Guest post by Erin McElveen
If you’re like me and have dabbled in a little search engine marketing to no avail – don’t lose hope. There is a fast, free tool out there that can help you drive targeted traffic to your online business or blog.
Enter Squidoo – the biggest SEO sensation since the meta tag.
What is Squidoo?
Simply put, Squidoo is a web-based publishing platform.
Like blogging, it allows users to create a small piece of web property (a.k.a. a lens) to deliver information without the need of strong Squidoo HTML or web publishing skills.
Unlike a blog, a lens should be thought of as a collection of resources and it must be focused on a specific topic. In fact, the more focused, the better.
Why use Squidoo?
By setting up a Squidoo profile and investing brain power in resources like the Squidoo Traffic Power system, you can tap into an invaluable SEO strategy that will put you and/or your website on the search engine map – fast.
Aside from accelerating your online business , here is my list of Top 10 Reasons To Build A Squidoo Lens today.
1. Become an expert authority on a specific topic or niche.
Squidoo is designed to enable you to provide your readers with focused information about a topic of your choice. As you develop your highly concentrated lens, you make your knowledge and expertise known to your Squidoo lens visitors.
2. Generate targeted traffic to your website.
Create links on your Squidoo lens to channel people – who are interested in your niche topic – to your own website, blog or your affiliate URL. You can also add images, banners and text ads.
3. Promote your writing
Whether you write daily blog posts, articles, or product promotions – Squidoo enables you to include a “links” module where you can list your articles on your Squidoo lens. The cool part about this feature is that all you have to do is enter the URL of the articles and Squidoo automatically includes the description information (no re-typing).
4. Get a front page listing on Google for FREE
Google values Squidoo lenses – more so than blogs because of their highly focused content.
5. Get quality backlinks for FREE
Google has given Squidoo a ranking of 7. When you place your website/blog URL on your Squidoo lens you are creating a valuable backlink from a very highly ranked authority site.
6. Earn a few extra bucks with affiliate income
There’s no need to hide or mask affiliate links at Squidoo. You can devote entire lenses about one product or many.
7. Build a subscriber list
There is money and value in building a list of subscribers. By adding a link to your lens and building a targeted opt-in list you can later follow up and send giveaway or promotional offers about your business or products.
8. Multimedia makes online marketing easier
Ditch boring text and really dazzle your Squidoo lens visitors with music, images, and/or video. Squidoo offers new and unique ways to keep your audience interested.
9. Brand your company and/or website
Not only does Squidoo allow you to become an expert authority on a specific topic or niche, the platform is the perfect arena to establish a base for your brand. Squidoo is a breeding ground for building startups – quickly, effectively, and at no cost.
10. It’s an easy way to create bookmarks and feeds
Squidoo takes the gruesome leg work out of trying to convince your audience to bookmark or get the feed from your page. Each lens has an RSS feed you can easily ping to blogs and RSS directories. You can also include an “add this” button to your lens making it easy for others to bookmark it!
Creating a Squidoo lens was the best thing I did for my website. Those incoming links and targeted traffic numbers are priceless – and I think my colleagues would agree now that they’re also bringing in a great income .
Squidoo is quite possibly the only online traffic system that I’ll use from now on.
And so should you.
About the author:
Erin McElveen is a freelance writer, award-winning journalist, and a closet SEO/SEM strategist. Erin uses her talent and experience to enlighten and educate readers of her various online publications. Check out the SquidooTrafficPower Blog! Follow her at @SquidooPower.
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