Squidoo - Easy Online Marketing

[BearWise Landscapers]

I’m curious if any of you have heard about or used Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com)?

I have heard a lot about it from some friends and just got on the other day to make a few pages (called lens) to help generate traffic to our business website. It is a free service and you can set up a page about your business that will show up in search engines and help your business website.

Here is a description of Squidoo from their website (http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo):

Squidoo is a website hosting hundreds of thousands of handbuilt webpages. It is the popular publishing platform and community that makes it easy for you to create "lenses" online. Lenses are pages, kind of like flyers or signposts or overview articles, that gather everything you know about your topic of interest--and snap it all into focus. Like the lens of a camera, your perspective on something. It's a supersimple, fun and powerful way to share your interests, build your online identity and credibility, and connect with new readers and friends.

Not sure what you can make a lens about? You could make an About Me lens (well, about you). Or a review lens. Or a lens about your blog, to help point traffic to it. Or a lens about your art. Or your eBay or Etsy or Zazzle or CafePress shop. Or about your hobby. Or your dogs. Or your hometown. Or your favorite books or movies or video games.

Facts about Squidoo

1. Squidoo has well over 1,400,000 hand built lenses. That's more than a million pages created by real, remarkable people.

2. Squidoo has been reviewed by the New York Times, Mashable, BoingBoing and sites and papers around the world. But the reviews we're most proud of: those from our lensmasters, who talk about Squidoo and their lenses on their blogs.

3. We call our pages "lenses" because each is one person's focus on something that she's interested in, something that matters to her.

4. As of December 2009 we are one of the 100 most popular websites in the US.

5. Squidoo grew 91% in 2008.

6. As of Dec 2009: About 800,000 people visit Squidoo (that means your lenses) every day. The more traffic one lens brings in, the greater the chances that visitor will see your lens as well. That means it's good for you when your competition on Squidoo succeeds.

7. Squidoo is free to use.

[BearWise Landscapers]

Here are the Squidoo Lenses that I made the other day:


Lens about Equipment Floater Insurance for Landscapers (http://www.squidoo.com/equipmentfloaterinsurance)

Lens about Florida Workers Compensation Insurance for Landscapers (http://www.squidoo.com/workerscompensationinsurance)


I don't really know that much about it and simply copied text from our business website to make them. I imagine it would be helpful to make one about your landscaping business and include links on there to your business website. If you make a lens or already have one, include a link to it in this forum. (That should also help with it and your business website ranking higher in Google and other search engines).

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

Thanks

[Turf Troll]

Hey Drew,

Squidoo isn't bad, you can use http://hubpages.com also, there are many social networking sites you can use for these purposes.

Besides sending links to your site to advance it in the search engines you can get the hubpage or squidoo lens to be on the first page of the search engines - it is all a matter of the links you get pointing to your site or to the squidoo lens.

Speaking of the anchor text links,

http://www.squidoo.com/equipmentfloaterinsurance
the link "I am an insurance agent"
probably isn't the best use of a link pointing to your site.

I copied the information for one of the insurance agents in orlando that was near the top of Google search page for "insurance orlando"

if you look at the title and keyword phrases you see they use -jacksonville insurance and orlando insurance - because they want to be found when someone searches using those terms.

<title>Jacksonville Insurance and Orlando Insurance</title>

<meta name="description" content="Brightway Insurance offers a full line of Orlando and Jacksonville insurance products at competitive value, delivered with a personal touch." />

<meta name="keywords" content="jacksonville insurance, orlando insurance , tampa insurance, tallahassee insurance, florida insurance" />
<

That is what would give you the most benefit on the squidoo or hubpage links or any links that point to your site.

You can find the same info by going to a website, hold your cursor over the page and right click, the code comes up for you to see.

If you have any questions send me a pm

[BearWise Landscapers]

Turf Troll,

Thanks for the advice. I'll check out hubpages too. If you think of anything else, please let me know. I'm just playing around with Squidoo and this whole search engine thing. I still have a lot to learn. Any suggestions are appreciated.

Thank you!

[BearWise Landscapers]

I have been working on a couple of new squidoo pages. I made this one a few days ago and want you to check it out:

Insurance for Lawn Care Businesses (http://www.squidoo.com/lawncareinsurance)

If you like it, please sign the guestbook at the bottom. I had somebody comment on it earlier today.

Thanks!

[Turf Troll]

What do you think about putting a phone number that someone could call if they might want to get some Florida landscape biz insurance.