My tenth lens, Greekgeek’s Squidoo Tips: How to Get Your Lens Found was created June 5, 2007. It remains my most popular lens, and has been updated and improved many times as I refined my Squidoo techniques.

What This Lens is About

Ten steps for writing a successful lens that will attract readers. This lens also has Squidoo Performance Polls inviting experienced Squids to share their best lensrank and typical traffic. If you haven’t voted, click da linkie!

Excerpt

The introduction is like a television episode teaser. You’ve got to “hook” your audience; don’t waste time on anything that doesn’t achieve that goal! At the same time, use text that contains keywords/search terms for Google. For example, I packed several keywords into the first sentence of my introduction module, and told people what they’ll get out of visiting the lens:

So, you want to learn how to build appealing Squidoo lenses (or any kind of webpage), attract web traffic, and get your Squidoo lens found by Google! This three-part tutorial covers…

Why I Made This Lens

I was brash and stupid. Doesn’t EVERYBODY make an expert lens on “How to Squidoo” while basking in the glow of early, lucky successes?

No, seriously, I was doing a lot of research on how to get traffic to web pages, and was having good luck doing it, so I decided to share what I’d found. (I did have previous experience from my own website).

Things I Learned Making This Lens

“Ten Steps to do X” webpages are very popular.
Squidoo members flock to lenses sharing tips on How to Squidoo, provided you give them specific, useful, unique guidelines they can immediately put into practice.
How to use/credit Creative Commons images.
“Ten Steps” isn’t enough. As time went on, I broke this lens into three: the first on how to write an appealing, effective lens that attracts readers, the second lens on bookmarks and social networking, and the third lens on SEO — search engine optimization — which I consider the best lens of the series.

Things I DIDN’T Learn Making This Lens

Yet another lens that could have been better-titled to capture searches. “Squidtips” doesn’t get searched often. Nonetheless, this lens is at the top of Google for “Squidoo Tips”!

Lens Stats and Milestones

Purple Star, 225 days on the Top 100 list so far, and it’s often #1 in the SEO category on Squidoo.

As of today: Lensrank #108, 856 ratings 956 favorites, 20913 lifetime visitors.
Best lensrank achieved: #8. Lifetime earnings: $259.80

Link:

Greekgeek’s Squidoo Tips: How to Get Your Lens Found

My ninth lens, Jackie Robinson: American Hero is one of my best lenses, with great videos and pictures and a story to tell. Plus it earns mon

I created it on 05/25/2007, a month after Jackie Robinson Day (Apr 15).

Photo Credit: Allan Grant
Buy at AllPosters.com

What This Lens is About

The story of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier, and what he endured behind the scenes to help the cause of civil rights.

Excerpt

If a player punched him or spiked him with cleats, or pitched a baseball at his head that might kill him, he couldn’t respond. If an ump made an unfair call, he couldn’t respond. If hotels refused to house him with his team, if teams protested his presence on the field or cancelled games to avoid him, he couldn’t respond. If the papers vilified him, he couldn’t respond. If spectators cursed him or ordered him to shine their shoes or threw black cats onto the field, he couldn’t respond. If he got death threats pinned inside his locker, or if his wife was harassed in the stands, he couldn’t respond.

All those things happened…

Why I Made This Lens

I wanted to teach more people about a personal hero of mine, and get across what “breaking the color barrier” really meant. I wanted to create a charity lens to support the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which provides scholarships and training.

I also wanted to find and share some video of Jackie playing baseball, because he was amazing to watch!

Things I Learned Making This Lens

In doing research for this lens, I learned more about Jackie Robinson– including the fact that he starred in a full-length autobiographical film, which is now archived online!

I also learned that two legal sources of good photographs are The Library of Congress (only some photos may be used…check rights and permissions) and AllPosters.com.

Things I DIDN’T Learn Making This Lens

If there’s a lot of webpages already on your topic (especially famous people), it’s really hard to optimize or get your webpage to the front of Google search engine results. It would take a ton of linkbuilding. It probably isn’t possible, because the best pages out there already have thousands of links to them. The only thing you can do is target “long tail” searches.

Lens Stats and Milestones

Lens of the Day: April 15, 2009

As of today: Lensrank #43,829, 159 ratings 60 favorites, 4135 lifetime visitors.
Best lensrank achieved: #6. Lifetime earnings: $33.66

Link:

Jackie Robinson: The Story of an American Hero