Squidoo is a hidden gem in the social tool world. Squidoo has been around as long as some of the biggest social networks on the planet, yet is often overlooked by website designers, business owners, and marketers. It’s not overlooked because it doesn’t work, it’s overlooked because it isn’t as flashy as some of the other social networks that we have all come to know and love. The other reason why many people don’t know about Squidoo is because the “conversation” aspect to Squidoo lenses never really took off.

At this point, you’re probably thinking “why the heck are you telling me about an online tool that nobody cares about”? Just because people aren’t talking about it, doesn’t mean that there isn’t any value in using it. In fact, Squidoo offers website developers a tremendous tool to help increase website traffic for your website or your client’s websites. In this article I am going to explain what Squidoo is, the history of Squidoo, who should use Squidoo, the benefits of using Squidoo, how to create a Squidoo Lens for your website, and provide you with some tips for using Squidoo. After reading this article you will be well prepared to create your very own Squidoo Lens for your website.

What is Squidoo?

Squidoo is a free online tool that anyone can use to create their very own “Lens”. What’s a Lens? A Squidoo Lens is a web page. It’s a “lens” into a topic. The idea behind Squidoo is that everyone on the planet is an expert in something, and some people are experts in many things. Squidoo was created to allow these “experts” to create lenses into topics for which they are experts in. Squidoo provides everyone with the ability to create a free web page that they can use to discuss any topic that they want to. Squidoo lenses are all hosted on Squidoo.com and are complete free to use. Squidoo lenses can even generate income for you through ads. You can choose to keep that money or donate it to your favorite charity. All of this is free and open to anyone who wants to build a Squidoo lens.

History of Squidoo

Anyone who follows my work knows that I started teaching myself about Marketing about 15 years ago. That journey started, and continues with, reading everything published by the man I call “the leading Marketing thinker of our time”, Seth Godin. Seth Godin is a Marketing genius and back in 2005, along with a team of brilliant young minds like Megan Casey, Heath Row, Corey Brown, and Gil Hildebrand, Jr., they created Squidoo.com. Six months after launching Squidoo over 100,000 lenses had already been created… Pretty powerful stuff for a social tool that you’ve probably never heard of until now. So, the question now becomes, can YOU leverage Squidoo to benefit your website or your client’s websites?

Who Should Use Squidoo?

Everyone who has something to say about a topic in which they are passionate about, or that they know a lot about, should create a Squidoo lens. Squidoo is about providing the global community with a free tool whereby they can all contribute to the dissemination of information to others who are interested in the given topic. Here are a few examples of people and businesses who should create Squidoo Lenses:

• Website Designers & Website Developers
• Marketers looking to build awareness for their business or a client’s business
• Auto Dealers looking to showcase their inventory
• Sports Teams
• Moms who have a skill that they want to share with the world
• Students looking for an interesting project idea
• Homeowners looking to rent or sell a home

I could go on almost forever with this list. As stated above, almost anyone who is an expert or highly knowledgeable on a certain topic can leverage Squidoo by creating a Squidoo Lens on the topic for which they are an expert.

Benefits of Using Squidoo for Increasing Website Traffic

Squidoo is a great that doesn’t get used as much as it should. That means there is a lot of opportunity for the people who do use Squidoo to create valuable lenses that haven’t been created by someone else. Website designers and website developers can create lenses that showcase their skils, provide examples of their work, and drive traffic back to your website. Here are a few more benefits of using Squidoo:

• It’s a free tool
• Dramatically increase the amount of traffic to your website.
• SEO is built in and is very easy to update for your lens. This built-in SEO is one of the biggest reasons why you see Squidoo lenses near the top of search engine search results. Use this Lens as a funnel since it’s going to be near the top of search results. Once people land on your Lens be sure to link your website to various places throughout the Lens so that visitors of your Lens become visitors of your website.
• You can make money through affiliate links and banner ads on Squidoo
• You can donate any money you make from your lens to a charity of your choice
• Use Squidoo as a funnel for driving quality traffic to your website
• Building lenses is extremely easy as everything is template for you. All that you have to do is drop in the content.
• Building a Lens can be very quick. You can have a quality Squidoo Lens up in one to two hours.

Squidoo really is a great online tool. Website Designers and Website Developers can really benefit from building Squidoo lenses. I definitely recommend that if you don’t have one already, to create a Squidoo account today.

