Is Squidoo Still a Valuable Marketing Tool? I Think So.

Squidoo was a really great tool for bringing in traffic not so long ago, until Google started penalizing anything that came from the site, due to so many spammers taking advantage of it, but it’s been a while, so I’ve decided to take another look at it.

It looks like Squidoo has taken the steps necessary to get rid of most of the people spamming their system and have made their content much more relevant. This, it seems has gotten rid of the penalties that they have incurred before. An example would be a search for “Michelangelo’s David.” A Squidoo page, or “Lens” as they call it, about the famous statue ranks on the first page of MSN, Yahoo, and Google. There’s a reason for this though. That page actually contains a lot of good information that can be very helpful to anybody interested in that particular topic.

After doing some research into many of the top “Lenses” on Squidoo, I’ve gathered some of the things that you should think about if you want to create a lens that will rank well. Here are some ideas for stories:

– Funny Stuff
– Tutorials / Lessons (ex. how to make fairy wings, parrot taming, make money by …, basic HTML for noobs, etc.)
– Ideas (holiday themes, different types of cakes, 20 best alcoholic drinks for Christmas)
– Informational (Japanese tattoos, bird rescue, Multiple Sclerosis, the 80’s)
– Reviews (ex. tech, software, toys, services)
– “Top 10” Style Lists (ex. top animated movies of 2007, 12 Christmas ideas, top 10 toys for kids)

Now, after you’ve decided on a topic for your “lens,” you need to think about everything that you can put on there to make people want to rate it, comment, email it, etc. There should be a wide variety of information available and here are some ideas that you can think about when creating content for your “lenses.”

YouTube Videos
Photographs
Books
Online Tools
News
History
Music
Poems
Criticisms

Keep in mind that this can be a very time consuming process, but can also provide some good links in to your site. You’ll probably want to try not to look like a spammer and refrain from coming across too “salesy” for the most part, but maybe after the lens has ranked well, you can go back and sneak in a few relevant links to your site here and there. Hey, you deserve something for the time spent on creating all of that good content, right?