Hello again, my beautiful web surfers!

The SEO world is going nuts right now. You have all of your different “hats” freaking out and biting their nails. Oh dear! So, sometime this month, the Penguin 2.0 is expected to be released. Webmasters from all sorts of backgrounds are wondering what kind of hell this update is going to be released. Yes, it’s true that Google rolls with the “shoot first, aim later” mentality, and unfortunately, since Google commands such a large percentage of web traffic, they can do whatever the **** they want. Anyone who has been hit by any of these latest updates – try not to take it personally.

What Was Said

Joe shloe who works for the Google spam team released a video a day or two ago. He alluded to what the update was going to accomplish, but as always, what he says is very vague. I thought it was quite funny that he specifically said people who hang out in the black hat forums were going to have a busy summer. Who knows what the hell that means? Who cares, really? I don’t hang out over there – lol. Everyone is speculating as to what “tactic” is going to get hit. This is the nature of the whole SEO thing – at least the way most marketers do it anyway.

What Really Matters

Maybe this will help to make some of you feel better. Understand that what is happening will always be happening. As long as Google is a machine, someone will always find a way to exploit its weakness. I hate when people say “oh, you’re gaming the system!” With the way the current Google environment is, there is really no other way than “what works now.” Honestly, who cares long-term? If you know what you’re doing, you can make enough money and get out very quickly. Fortunately, the Internet is still young enough and people are still naive enough for it to work like that. What I’m trying to say is that all Google can do is try to get smarter. People like Joe Shloe can ramble on all day and try to scare people into “doing it their way”, but at the end of the day, that’s all they can do. There will always be a way, and it’s up to you to find it.

The most-important piece of advice I can give you is to stray far away from the mainstream. You need to find out what works, and do it differently than everyone else. That is the only way that Google can potentially bring down your business. Google extracts data, and they create algorithms based on that data, and it’s a continual process. However, understand that Google will create algorithms for what the mainstream or “herd” is doing. If you’re doing everything exactly like this group, guess what – you’re going to go down with the Titanic.

If you’re brand new, you need to find a mentor – someone who can give you information about what has happened, what is happening now and what’s likely to happen in the future, and I say that in terms of what’s working with SEO. If you’ve been doing this for many years, you should be able to see the big picture. If you can see the big picture, it’s as easy as picking something that works and adapting that method to your own unique specifications. If the world doesn’t end, you should probably have at least a few more years to make some life-changing cash. At the end of the day, that’s all were here to do – create a successful online business and get out.

I have one last piece of advice for you. Understand that whatever ANYONE else says, don’t just take their word for it. For example, if someone says XYZ method doesn’t work anymore and you think it does, try it for yourself. To be successful, you need to DO YOU, and you need to block out the noise, especially the noise from Google. Much like Lucifer, Google’s greatest weapon right now is fear and deception. Expect anyone who works for Google to act like they’ve got it all figured out. Expect after every major update for the “herd” to freak out and say SEO is dead, and expect them to say XYZ methods don’t work anymore. Ignore all of that and DO YOU. Quitters quit, and winners always find a way. This article is starting to get borderline-self-help status, so I’ll end it here. As for my niche websites venture, expect much more to come on that subject.

Hello, my pretties!

It’s sad that I’ve been talking so much about Squidoo Lately because it’s a website that plays about 0.5 percent of total role in my online business. However, I want to shed some light on the subject to help those who’re still wearing a blindfold. Maybe you know or maybe you don’t. As of late, the people who run Squidoo have been freaking out. What’s happening is their website is being decimated by Google. The website has been slapped – and hard. If you take a peek at Quantcast or SEMRush, you will see that Squidoo’s traffic continues to plummet.

What’s Funny

I find it hilarious that all of the “Squidoo” gang who hang out on the forums are like “oh, gee, all of my lenses have been locked – maybe I just need to work harder!” Please, get a clue. I woke up this morning to an email telling me two of my lenses had been locked. It’s ironic that the only two lenses that were locked were the ones making an decent money on the account. Now, this has absolutely no financial effect on me as I’ve stuck to my methods and moved my system to another website. I’m currently using BlogSpot in place of Squidoo.