How to Create a Squidoo Account

Creating a Squidoo account is very straightforward. Navigate to Squidoo.com and click the “Join for free!” button. You can then either sign-up by using your Facebook account or simply enter your:

• Email Address
• Username
• Password
• Click the “Sign Up!” button when you’re finished

It’s really that simple. It literally takes less than a minute to create a Squidoo account. Once you’ve completed these easy steps it’s time to build your first Squidoo Lens.

How to Create a Squidoo Lens

As I mentioned above, creating a quality Squidoo Lens can be done in just a few hours. Think about that for a second. Even with website development software like WordPress or Joomla, creating a website or in this case web page takes much longer than 1-2 hous. If you’re ready, let’s go ahead and build a Squidoo Lens together. We’ll build a Lens around the topic of Website Design & Development. Follow the steps below and you’ll have your own Squidoo Lens up and running in no time!

1. Determine the topic for your Lens – Let’s go with a topic of “Making Your Website Tablet Ready”

   

2. Title Your Page – Create a Title for your Lens, setup your URL, and fill out the topic and sub-topics for your Lens. This all plays into the SEO for your Lens and helps people find your Lens when searching both through Google (and other search engines) and searching through Squidoo.com.

   

3. Tag Your Page – Create 3 main tags for your Lens so that people can find it when searching. This is part of the built-in SEO.

   

4. Configure the “Earn Money” Settings – As I mentioned above, you can make money through ads and affiliate links on your lens. You can either turn this on or off. If you want to make money with your Lens you then must decide if you want to keep your earnings or donate it to charity.

   

5. Start building your Squidoo Lens. Add modules (building blocks) to your Lens. There are modules for everything you can think of. A few examples are:

   

   • Text box – Add copy, images, and hyperlinks to create the main text areas of your Lens. This module is great for providing copy/information about your topic to your Lens readers.
   • Flickr Photos – Add pictures to your lens by integrating your Flickr account into your Squidoo Lens.
   • Link List – Add a list of links to other supporting website that your readers might be interested in.
   • Google News – Feed Google News stories into your Lens to keep your content fresh.
   • RSS Feed – Add your blog feed to your lens
   • Amazon – You can sell products on Amazon from your Squidoo lens to help generate more revenue.
   • YouTube – Add YouTube videos to your lens with the YouTube module.
6. Add Tags – Squidoo allows you to add even more “tags” to our lens. Again, think of tags as keywords which will help the right people find your lens. Add as many tags as you think makes sense.

   

7. Preview Your Lens – Once you’ve added all of the modules that you want to your Lens and you’ve added all of the content you need to add to each module, it’s time to Preview your Lens to make sure you didn’t make any mistakes. Correct any mistakes you may have found and…

   

8. Publish Your Lens – It’s that simple. Once you have completed your QA, simply go ahead and Publish your Squidoo Lens for the world to see.

Eight steps. That’s all it takes from start to finish when it comes to creating your very own Squidoo Lens.

Tips for Using Squidoo to Increase Website Traffic

Now that you know HOW to create a Squidoo Lens, and you understand the benefits of creating a Squidoo Lens, let’s go over a few final tips so that you can make sure you create the highest quality Lens possible. Follow the tips below and I will guarantee that you create a great lens for your website:

• Have a plan. No matter what you’re doing, I always recommend starting with a plan. Think through what you’re trying to accomplish with this Lens before you start building it. What are your goals for the Lens?
• Add links to your website to as many modules as possible. Lenses can act as landing pages for your website. Because of the built in SEO, Lenses will oftentimes outrank your website and even your biggest competitors website. Use this to your advantage by turning your Lens into a lead generation tool. Linking your website to your Lens will move traffic from search engines to your Lens and then ultimately to your website.
• Add as many relevant “tags” as possible so that your Lens ranks for all possible search terms related to your Lens topic.
• Pick a topic that is relevant, that people want to learn about, and that compliments the website that you’re trying to drive traffic to from your Lens.
• Share your Lens on all of your social media channels.
• Visit other Lenses geared towards the same topic. Leave comments on those Lenses with links back to your Lens.

By following these tips you’ll be able to create a Squidoo Lens that can truly generate more traffic to your website. Squidoo Lenses are great tools for Website Designers and Website Developers when they are leveraged properly.

Will You Use Squidoo?

Now that you know what Squidoo is, what the benefits are and how to create a Squidoo lens the question becomes, will you use Squidoo as a tool for funneling quality traffic to your website? Perhaps you have already created one or more Squidoo lenses. What has your experience been? We hope you will all share your thoughts with us and our readers by leaving a comment below. Remember, get out there and start creating your next great Squidoo Lens today. I promise that you will be very happy with the results.