Lens Critiques & Chocolate!

Well it appears that a lot of you are brave enough to have your lenses publically analyzed which is fantastic, but when the first email appeared in the box and included the words chocolate and cupcake in a single line I'm afraid I momentarily forgot I was supposed to be analyzing it - I was suddenly very hungry!!

Chocolate Cupcake Postcard by jamieanne
More Cupcake Postcards

MamasCritics is a lensmaster that I haven't come across before and she wanted me to look at her lens - How to Make a Giant Chocolate Cupcake.

The first thing I did was to simply google - how to make a giant chocolate cupcake - and this lens came in at number 1 which was fantastic, unfortunately there are no monthly searches for this phrase according to the Google Keyword tool which explains why MamasCritics was only getting 31 visits per week.    

How do I know the number of visits to a lens - well I checked Squidaholic - this is a great site to use not just on your lenses, but on your competition to see how they're achieving a higher ranking than you (you can't see everything though).   What you can see is the traffic of a lens and the backlinks to that lens.   With this lens there are no backlinks either.

What do we do now?   We have to find some better keyword phrases that will apply to this lens for starters so I looked at - how to make a giant cupcake - this phrase is searched for 1,000 times each month, but unfortunately this lens isn't listed on the first 5 pages for the term.

Giant Chocolate Cupcake is a phrase that has 260 monthly searches PLUS MamasCritics ranks at number 7 for this keyword.   This is obviously a good place to start.

This is what MamasCritic's lens looks like in Google -

How to Make a Giant Chocolate Cupcake

eview by Darren Slatten - Jan 1, 2010 - Price range: $999.99

 ... I made this Giant Chocolate Cupcake for a church get-together, it was a hit. I took pictures as I put it all together, it was so simple! I thought I ...
www.squidoo.com/how-to-make-a-giant-chocolate-cupcake - Cached - Similar

It's the reason why she ranks well for Giant Chocolate Cupcake, because she's one of only 2 on the front page that actually has the words together.    Remember my last post we discussed using the Google SERP tool?   That's what you're seeing above.

In that same post we discussed checking what Google thought your lens was about and using that tool we find that Google already thinks that MamasCritics lens is about these keywords -

how to make a giant cupcake - 1,000 monthly searches

giant cupcake recipes - 720 monthly searches

giant cupcake decorating ideas - 1,600 monthly searches

giant cupcake cake - 4,400 monthly searches

giant cupcake - 33,100

I think we should work on the keyphrase 'how to make a giant cupcake' the reason being that is already in the title and I've looked at the top ten results for this and stringing the words together in the first two sentances has NOT been done in the results, the closest has been how to make a polka dot giant cupcake and how to make a giant 3d layered cupdake.  

The first step is to change the introduction for example - I am often asked how to make a giant chocolate cupcake because my recipe is always a hit.   My giant cupcake recipe is very simple to make, let me show you how.   This is what it will look like-

How to Make a Giant Chocolate Cupcake

 ... I am often asked how to make a giant chocolate cupcake because my recipe is always a hit. My giant cupcake recipe is very simple to make, let me show ...
www.squidoo.com/how-to-make-a-giant-chocolate-cupcake - Cached - Similar

It includes the keyphrase how to make a giant cupcake as well as giant cupcake recipe which is another keyword phrase that has been identified on this lens already. 

I would continue on about the 10 easy steps and when you endorse Betty Crocker (if you're an Amazon Associate) I would make her name a link to her products on Amazon.

Before leaving the introduction we need to do something about the introduction title - at the moment it reads

 In 10 Simple Steps – this doesn’t mention any potential keywords so we need to beef it up.

The Easy 10 Step Way to the Perfect Giant Chocolate Cupcake is an example or Make a Mouthwatering Chocolate Giant Cupcake in 10 Easy Steps.

We really need to look at your titles and make sure that they add keywords because the best recipe in the world won't be found unless it appears in Google and keywords are crucial to Google finding it.

What You Will Need could be changed to Ingredients for a Giant Chocolate Cupcake.

Now Let's Put It Together etc could be changed to How to Make A Giant Chocolate Cupcake in 10 Steps with the sub title Giant Chocolate Cupcake Recipe.

Another thing you could do is after the cake is assembled and you say now for the icing you could start a new module and have a title or subtitle whichever looks better as it's part way through your 10 steps with the words Decorating Your Giant Chocolate Cupcake.

As well as this lens I see you enjoy cooking so I would consider settng up a food lensography which would link not just to your recipe lenses, but also to your blog recipes.   You can then add the lensography to the bottom of all of your food recipes with customized headings such as Because You Can't Survive on Giant Chocolate Cupcakes Alone! 

Hopefully those tips will help, but getting backlinks will also help as they're like signposts to content.

For other people hoping to get tips from this you're at an advantage because you can look at what keywords are bringing traffic to your lens already and see where you're rating for these.   Once you've found these you need to Google them to see what position you hold.    Next you should compare with others that are above you and ask yourself which link would you click on if you were making this search?

 

 

What Do Google and People Think Your Lens is About?

Now you've written a great lens about thingamejigs and it has everything you could ask for of a webpage, but no visitors. What can you do now? Well first up you need to check what Google thinks it's about because if Google doesn't index it for thingamejigs then it won't show up in searches.

Let me introduce you to the Google Keyword Tool - now you've probably already seen this, but did you know that you can leave the keyword area blank and enter your url? I didn't until I read Thriving Mom's blog post about it. It can be quite interesting to see what Google thinks you've written about and it can help you keep focused and to the point.

Once Google and you are on the right page and you've managed to rank on page one in the Google results are you still not getting traffic? This was the case for me on one of my lenses - I was ranked well, but people weren't clicking on my lens for some reason.

The reason was my introduction - I thought my introduction was very clever with a play on words that worked really well when read completely. Other people had commented to me about this too and I loved it. Enter the Google SERP Snippet Oprimization Tool, by entering your lens details in here it will actually show you what people see of your lens when they find it listed in Google. Your introduction that looks great as a whole doesn't always look great as a snippet!

This is a fantastic tool and I'm planning on going through all of my lenses and hubs and checking them out with it - I've already started to sort through some of them - the words 'what was I thinking' has come to my mind a few times!!!

Now who among you is brave enough?

With such an enticing heading, what am I going to ask you to do?   I have helped (I think anyway!) a number of people over the last couple of years that I have been on Squidoo and I thought I'd put something out there on this blog.   If you're brave enough to have your lens dissected on this blog then email me through my Lensmaster page.   

I'll post the lens on this blog for people to see and then I'll critique it for you and we'll see how it goes.   Now I'm not sure how many people will be brave enough to do this publically so I can't promise I'll get back to everyone, but I'm looking at starting this in next week's blog if you're up to it.   Think of it this way - it will be another backlink!