Victoria Neely’s Squidoo Diary

Squidoo lenses can always use images. I try to have at least one for every text module; it’s an extra touch that people notice.

Depending on the subject of the lens, almost any kind of image would do. Sometimes I’ve used a series of animal pictures on lenses that have nothing to do with animals, simply because I liked how the animals lightened the message or conveyed the kind of emotions I was looking for. Sometimes I use completely random images that have little or nothing to do with the subject.

That doesn’t mean I will do this for every single lens I create, though. This approach isn’t appropriate for all lenses.

For instance, I once saw a lens that I think was about real estate… you’d expect to see pictures of houses, right? Maybe images of paperwork, or people talking to real estate agents, etc. However, the lens had cutesy, cartoony images of kittens.

My brain went, “Huh?”

That was a case where the images did not complement the tone or subject matter of the lens. It needed a sense of professionalism, or at least a better sense of cohesiveness. I even would have been fine with seeing cartoony pictures of houses.

Make sure that your images complement your lenses.

I’m starting another experiment right now… when I create lenses promoting affiliate products, I want to draw attention to the links. Although letting the links “blend in” might be a little more tasteful, I suspect links get more attention if they stand out. Which is a good thing in the long run.
So, I’ve been making links look a little garish. Here’s how:

<a href=”http://littlesquidthatcould.com/”><b style=”color:red;”>Little Squid That Could</b></a>

This gives you a bold, red link with a blue underline. Very eye-catching. That A HREF stuff is what creates the link, while the <b style=”color:red;”> thing bolds the text and makes it red. You could even give it a yellow background color this way: <b style=”color:red;background-color:yellow;”>

These are technically CSS tricks. You can learn a few more at thefluffanutta’s My Favourite CSS Tricks on Squidoo.

Edit: Well, phooey, I thought I might demonstrate these tricks here, but the blog overrides my CSS style settings. I know for a fact that they work over on Squidoo, though.

Addendum: Don’t go overboard with this… highlight the most important links sparingly. Too many tutti-frutti colors all over your lens will make people’s eyeballs bleed.

The cool thing about Amazon is that if you become an Associate, you can promote products and earn commissions whenever someone buys stuff through your affiliate link.

Considering that Squidoo already lets you earn money with Amazon products, that probably doesn’t sound very exciting. However, you could also use a Squidoo lens to promote an Amazon aStore.

An aStore is kind of like a Squidoo lens for Amazon, except your “modules” consist solely of products. You handpick all the products you want displayed in your Amazon aStore. So, if you don’t want to load down your Squidoo lens with tons of products, you can direct people to visit your aStore instead.

You can read more about Amazon aStores at this old SquidU thread, Why We Should All Make Amazon aStores.

We had a new graduating class of Giant Squids recently - lensmasters recognized by Squidoo as having made 50 or more quality lenses. You’ll know you’re looking at a lens made by a Giant Squid when you see the Giant Squid badge in the profile box.

But you get more than just a cool badge. Here are some of the other perks of Giant Squidom:

Access to the secret Giant Squid blog. Keep up with this, and you’ll get sneak peaks of cool new things that are being added to Squidoo.

Gold stars on all your lenses. Looks nice and gives them a little lensrank boost.

A template tool for creating custom lenses. If you consistently make a certain type of lens, you can use the template tool to lay it all out for you.

Warm fuzzy feelings. Well, it’s nice to be appreciated! People’s reactions to being made a Giant Squid has ranged from basking in a happy glow to whooping and doing a Giant Squid dance.

You just need to have 50 great lenses by the 30th of September. If you want to learn more about what it takes to be a Giant Squid, check out these blogs by the Giant Squid Organizers:

So You Want to Be a Giant Squid

Giant Squid Community Showcase

This is something I need to do more often… it’s pretty cool. You can make your polls look fancy by adding a small picture to each option.