How That’s Working For Me

As I mentioned quite awhile back, I jumped ship the second I saw that Squidoo was slapped. Any money that those two lenses were making when they were locked was just bonus money because I’ve moved my system weeks ago. Unfortunately, since I haven’t used blogger in years, I had some problems migrating over there. Due to my lack of knowledge of how blogger works, I had to sacrifice some very important on-page SEO elements. For example, since I’m using the actual “blogger homepage”, ex. Mywebsite.blogspot.com and not an inner page, my title is not properly optimized for the main keyword, and it’s not optimized for any others also, which will greatly reduce long-tail traffic.

I also don’t have my main keyword or any related keywords at all in the URL, which happened because of my lack of knowledge of how blogger works. So those two very important on-page SEO elements are causing the blog to sit at the bottom of the top 10 results for the main keyword, and the fact that these elements are not optimized are greatly reducing the long-tail traffic. I’m actually thinking about scrapping the whole blog and redoing it all since I now understand how to setup a blogger blog correctly. There is also a huge drop in overall page authority since I’m not getting an authority boost like what I had on Squidoo. My system still remains quite profitable.

My Thoughts

Only time will tell if Squidoo will recover or not, but I feel bad for those of you who were making a substantial income from them. All good things must come to an end, right? To those of you who are hanging out in the Squidoo forums acting all happy and “oh my were moving in the right direction now, yippee!” – you really need to learn up on current SEO methods because you’re wasting your time. It’s sad that Squidoo has essentially turned into a Hubpages – in terms of both freaking out and strictness. I think it’s pathetic that Squidoo is actually locking lenses based on backlinks. All the more reason to jump ship and create your own web properties.

If you know how to quickly setup shop on reliable web 2.0s and generate profits with a specific method, go ahead and do that. However, NEVER make the mistake of choosing a third-party platform like Squidoo or Hubpages as your sole income source. Also, if and when Squidoo does recover, understand that eventually, all of the losers who want to spam these platforms will eventually show up again. This is just the way it works with these platforms. Lol, it’s kind of like a N – U – D – E beach; once all of the fat, old ugly guys here about the beach filled with many hot women, they flock to the beach and the women all run away. Google traffic is basically the hot women, and the old, fat men are the lazy marketers who ruin it for everyone else.

This is the nature of all of these free platforms, and as long as there is money to be made, there will always be losers who ruin it for everyone else. I’ll be grabbing the last of my articles that are on Squidoo, placing them into a folder on my computer and moving on, and everyone else should do the same. If you want to use a free platform, choose something like WordPress or Blogger – you’re not going to see them freaking out like all of these other places like Squidoo, Hubpages, Wizzly and X name here. Yeah, you’ll lose some free page authority, but if you know what you’re doing, you can still be quite profitable.

Hello. I want to talk about niche websites. I’m really not going to go into too much detail, and this post should be pretty short. I just want to say that I’ve decided to start a new business venture. I will still maintain all of my current ventures, and I plan to add to them as well, but I want to publicly announce this new business model that I’m pursuing. I want to make it clear that there is nothing new about creating niche websites. People have been doing this for many years, and many people have become very successful with it. You can call them micro niche websites or whatever; let me give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti over at Empire Flippers have a great business model going, and they’re really killing it. Recently, I gave their eBook a read, and while none of the information in the book is anything new to me, I’ve become very interested in trying out this business model. I also like the fact that these guys are really straightforward and transparent with all of their business process; you don’t see a lot of that in the MMO niche. I’m curious as to what they did to get their website to the point where people are instantly buying the niche websites that they put up for sale on their sales page.

The big difference between what my wife and I will be doing and what the guys over at Empire Flippers do is monetization. Obviously, the type of content that you will have on your niche websites is going to be different, depending on how you plan to monetize the websites. Apparently, they monetize all of their websites with Adsense, but in their book, they say they target product and service keywords. I’m not exactly about the specifics of how they’re doing this, but for the most part, I would think content targeting information keywords would be quite different than content targeting product keywords.

If you’re targeting product keywords, like “baby crib bedding” for instance, you would need to be creative to make content that will actually help the searcher. If I was searching for “baby crib bedding”, then I would want to find a website that has a lot of really informative reviews for different baby crib bedding. I’m not sure how Justin and Joe handle that situation with their content. Anyway, back on topic here; my wife and I will be monetizing our niche websites with the Amazon Associates program. To do so, we will need to target product keywords, and every website we make will need to adequately satisfy what the searcher is looking for.

