Squidoo is a small but powerful site that can be used in multiple ways. It allows users to create mini web portals with text modules, images, RSS feeds, and even affiliate modules with Amazon (Squidoo will pay you a percentage of the comission it recieves from Amazon).

(1) First things first. Siging up for Squidoo is as easy as cake. Or pie. Or like… walking a really old faithful dog on a perfectly warm yet cool summer evening… well… you get the idea. Maybe I’m exaggerating, but it is pretty simple. Just look in the top right hand corner of the homepage, and you should see a ‘Sign-up’ link.

(2) Once you’e signed up, you should make a starter portal. I like to write a short introduction first off. Then I move to a text module. As always, it’s best if you have unique content. But if you’re lazy, you can do with an article from an article directory. Or you could rewrite an article from an article directory using Google Translator. I would highly recommend writing your own content, especially if you want your lens to rank in the search engines. And believe me, they can rank in the search engines, in quite surprising places too.

If I’m doing a lens for a blog, I’ll usually put the RSS feed in the blog as well. It’s simple enough; just enter an RSS feed URL into the RSS module, and it’s all set. You can write a short description of the blog, or you can leave it blank. I prefer to leave it blank, but I have not tested which one is better, so I couldn’t say for sure.

You can see an example lens I did for this article here (it’s also the graphic below).

(3) And finally, some quick notes.

-Make sure you link back to your main page in the text module. This will give you a one-way link at the least, and if the lens gets any traffic, it can also generate some direct traffic.

-Make a second link back to an article on your blog. This isn’t necessary, but I usually grab any extra links I can get.

-For most it might be easy, but I’ll tell you, it must have taken me ten minutes to figure out how to move the modules around when I was editing my first Squidoo lens. To save you some pain, sweat, and frustration (or maybe not), there are two arrows, one pointing up, and one down, at the top of each module in a little orange bar. Click the arrows to move the modules up and down (the page will refresh before the module moves).

I think that about does it for squidoo. Feel free to comment if you have any questions, and I’ll see if I can answer them.

Will has been designing websites for over a decade, and has extensive experience with Joomla!, WordPress, and social media. He has consulted hundreds of businessmen and webmasters on the oftentimes mystifying aspects of Search Engine Optimization.

Will has blogged 54 posts here.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 1:31 am and is filed under Linking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.