Mostly this would be useful for polls where you would ask for someone to vote for their favorite picture. For example, you could have a poll showing a series of Michael Jackson pictures throughout his career, and ask people to vote for the best/scariest/the one where he started going too far with cosmetic surgery/etc.

Here’s an old SquidU forum thread that proposed the idea of pictures for your polls: http://squidu.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=7178

A good lens title is a must. Here are some of the qualities that help make a lens title a good one:

1. It’s straightforward. There’s no mystery when the title is something like, “How to Tie Your Shoes.” But a title like “The Sky’s the Limit” is very vague; you’d want to at least pair it up with something else, like so: “The Sky’s the Limit: How to Live the Life You’ve Always Dreamed of.”

2. It matches the content. Don’t name your lens “How to Cook Steak” if you’re mostly going to talk about where to find the best steak restaurants.

3. It’s SEO friendly. It’s a good idea to include a phrase or two that people are looking up in search engines every day. You can do keyword research at places like Seo Book Keyword Tool and Wordtracker.

There’s more, but those are some of the big factors. The title makes the first impression, so choose wisely.

When I build or modify lenses, I tend to stick with the basics. After all, the real meat is usually in the text modules anyway! But, sometimes an unusual module will add a nice touch.

The Polaroid module is a good example. This gives you a way to upload bigger pictures to your lens, which is more visually appealing. Then there’s also “The Most Important Thing” module, which adds an orange border around some enlarged text… not exactly pretty, but it’s probably a good way to grab someone’s attention and make sure they read your most important point.

Poke around and take another look at some of the more unusual modules and widgets. One of them might add that special something you were looking for.

I don’t know about you, but a few of my SquidTop posts have been getting hammered by spammers. May all spammers be tarred and feathered. There are a few ways to fight them, though.

First, whenever you see a spammy comment, don’t delete it. Mark it as spam. This is supposed to help teach WordPress learn the difference between spam and legitimate comments.

If one of your posts is heavily targeted by spammers, I recommend disabling comments for it. Here’s how:

1. Log into your SquidTop account and go to the “Manage” section of your dashboard.

2. Find the post and edit it.

3. Click on the blue bar to the right that says “Discussion.” This will be right below the Categories box.

4. Uncheck the “Allow comments” option.

5. Click the “Save” button.

Ta-da, spammers can’t hit that post anymore.

Unfortunately, it also means that non-spammers won’t be able to comment. However, once a post gets fairly old, it’s unlikely to get more attention from people who would usually leave a legitimate comment.

You may not see a whole lot of Squidoo activity from me right now, since I’m directing most of my attention toward building niche web sites. Squidoo will be an important part of that strategy, though.

So here’s what I did today… updated Oh Rubber Ducky with another reason why rubber ducks are so great, added an entry for Alternatively vs. Alternately to Commonly Misused Words, added a list of side effects for Apple Cider Vinegar, added a list of features to the A Small Orange lens, and added a video about making stuffed strawberries to the Strawberry lens.

9 lenses in Tier 1, just 1 lens in the Top 100 list now (Rubber Duckies). Common Newbie Squidoo Mistakes slumped just below 100. Ah well, it had a nice run for a bit there.

Oh, and I’m a Top 100 Squid now, along with several other handpicked lensmasters. Congratulations to all the other Top Squids and new Giants!

It’s easy for me to forget to add more than three tags to my lenses. It’s an important step, since this increases the odds of people stumbling across your lenses. The more tags you have, the better… generally speaking.

You’re allowed to have up to 40 tags per lenses. Some would say that you should add as many tags as you can think of straight from the get-go. I don’t tend to agree; instead, I prefer to add tags “organically.”

What I mean is, I like to check my lens’ stats to see what kind of keywords are leading people to my lens. Sometimes I’ll see a great ones I didn’t think of, and of course I’ll add them as tags to my lens.

That’s why I don’t try to use up my allotment of 40 tags per lens. I start out with about 10-15, then go from there.