That’s the biggest twist to what we’ll be doing and what Justin and Joe are doing. Actually, to be honest, our method will be quite different. Justin and Joe do no linking to their websites, and I believe we’ll be able to make our websites substantially more profitable with linking, and we will be doing keywords research slightly different. It’s funny that I’m so fired up for something that the “SEO world” has basically forsaken. This shows how quickly your mindset can change.

A couple months ago I was totally against creating your own web properties, and now, I feel the complete opposite of that mindset. My wife and I are both really excited to start this business venture. Please keep in mind that updates and specific information will come slowly at first, but in the end, I hope to turn this website into a valuable resource for a few different, effective business ventures/business models. A quick tip to some of you who might be starting out making money online: try to block out the noise. There are so many different websites out there with thousands of different people using various business models.

Find someone who has seen great success; take their business model and improve on it, and try to follow only that person(s). If you follow 10 different bloggers who all have different business models, you will probably spread yourself too thin. Just want to give another shout out to my boys over at Empire Flippers for being kind enough to offer their guide for free. As always, if you have any questions about anything, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at admin @ realobmarketing.com

God bless – talk soon.

Many people think Squidoo has been penalized. It’s sad because many of the loyal lensmasters who write for Squidoo might not have the knowledge to find out if this is true or not. A quick look at a couple tools will reveal just how deep the rabbit hole goes – in terms of how penalized the website really is. The short answer is yes: they have been slapped by the King Kong of search engines.

You know, it’s funny; I was sitting back and enjoying the great profits pouring in each month from using my Web 2.0 Cash Valve method with Squidoo, and it’s been many months since I started the method, and as long as the money is rolling in, I really don’t keep track of these things. It was only recently that I heard someone say something about the website being hit, but I haven’t really started to notice the effects until very recently.

All good things come to an end, right? Although that saying is, for the most part, true, it’s not as bad as it sounds. The core of the method that I’ve been using to profit from Squidoo is still strong, and all I have to do is simply pick another web 2.0 website that isn’t penalized. With maybe a couple hours of work, my method will be up and running with a different web 2.0 website. I’ll discuss this a bit more at the end of this post. For now, let’s dig a bit deeper into the very conclusive evidence of the penalty.

If you look at the image above, courtesy of SEMRush, you will see that the penalty hit sometime in November, 2012. Squidoo’s traffic has been slipping every month since. The image above shows the website losing about one million unique visitors a month, every month since the penalty started. Please keep in mind that the image above is not completely accurate, and the website has probably been losing many more visitors than what this image shows.

Since SEMRush estimates total traffic based on keywords that the website ranks for and how much traffic each keyword gets per month, it’s an educated guess, really. However, even with the slight inaccuracy, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what’s happening. I’m actually surprised traffic hasn’t been slipping much faster than what this image shows. BUT, its best to check multiple sources to be sure. So, I went over to Quantcast. Take a look at the Quantcast statistics shown in the image below.

Once again, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see what’s happening. Many people on the Squidoo forums say they haven’t lost traffic, and many say that they’ve gained traffic, and many notice no change in traffic. For each of these scenarios, there’s a reason why traffic hasn’t been lost yet. With such a massive website like Squidoo, things work differently. When you’re small niche website is penalized, it’s so small that it takes maybe a day or two for the full power of the penalty to kick in and vaporize your traffic. Things work differently with a website that averages millions upon millions of visitors each month. The people who haven’t seen a global traffic loss on their pages will inevitably see it soon. Also, when a website is penalized, especially if it’s massive like this one, there will probably still be a few pages that might not lose any traffic or might even gain traffic. The larger the website the more pages that will somehow continue to rank and bring in traffic. I don’t know the exact mechanics behind why this happens, but I have the personal experience to know that it DOES happen, so you can just take my word for it. Bottom line here — Squidoo is a sinking ship, as of right now. Maybe they’ll somehow manage to turn things around, but for now, it’s time to grab your gold bars and make off on the lifeboat.

I should add that I’m still making money from Squidoo. Since I haven’t “migrated” my method to a new web 2.0 website yet, the main lens that’s making me money is still pulling in about $20 a day, even with minimal visitors, but there is no point in losing money when I can just choose another website to setup camp and make much more profit. Amazing as it sounds, my method is still extremely profitable, even with traffic declining on my main lens. I’ll show you the tell-tale evidence, and I’ll show you the penalty slowly kicking on my lenses. In the images below, one of the lenses is the main lens I used my method for, and the other lens is just a lens that was getting traffic.

