Using Squidoo Directories for Backlinks

While organic backlinks are by far the best ones to get, don't dismiss the role that squidoo directories can play. There's always a lot of discussion online about the importance of backlinks. What's good and what's not and I am by no means an expert. I see a backlink as a recommendation, imagine you're sat at a table with a couple of your friends and there are also a couple of their friends present who you don't know as well. The topic turns to where you can buy the best Indian, out of all the recommendations you're going to allocate value to them. One of your friends has similar tastebuds to you so you take her recommendation more highly than the people who you don't know as well. Google also allocates it's own value to bakclinks, but unfortunately we don't know what Google bases it's values on.

The way I look at it, even if I didn't know the other people at the table very well if they ALL recommended the same place chances are I'm going to try it out - why wouldn't Google act the same way?

After using the interlinking lenses tricks that we've discussed previously, squidoo directories are probably one of the easiest ways to build backlinks. I've used various squidoo directories on and off and when I look at some of my older lenses I wonder why I wasn't more consistant with my practises!

This week I've been checking out the squidoo directoris to see what ones are still working. A couple of the directories aren't taking submissions at the moment, but all of the one's here are working fine as of posting -

Lensroll
Squidom
Isle of Squid
Squidup
Squidooenc.corank
Squidlog
Slinkset
Squidpoint
Squidirectory

My Experiment on Squidoo Directories

I have a lens that spent the 1st couple of weeks of this month in tier 1 before dropping into tier 2 (it has been a pretty consisten tier 2 lens for a while now). Most of it's traffic is referred with very little coming from Google. When I searched Google I found out why - it was at #53! I added the lens to 2 of the directories mentioned and the following day it was at #24. Two days after submission it's moved back into tier 1.....will the monthly average be enough? I added the lens to all bar 1 of these directories and it's now at #23 in google. It's also moved further into the top tier which I think is due to visits from members of the squidoo community that are involved in the squidoo directory and who have given the lens a thumbs up.

My conclusion - spend a few minutes adding your lenses to these squidoo directories. I'm waiting to see where this lens ranks for it's main keyword in a couple of weeks when the backlinks have had time to percolate and I'm expecting good things :)

So, do you use the squidoo directories?

Let's Talk Lensographies!

Apologies for the long wait between posts, life getting in the way again and in a couple of weeks I'll be jetting back across the Tasmin to help out when dad get's out of hospital, but for now let's look at lensographies.

Fellow squidmaster Fluff coined the term lensography to mean a collection of one's squidoo lenses, but they've really taken on a life of their own since and can really help with increasing your income. Yes you heard right, increasing your income. Now I'm not talking directly here, rather indirectly because a lensography helps you to link together all of the lenses in a particular niche.

Basically you're providing backlinks to each of your individual lenses when you include them in a lensography. Now there's a lot of debate about the value of internal versus external backlinks, but these are so easy to produce why wouldn't you?? I also like the fact that if you're setting up a profile or a forum signature where you want to promote one of your niches you can just use your niche lensography - how simple??

I have a lot of lensographies which is why I've just published my Lensography of Lensographies and it's a great way to see the different ways in which I've approached making my lensographies. If you want to look at my feelings behind lensographies and why I believe that lensographies are such a good idea then you really should check out Why Should You Have a Lensography?

So how many lensographies do you have?