December 22nd, 2009 
JoAnn Guida 
Can You Squidoo?
Following up on the fact that I finally made my first Squidoo Lens in my quest to become an Internet marketer, I wanted to share some good information for the masses about Squidoo. In the past few years, many marketers watched from the sidelines as Squidoo evolved into a SERP-ranking powerhouse and finally invested in a guide to teach them how to do it themselves. They created content, did all the recommended traffic tactics – and one day awoke to discover their lenses locked and their efforts ruined.
Squidoo has made many changes in 2009 – and for a very good reason. They were in the good graces of Google until one day the search engine giant decided to teach them a lesson and slapped their search engine rankings into nowhere-land. To combat this horrible effect, Squidoo knew what they had to do. They had to lock down spam lenses, implement some new rules and take down unsavory content.
A new Squid Don’t lens was erected to help guide lensmasters in how to create a proper page on Squidoo. Many ClickBank products, which were the bread and butter of some affiliates, were blacklisted. No more teaching how to cure toenail fungus or how to lose weight with acai berries. These topics were just too enticing for spammers, so Squidoo had to make them off-limits for everybody – even those who provided viable content about them. That was a tough one. But necessary for us today to provide viable content.
Squidoo did create a great program called the Giant Squid program, where lensmasters with at least 50 good lenses could bypass the filter system they set in place – because they earned a badge of trust from the creators of Squidoo.
They limited the number of links to a hefty nine, which is more than generous considering places like Hub Pages that only allow two. In the coming year, Squidoo will be checking up on lensmasters to see who’s abiding by their policy and who isn’t – and they’ll be cleaning house on lenses that don’t comply, so make sure you abide by their rules.
One of the best ways to get what you want on Squidoo is to become an active participant in their SquidU forum. Here, you can interact with the founders and worker bees on Squidoo – and they constantly ask for your input on future decisions, letting you speak out about how it will affect you.
For example, they’re considering giving lensmasters the ability to take a live Squidoo lens and purposefully make it a work in progress lens – but before they do, they’re asking for your opinion. Take advantage of this open door philosophy because not many social networks have it – they simply make the rules and you’re expected to follow them.
Build a Lens Today!
Despite all the changes, Squidoo is still an awesome place to make quality product and niche topic lenses to promote your brand and affiliate programs. The lenses rank well and the community participation is very large. It will always be an important part of your well rounded affiliate marketing strategy.
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