If you look at the two images above, you will see a familiar pattern in the traffic. I don’t have conclusive evidence, but I believe those traffic patterns are essentially the “deathrows” of the dying lenses, if that makes sense. The traffic drop pattern in the second image is much more distinct, and it’s not your “typical” traffic drop; it’s a distinct pattern that is marking the inevitable death of the lenses. Take a look at your lenses that have any decent amount of traffic, and if you see this pattern somewhere in the traffic, I believe it’s downhill from here.

Now, keep in mind that this is all happening ever so slowly; it’s been happening over the last few months. Even if your lenses seem to be unaffected, I don’t want to wait around to watch them die off completely.  The images above only show the last 30 days. The main lens in the top image is the main earner, and if you could go back further, you would be able to see the lens getting around 80-90 visits a day, and it was making a few hundred a month at it’s peak. I could show you evidence from my other Squidoo accounts, but I don’t feel it’s needed.

For those of you who have hundreds of lenses, I feel sorry for you. It’s almost impossible to just “pack up” and move on. Your only hope is that Squidoo will somehow pull through the penalty and prevail, but if you want to see an almost identical situation, go plug Hubpages into SEMRush and Quantcast to see what happened to that web 2.0 website when it was slapped. I don’t believe it has ever recovered. When you’re making money online, this is just the nature of the beast. You probably here this all the time; things change. Are your methods versatile enough to change, adapt to the new environment. It doesn’t really matter what you’re doing to MMO; things will always be changing. If you can’t adapt quick enough, you might be wiped out completely.

Why Is Squidoo Slapped?

Nobody really knows for sure, except maybe some people deep in the Googleplex, ha ha. If I had to guess, I would guess that it’s simply because of all of those “Sales” lenses that were encouraged so much at Squidoo. Whenever you see “the herd” or all of the filth who hangout at the Warriorforum begin to move in, then it’s time to run the other way. All of the cookie cutters and people who just slapped up a lens with 15 Amazon modules and zero original content just ruined it for all of the people who were making money the legit way.

I believe it got so out of hand that the powers that be had had enough; then BAM! Squidoo has already began their “freaking out” mode, and they’ve made several drastic changes. One of the changes involved “no-following” all external links. Too bad for anyone who was using the website for links to their own properties. Funnily enough, many “marketing firms” who order content at places like Textbroker still have no clue that this change has even been made, and they’re still ordering content to put on Squidoo when all current and future links to other websites have been no-followed, which means links from Squidoo no longer pass ranking power to other web properties. Who knows how long before these firms wake up and smell the coffee.

What Can You Do?

For those of you who have hundreds of lenses, ALL you can do is wait it out. For those of you, like me, who are versatile enough to quickly setup camp on another web 2.0 website, get on with it! This news will probably cost me a few hundred or more in lost revenue, but that’s not a big deal. For those of you who are anxious to start writing lenses at Squidoo for the hopes of earning a few dollars or more a month per lens, you are taking a serious gamble with your time or money. If Squidoo doesn’t miraculously recover from this, which I doubt they will, you will probably be wasting ALL, not just a little, of your time. If you still think mass-producing content at Squidoo in the hopes of a few dollars per page will work, go read this post, and you will see that as it stands right now, Squidoo is basically making it impossible for new lenses to get any traffic. Also, that’s assuming Squidoo somehow beats the penalty. Lol.

What’s my final recommendation? For those of you who can’t easily setup camp on another web 2.0 website, PRAY. Well, you probably won’t have to pray if you’re not making a few thousand a month from hundreds of lenses. Lol. I’ve already accepted the loss and moved on. I haven’t sat down to find where I’m going to setup my method at next to replace this income stream, but it should only take an hour or two. If you can ready between the lines, links are your source of power; your backup generator. Good luck my friends, talk soon.

Are you searching for the mindset for success, and No, I’m not going to start this piece out with some type of motivational quote; I’m also not going to say a bunch of BS about how “you can attract more abundance into your life by doing XYZ.” I will, however, explain to you what works for me. People have written whole books about this subject, and many of them probably have a PhD in psychology or something.

