Seo Friendly Images on Squidoo

The latest update from Squidoo headquarters is something that I have been secretly wishing for since quite some time.

Update 1 - Add Labels to Images
Squidoo now allows you to add labels to images which would function as the alt tags. This means that you have one more powerful location to insert your keyword. But remember to use this sensibly and don't stuff keywords.Uploading images to image hosting sites and then linking to them was a real pain. On the other hand if you were uploading pictures in a text module or polaroid module, you weren't able to add "alt" tags. Alt tags are considered important by the search engines as the spiders can't decipher images and rely on the Alt tags to determine relevance.This new update makes this process extremely simple and very SEO friendly.

Update 2 - Add URL Links to Images
This is also a powerful tool that you can use to your benefit. You can use images to link to your affiliate products. You can use them to link to other modules in your lenses. Alternatively you can use them to link to your website or blog. You could have done all of this earlier by using the relevant html tags but this is now made very simple after this Squidoo update. You can now have links even in your Polaroid module which wasn't possible earlier.

To sum up - these are extremely useful updates and are going to be a great help in your On-page SEO efforts.

Have You Seen the New Holiday Themes on Squidoo

Squidoo has introduced two brand new themes for the Holiday Season. Take one look at them and you will realise that they are awesome. Check them out here.

The Christmas Theme

The Winter Holiday Theme 

Happy Holiday Lensmaking!

How to Legally Steal Traffic on Squidoo

Yes. Steal traffic legally.

This is a follow up to one of my previous posts about the new Squidoo Greetbox Feature. If you haven’t heard about this yet – then read this first – Should you play the discovery game?

As I had mentioned I turned on the discovery tab on all my lenses. A couple of my lenses have benefited tremendously from this tool.

One of my lenses is a mini lensography – Halwa Recipes. More than 50% of the traffic on this lens comes from the Discovery tool. You would have noticed that Squidoo has started sharing this info as a part of the Lens Stats. While getting traffic from one of your lenses is fine – the fun begins when you begin to get traffic from a competitive lens.

On another of my lenses – I again happen to receive more than 50% of my totally traffic from the Discovery Feature and this traffic is coming to me from a competing lens which is fabulous lens in itself. (I don’t want to name these lenses here – lest I lose this traffic stream..lol). The Competing Lens is ranking on Page 1 of Google for a very competitive keyword for which I haven’t yet been able to rank.

But I am receiving at least some of the benefits from the SEO work done by my friend with the competing lens, while I enjoy some free traffic, just for turning to discovery tab on.

But of course, this is a double edged sword and I could be losing some traffic from my lenses as well. It would be interesting if Squidoo would also show us the stats where my lenses have referred traffic to other lenses via the discovery tool. While some amount of traffic shift shouldn’t be an issue, if there is a significant traffic diversion, this would signal a need for some urgent sprucing up of the lens.

So now you know how to legally steal traffic on Squidoo – but just be careful, you might be losing some too.

10 Ideas to Create Backlinks for your Squidoo Lenses

One of the primary tasks for any lensmaster is to create backlinks for their Squidoo Lenses. They should be dofollow links and preferably with the primary keywords in the anchor text. Let's discuss 10 ideast to generate backlinks for your lenses.

1. Squid U Forum: This is perhaps the simplest options. Head over to http://www.squidu.com  and leave  a post in the Critique me section. You will not only get a backlink but also some useful advice on your lens from helpful lensmasters.
   
2. Lens Directory Submission: Submit your Lens to Lens directories. Couple of popular ones that I have used are IsleofSquid and Squidig. The links are dofollow and you can control the anchor text as well. A quick way to add some links.
   
3. Blog Commenting: Comment on a related blog. This may be a no-follow link – but it can get you traffic – if the blog on which you are commenting has a good traffic. It's generally preferable if you are among the first few commenters. The links in these comments have a better chance of being clicked upon.
   
4. Squidoo Groups: Join a related group on Squidoo. This is a simple but very powerful tool.Some Group pages have very good PR and a link from such pages will be very valuable in terms of link juice.
   
5. Squidoo Lens Comments: Submit a genuine comment on a related lens and if you feel that your lens can be a value add to the other lens – leave a link. Use this very scarcely and sensibly though.
6. Blog about your Lens: Write a blog post on your own blog (if you don’t have one – get started today).They will not only help you index your lenses faster but will also help you build good backlinks.
   
7. Niche Forums: Join a forum related to your niche and have the link in your forum signature. You can have links in your Squidu Forum signature as well.
   
8. Social Bookmarking: This one is probably a no-brainer. You can join the popular social bookmarking sites and add a link to your lens(Digg, Reddit, Stumpleupon). Be careful though and do some research on the bookmarking strategies for these sites. For Stumbleupon, especially you need ot be careful to not stumble only your squidoo lenses. You have to providing value so you need to be stumbling a variety of websites with one or two squidoo lenses in between. 1 Squidoo lens in 10 other websites will be a safe area. However there is a new kid on the block- Redgage – Not only can you post your lenses there, but you can also make from money from just posting links. Very interesting.
   
9. Other Web 2.0 sites: Join Hubpages and create a hub on a related topic and create links to your Squidoo page.  (hint – you can make money here as well). This is quite similar to lensmaking but has its own peculiarities.
   
10. Give me your ideas: I would love to have some comments here.