DO YOU SQUIDOO?
Well, it was bound to happen, wasn't it?
Any of you who have spoken to me personally over the last year – about ways to increase your online exposure – have heard the advocation of building a lens on Squidoo.
“get in now and get the advantage, because – for some reason – the search engines love it!”
That is what I said and that is what I meant.
If you listened and built a lens in the last year, you probably saw 1st page (maybe even first place) organic listings on Google for your lens. I did on one of my own, but as of now it is no longer up that high.
Like all good things, eventually the search engines fall out of love and rankings start to slip. Or they change their algorithm and the thing that made magic is gone.
Today is that day…or so it seems.
I was reading my Twitter comments and saw this post by Ed Dale about his blog post on the subject. People are noting that their squidoo ranked sites are slipping out of favor on Google.
We all knew it had to happen sooner or later…but I still think it is a worthy tool.
After all, even the overpopulation of MySpace hasn't rendered it useless. It just changed the game, a bit.
Think of it this way, the more places you have fresh content – of interest to your audience – the more likely people are going to get ‘repeat exposure' to your ideas, services, and products.
And that is a good thing.
So I still suggest you Squidoo. Now is a good time, with all the publicity around the slap.
People who have not visited before will be exploring it, to see what they have been missing.
They may just come across your lens as they search their favorite subjects on Squidoo…
Do You Squidoo? If so, share your lens here:
Thanks for referencing my post within yours!
Enjoyed reading what you had to say – sounds like we both agree Squidoo is worth continuing to use.
I think we have been hit hard at the moment, but long term, things will balance out.
Dan
[…] with all good things, they must come to an end as suggested by this blog. “Like all good things, eventually the search engines fall out of love and rankings start to […]
I can’t believe anyone is thinking of stopping using squidoo.
one thing I have noticed over my time on the net is that people panic way to easily, they hear some emotive term like “squidoo slap” and they think the sky is falling.
The same rules still apply, backlinks make the net go round and squidoo is no different.
Make a good lense and build backlinks and all will be well in the world.
Paul forcey
I had the opportunity to interview Seth Godin on the “Squidoo Slap”
the full Squidoo interview is available here:
http://www.searchingdot.com/2007/07/17/interview-with-seth-godin-on-the-squidoo-slap/
As I understand it, a good lense is basically supposed to be a fast and rough information page…sort of like a good article with nifty perks. I see many, many lenses though, that are just a collection of junk generally about a topic, but with no real information.
I think this is why they’re falling out of favor. The quality of content is generally low. I’m afraid something similar is on the way with HubPages as people are looking up things like holiday makeup, and getting a five page sermon on something irrelevant.
The way out of this problem is for articles to have to pass review in order to go live. It means more work, and maybe enlisting some moderators, but it would work. They’d become a credible source of information.
Another solution would be suggested wikis, where members who notice a lense is low on relevancy could make recommendations that the lense owner could approve or veto.