I think it’s funny that when you search Google for this subject, half of the top ten listing are all people trying to sell you some book or product that they’ve created – don’t worry – I’m not here to sell you any products. Let me start by giving you some background information before we discuss the actual problem that’s holding you back.

The Lost Mindset

Working a corporate job is something that works for some people and not very well for others. I remember when I had a corporate job. Some people are fortunate enough to have landed a decent corporate job, and they don’t feel nearly as bad as others.

Some of the worst, but easiest I might add, corporate jobs are the ones that you encounter every day in your local community. The kind souls who pump gasoline into your vehicle on your way to work; the people who bag your groceries at the local grocery store; the people who ask you if you want to open a new credit card when you’re buying a new pair of pants; the person who asks you if you’d like fries with your burger.

These are the corporate jobs that fuel the country – they do the dirty work. I was once in this position in my life. Corporate jobs sort of suck the life out of you. Working this type of job puts a dent in your soul – life seems to blow past you faster and faster, until life becomes a total blur. I remember making the transition from my corporate job to what I do now.

For the first few months, my brain was still recovering from the damage that was done, but after a few months, I felt as if all of the weight on my shoulder had been lifted. This is what happens when you basically give up your old life for a new one. Yeah, it was very scary, but that feeling of uncertainty and excitement – it feels amazing. I really felt as if I had been reborn; however, there was still a problem deep inside of my head.

The Problem

Although I had quit my job to try this new, scary and exciting path, there was still something wrong with me. I still had the “lost” mindset somewhere in my head. I knew 150% that I wanted something new for my family and myself, but I didn’t quite understand it.

For many months after I left my corporate position, I was lost in the sea of making money online. I searched high and low – looking for the “secrets.”  Almost a year had passed, and I hadn’t made much money on the Internet – nor did I really know how to do it. I experienced information overload, and I didn’t know who I could trust. There was no role model that I could talk to and ask question.

After a full year of dogpaddling in the ocean of working for yourself, something changed. It finally hit me all at once. At the exact same time that I truly realized what I needed to do to be successful working for myself on the Internet, I felt my mindset shift. As crazy as it sounds, I actually physically felt something inside of brain shift, and at the same time, I felt CLEAR. Everything that I thought I knew and all of the paths that I thought were right faded away, and the TRUE path to success became visible.

It was a very enlightening feeling. Although it did take a year for it to happen, I didn’t need to “wish abundance into my life” or write some ridiculous positive saying on my mirror – none of that crap. I realized that I had been trying to emulate and copy other successful people. I had basically been trying to transform myself into them. I wanted to make money on the Internet just like they did; I wanted someone to give me a step-by-step blueprint to Internet riches, but it never happened.

I finally understood that I needed to find my own way. I needed to find my own path to success, and it was at that moment that I determined not just how but why I wanted to do it. I had finally achieved the mindset for success. The rest of the story is history.

The Solution

Let me give you the solution that you’ve been looking for. Get this; it doesn’t matter where you currently work; it doesn’t matter if you’re homeless; your current situation in life is completely irrelevant. All that matters is that you’re ready to make the shift. See, all of us have the success mindset already inside of us. It’s not a matter of writing positive quotes on your bathroom mirror, and there is no step-by-step process that some piece on the Internet can give to you.

The mindset is already in your head – just waiting to be released. Believe me when I tell you that you will FEEL it happen. You will feel a physical shift take place in your brain, and only then, will you be ready to finally conquer life and take success as your reward. You have to stop trying to emulate others and find your own path. You have to be ready to DO YOU, as simple as that might sound.

If you dig deep enough, you’ll find that you’ve been longing to do your own thing. Maybe you have thoughts of fear that if you don’t follow these other people that you won’t find success. Realize that when you ignore your true feelings, you are simply chasing your own tail.

The feeling of fear of not knowing how things will turn out if you do your own thing is what is holding you back, and it’s what was holding me back as well. Understand that you already have the mindset, and all that you need to do is dig deep to find it. Sit down and think about what you’re doing. Are you really DOING YOU? Does it feel right? I believe if you really sit down for a moment in a quiet room and think about it, you will find the successful mindset that is already in you. With that, I’ll end this piece.

A question that people commonly ask is which website is better: Squidoo vs Hubpages. Honestly, it depends on what your goals are. I’ve used both websites extensively, so I’m qualified to give you an honest opinion.

