Squidoo tips

[Katinka Hesselink / Spirituality]

Hi all,

Just thought I'd share some of my squidoo tips lenses. First off - my lens with Editing suggestions for your lenses - to give your lens a lensrank .... Just a reminder we all need occasionally I think.

Second: the google blog search module is one that I've put in my lens template (one of the giant squid perks). That's how consistently I use it. Adds some of your most important keywords to your lens and some always changing text, which should help your lens stay fresh for google (no guarantees though).

Third: are there any squidoo newby's around? I made a squidcast tutorial. With some all time annoyances in there as well.

Last, but not least - I have gathered together all I know about lensrank into one lens. So check it out if you have any questions about lensrank.

[John Dilbeck]

Good morning, Katinka.

Those are excellent lenses.

I just posted a rather long comment on your Squidcast Tutorial lens. With the change that Squidoo made to the RSS feed for each lens, I've been thinking of Squidcasts as a simple blog. I'm not sure when they made the change, but, now, the RSS feed shows the latest Squidcasts.

I haven't looked at a lens without a Squidcast, so I don't know what the default RSS feed would show, but with this development, I think it is even more important to post at least one Squidcast for each lens.

Another interesting idea would be to syndicate the RSS feed (Squidcasts) from one lens onto another lens using the RSS feed module. It would make an easy way to cross-promote related lenses.

I haven't done this yet, but it's on my to-do list.

Regarding the blog search module, I don't know if it will add any value as far as Google is concerned. I haven't looked, but I suspect that it is handled by javascript. If so, it's invisible to the Google spider.

Hang on a moment...

Nope, it's not shown on the lens using javascript. Each item returned by the blog search is a data item with real text, so it should be seen by the spider. The links are nofollow, but that doesn't matter for what you want from the module.

Perhaps it does help the lenses look fresher, but I suspect the spider pays more attention to the time when the lens was last updated (published). Of course, I'm just guessing here, and I've been known to be wrong before. (grin)

Great lenses. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Act on your dream!

JD

[Katinka Hesselink / Spirituality]

I don't think so somehow. Why would google care more about the latest published date then about the latest change?

As for RSS: there are so many RSS feeds to promote, I personally don't bother with the individual lens feeds. I do use my squidcast feed (of all my squidcasts) on one of my lensographies. I also use my feed of all lenses (thanks to squidutils) to promote my lenses online on zimbio for instance. I think that's enough promotion. More would be overdoing it & spamming in my book.

[John Dilbeck]

That's a new one for me. Where do you find your feed of all your Squidcasts?

I have plans for some lenses where I'll be setting up a mailing list on the topic and I'll be using AWeber to broadcast that lens' Squidcasts as updates to the list. I know that would not be useful for all lenses, but I think it will make sense for the ones I'm planning.

You may be right about the dates. I don't know. I was just thinking out loud. Possibly, this is a bad habit.

[Katinka Hesselink / Spirituality]

Just on squidutils. See: http://squidutils.com/export.php for a list of all feeds you can create.

Not a bad habit - I think the community can definitely learn from this.

[John Dilbeck]

I hadn't seen that RSS feed for my Squidcasts, before. That's very cool. It may have some real possibilities for what I'm wanting to do.

The RSS feed from my favorited lenses and lensmasters is equally interesting.

Thefluffanutta's been busy!

Thanks for the link.

[Katinka Hesselink / Spirituality]

You're welcome. Those options have been there for ages :)