Squidoo is probably one of the lesser used marketing tools that many people are still not aware of. It appears that Squidoo will not only increase the visibility of your site but it will also help your ranking in the search engines. I definitely believe that having a Squidoo lens helps in bringing at least a little traffic over to your main site(s). Did I mention it’s free?
For those not in the know, Squidoo is a creation of Seth Godin, a well known marketing strategist and blogger, and it is basically a blog, mini site, myspace, and social site combined into one. What’s the buzz about Squidoo?
- Quickly set up a lens. A minisite in Squidoo is called a lens and the author a lensmaster. You just need to know how to type. Just don’t spam or make your lens spammy in character.
- With the wide range of modules…reminds me of Netvibes (very Web 2.0), you can quickly embed Amazon and Ebay adverts into your post via the modules and earn a cut of the revenue (50%). The rest goes to charity and Squidoo.
- You can indulge in writing some off topic stuff related to your site and yet have a link to your site (which the search engines love).
- Since a Squidoo site counts as a real site in the eyes of the search engines, it can give you valuable link juice to the lesser ranking pages of your site. You might have come across some Squidoo lenses having top rank in Google…(Google likes Squidoo for now).
- Get yourself recognized as an expert on a topic. You’ll notice the tendency in Squidoo is to give a lot of airtime to really peculiar stuff. So it is fantastic for niche marketing. There are people making hundreds to thousands per month from Squidoo alone.
- No limit to the number of lenses you can make. You could make 100 lenses if you wanted.
- The only drawback to Squidoo is that you may get sidetracked from your sites and spend too much time there. Also, Squidoo is slow to load most of the time. But Squidoo can be addictive!
If you want to make your Squidoo lens more effective as a marketing tool, here is a small tip – Promote other sites as well, not only your own, on your lens. That way, you’ll establish better credibility and your lens will gain the respect it deserves. Treat it as a mini yet info packed site and you can get your lens achieving a higher rank in Squidoo.
Update 2015: Squidoo is now under Hubpages, who acquired it in 2014. Hubpages and Squidoo have been very similar entities all along. Most of what’s written here, has always applied for Hubpages as well. Basically, this consolidation/merger is a reaction to Google’s huge algorithm changes that happened the past few years in the form of Panda and Penguin, which impacted the “Content Farm” business model that defined both Hubpages and Squidoo.