Where I Started Making Money Online

I actually started on Hubpages; it was the first revenue-share website I started writing for. I actually learned about it during my time at the keyword academy. Many of the members there were using it to MMO. Let me put this into perspective for you: I actually had many problems when I first started writing Hubs. However, my writing has improved dramatically over the years since I wrote there, so it’s no surprise that I had some problems there.

Usability

In terms of the user interface, Hubpages and Squidoo are basically the same. Creating a lens or hub requires the same amount of effort at each website, so they’re equal in that way. I think Squidoo might actually be a bit easier to use than Hubpages, but I haven’t created any hubs in such a long time that I really don’t know what it’s like over there, and honestly, I really don’t care to know.

The Problem

The biggest problem with Hubpages is their moderation. What happened was Google slapped their website, so their moderators and the people who run the site started freaking out; they locked or deleted thousands of hubs without warning, and that was the final nail in the coffin for me.

Most of my hubs were labeled as “low quality.” I simply deleted my hubs and moved on. From what I’ve gathered from other people over time, Hubpages has basically spiraled downward since then. Their traffic dropped and never recovered, and they lost many of their writers. At this point, I would never use Hubpages ever again; the moderators are douchebags, and it’s just not worth your energy.

Why I Like Squidoo

Although they are going through their own struggle right now with getting slapped by Google, Squidoo is still a great place. Even with all of their newest “quality filters” that they’ve unleashed, which seems to have affected MANY lensmasters, I have yet to have a single lens flagged. However, I only have a few lenses built there, and with my methods, that’s all I need to bank.

From what I can see, Squidoo is quite lax about most things. I’ve never been in trouble for sending links to my lenses, even if I only send a few, and I’ve never had any bad experiences over the many months I’ve been using their platform. However, it’s important to note that as of right now, Squidoo has no-followed all outgoing links, which means they’re completely useless for linking to your own web properties.

What Do You Need Them For?

Let me try to sum this all up for you. If you want to make money online, then I would go with Squidoo. Ever since Hub pages were slapped, their website is no good for making money or anything else for that matter. I honestly wouldn’t use Hub pages for anything; not even linking to your own websites.

You can still bank with Squidoo, but you have to know what you’re doing; you can’t just create a huge amount of lenses and expect to bank. If you want to MMO with Squidoo, then you need to create a few quality lenses, and you need to point some powerful links that them. If you’ve read my other posts, then you’ll know what I’m talking about. This is the opinion of a seasoned marketer.

I can’t really say how much longer Squidoo will last, but if you have the resources, hop on there and cash in while you still can, but Keep in mind I don’t advocate creating crap content. Regardless of how you link your content or whatever you’re doing, always make sure that you’re putting out quality content.

The Revolution

As usual, the Internet is changing, and it will always be changing. If you want your own content to be around for at least a couple more years, you need to make it personal, and you need to make it good. Rather than creating a generic product review that is a bunch of text created by rehashing reviews on Amazon, you need to go buy the product your trying to be an affiliate for, and you need to make a quality video review of the product.

You need to demonstrate that you know what you’re talking about. If I could give a newbie one priceless tip, it would be to avoid what the “herd” is doing, and by herd, I’m referring to all of the ”Internet marketers” that you’ll find at the Warrior Forum and other similar hangout spots.

Doing your own thing and creating your own ways to MMO, along with the right mindset, is what will make you successful. So, to conclude this post, forget Hub Pages altogether – there time has passed. Squidoo will work great for MMO, but as of right now, they’re useless for linking to your own properties.

So, you’re wondering what Squidoo SEO will work the best.  Let me just say that I’m not a big fan of the terms “post-penguin” or “post-panda.” I think those terms are thrown around a lot by people who are trying to make money off of people who’ve had websites penalized by these algorithms. However, I think the term will work great for the title of this piece. Let’s get right to the point, shall we?

Squidoo SEO hasn’t really changed much at all; not even with all of the latest updates. The type of content that people produce for Squidoo has changed. If you’ve published a new lens, you need to make sure your on-page SEO is solid. Make sure to include your keyword in the title of the lens, but don’t make the title look or sound like spam. You can create a title that has your keyword in it, and you don’t have to include the exact keyword. For example, if your keyword is “best lawn sprinklers”, you could create some titles like this:

“What Lawn Sprinklers Are Best For Your Home?”

