic that these pages get. With any luck, this will also boost the overall authority and traffic to Squidoo.

In other news: Continue reading “Improved Tag Pages at Squidoo”

Originally posted on SquidU Forum as The Importance of Primary Tags.
This post was published on April 21st, 2008 and updated on July 23rd, 2009.

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!

It is important for Lensmasters to 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.

More importantly (and relatively recently), the tag page gives priority to lenses that use that tag as their Primary Tag, listing them before all of the other lenses. This means that for one well chosen tag, your lens will get the prime spot on the tag page.

There is also the lens directory here at SquidUtils, which automatically collates lenses by Primary Tag. Only those tags that have 3 or more good lenses under them will be featured, so there’s another reason to pick yours carefully.

Here are some tips to help you pick the right keywords:

Continue reading “How To Pick Your Primary Tags”