So, like many others, I have read with some dubiousness about the exploits of others using Squidoo lenses to great affect for building up their links and increasing traffic to their various freelance writing projects or just to their own writing in general.
Now, I have no doubt that someone who is dedicated to building up a portfolio of several dozen lenses, linking them from all of the back corners of the Internet, and generally telemarketing the web, can build up a significant enough of a presence on Squidoo to both be “featured” and have sycophants willing to re-link and re-promote said lenses and/or their targets to make Squidoo lenses very good traffic building tools.
I, like most other successful professional writers, am busy doing other things and will not be dedicating myself to becoming a Squidoo Guru or Squidoo Master or whatever it is that they are calling themselves these days. That being said, can an ordinary Squidoo lens thrown together in a matter of 45 or 60 minutes generate any traffic or other benefit at all?
To test, I have created a Squidoo lens that for SEO purposes I have titled, Investing Information Guides. The lens for the most part links to an editing gig I have at Bright Hub where I am the managing editor for the nascent Investing Channel, which for SEO purposes I will not link with those words despite that being the best and most intuitive place to link from, because those would not be good “long tail keywords”.
This link should ensure that next time the search bots come by here that they will at least see the link and head on over to take a look. Then, we see if there is any benefit.
- Do the links from my Squidoo lens show up as inbound links?
- Is there any increase in traffic?
- Does Google Analytics show any additional Direct traffic from the Squidoo.com domain name?
We’ll see how it goes.
(Wow. Microsoft Office Clip Organizer came up with 21 clip-art or photos for squid. Impressive.)
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