“Lawn Sprinklers That Have the Best Spray Patterns”

I think you get the point. With the way the search engines are today, it’s better to just make a title that includes all of the words in your keyword, but the title should be something thoughtful. By making a thoughtful title, you can include the keyword you’re trying to rank for, and you will also be optimizing the title for better SERP click-thru rate, which means more traffic and more sales.

Once your title is finished, you want to make sure your keyword is in the description. Keep in mind that Squidoo doesn’t give you a special field to put a description into like you would have with a blog. Google will use the first few sentences of your Squidoo lens to create the description, which means you need to make sure your keyword is in the first few sentences of the description. I usually add my exact keyword into the first sentence of the lens, but only if it makes sense and doesn’t sound awkward. For example, if my keyword was “best lawn sprinklers”, the first sentence in my lens might look something like:

“Here are some of the best lawn sprinklers from someone who knows what they’re talking about.”

Once your title and description are optimized, that’s really all you need for on-page SEO. I see a lot of people ordering content from places like Text broker, and these clients state that the content is for a Squidoo lens, and they demand a certain keyword density and get really crazy about it. Trust me; you don’t have to worry about keyword density, as long as the article is written naturally. If you’re writing the articles yourself, you actually want to avoid adding too many instances of your keyword into the article.

What about Squidoo Tags?

You might’ve heard that tags offer some value. Honestly, for tags, I just add a few keywords related to my main keyword. I don’t sit and stress out about whether I’m choosing the right tags or not. You can always use that Squidutils program or whatever it is, and it will tell you whether you’re choosing good tags or not, but I get great results with Squidoo, and I never freak out about the tags. The only tags that really matter are the “category tag”, which is chosen automatically for you when you choose a category for your lens, and the “lensmaster tag”, which is added automatically. If your lensmaster page is really old, it might have a high PageRank, which really helps to pass some authority to all of your lenses. Aside from these tips, don’t stress about your tags, and don’t add tons of tags with your main keyword because this could cause problems for you.

Off-Page SEO

Now, this is where all the magic happens. Many lensmasters handle off-page SEO the wrong way; they go out and build a few social bookmarking links, and then they wonder why their lenses never get any traffic. Honestly, when it comes to off-page SEO for Squidoo, the sky is the limit. However, you don’t want to spam your lens with tons of crappy links with automated software. As with any other web property, you want quality over quantity.

It’s important to understand that Squidoo is very lax when it comes to lensmasters linking to their lenses. You should also understand that you have much more flexibility when linking a Squidoo lens or other web 2.0 property. Unlike your own website, these websites have enormous authority and trust with the search engines, which is why you can throw almost any amount of links to pages on these sites, you don’t have to worry about penalties and such.

I want you to understand that the most powerful type of link that you have at your disposal is a link from expired domains. You can use these links for any type of web 2.0 page, and there is nothing to stop you from doing so. Forget social bookmarking and all of that crap; if you want to rank your web 2.0 properties or Squidoo lenses, you need links from expired domains.

I won’t go into detail about where you can get these links; that’s for another day. Just understand that unless you’re sending these powerful links to your lenses, you’re probably not going to have much success with Squidoo. If you write hundreds of lenses, you might have a handful that will actually get traffic with no links to them, but the majority will flop, and this is partially due to Squidoo’s LensRank system, which greatly puts new lensmasters as a disadvantage. I’ll sum this all up for you in a couple sentences.

A high-conversion Squidoo lens + in-content links from powerful, expired domains = $$$. My web 2.0 Cash Valve book actually goes into great detail about how to absolutely kill it with Squidoo and my methods. However, I’m not selling this book right now, so you’ll just have to figure it out. Pat yourself on the back; you now have all of the Squidoo SEO information that you need to make money with Squidoo.

Are you here because you want to find out about the Squidoo scam?  Maybe you want to see if Squidoo is good for SEO, making money or backlinks? If you are, that’s good. The short answer is NO, but you might want to stick around to see what I have to say about it.

What Is Squidoo?

Put simply, it’s a revenue-share website. Much like other websites on the Internet, Squidoo’s goal is to make money. Since it’s an online business, it needs to make money to survive. Without revenue, who’s going to run the website? Unfortunately, money is the blood that powers the entire world.

However, Squidoo is different from your typical one-man website; it actually allows regular people, like stay-at-home-moms for example, to write content for it. People who write content for Squidoo are given part of the revenue that the website makes, which is primarily revenue from contextual ads like Google Ads.

The concept is very simple to grasp: you write articles for Squidoo, and you get a chance to share some of the money that the website makes. I won’t go into great detail, but you should understand how it works.

Why Squidoo Might Be Considered A Scam

Now, I’ve never been wronged by this website. I’ve never had any accounts banned, and I’ve never had any horrible experiences while writing for them. However, Squidoo backlinks are not even possible anymore.

Sadly, many others have had bad experiences with them, and currently, due to a string of changes Squidoo’s owners have made, many people are having a rough time. From now on, I’m going to refer to Squidoo as “them” or “they.”

The Algorithms

The way that they operate makes the whole Squidoo make money experience partially a scam. When you write an article for them, various internal algorithms give your article a ranking. I’m not sure how high the ranking goes, but I believe it might go up to 1,500,000 or so.

Now, whenever you publish a new article, even with targeted Squidoo seo, it starts out with a ranking of like 350,000 or something, and if the article doesn’t start getting traffic in the few days after it was published, it will begin moving past a ranking of 400,000, and it will continue until it’s 600,000 or higher.

The Problem

The problem occurs when your article hits a ranking of 400,000. All articles on Squidoo that have a “LensRank” of 400,000 or higher are basically murdered. Once an article ranks 400,000, Squidoo’s algorithms tell search engines like Google not to index it, and this happens regardless of how long the article has been ranking below 400,000.

The way that the website works is the lower the LensRank number the better. Put simply, if your newly-published Squidoo article doesn’t receive traffic in the few days after it’s published, it might as well not even exist. Nobody will ever be able to find it in the search engines.

The reason Squidoo works like that is because they don’t want search engines like Google to label the website as a “content farm”, which would penalize the website and dramatically decrease profits, and it would potentially put them out of business.

Why I Think This Is A Scam

Although scam might not be the proper word for it, I think it’s fitting. Squidoo tries to lure new writers to come and write for them by offering an inventive to be able to make money. I think it’s misleading to bring new writers aboard promising the ability to earn money online, and when a new writer publishes their first few lenses, if those lenses don’t start getting immediate traffic, then all of the time that the writer spent making those lenses is wasted. These days, you can’t even use Squidoo for SEO

In the past, maybe this idea worked well for both writers and Squidoo. However, with the way things are today, it seems more like a pyramid scheme. Only the top 400,000 lenses make any money, and the rest are killed off. I think it kind of resembles a scam because writers are basically forced to create many new articles or “lenses” before getting lucky enough to have a few get enough traffic to maintain a LensRank of 400,000 or lower.

Just recently, I had to delete over 40 articles that I wrote there because they were articles that never got any traffic, which means Squidoo’s algorithms killed them off, and so I just removed them from the website since they weren’t really accomplishing anything.

My Conclusion:

Here’s my conclusion. If you’re thinking about using Squidoo to make money online, then I would approach the idea with caution. With the way things are right now, it’s basically only the people who’ve been writing there with many lenses that are getting consistent traffic that make any money. The whole LensRank idea makes it:

A-     Almost impossible for new articles written by new authors to get any traction in the search engines

B-      Causes authors to constantly “re-publish” their newly-written lenses to keep them from dropping past a LensRank of 400,000 so they don’t get de-indexed, which is very hard to do.

I’ve been re-publishing lenses that weren’t doing well for months. It’s way too much effort to keep doing this daily. Why should you have to do all of that work just because of Squidoo’s LensRank idea, and you have to do all of the Squidoo marketing yourself.

What You Should Do

If you want to start making some money online and want to use a revenue-share website like Squidoo to do it, I think you should choose a website that doesn’t de-index all of your articles that don’t start getting good traffic right away, which is why the Squidoo vs Hubpages debate is not really a debate at all.

Now, I’m not quite sure about the exact names, but I would check out revenue-share websites like Wizzly and Infobarrel. There are several more great websites that you can choose from, which don’t have that ridiculous “LensRank” feature.

I might add to this post in the future to give you a solid list of websites that I recommend, but for now, just go to Google and search “revenue share websites” without the quotation marks of course. That’s my current view on the Squidoo platform.