Professional Squids

When I first joined Squidoo (two years on 10 July 2010), I knew I wanted to write, I liked the idea of blogging but I had no idea about how I could possibly ever, ever be found in that huge morass of content known as the Internet. I mean, who on earth would want to read anything that I wrote?

My main motivation to write (at that time) was for therapy and I thought that some of my recent experiences may help other people. I had a daughter who had been subjected to a three year campaign of bullying at school and I had been diagnosed with a disease of the inner ear: Otosclerosis. So, that was at least two topics I knew I could write about and who cared if no one read it, at least I would get stuff off my chest!

Or so I thought……

But the thing is with writing that the temptation to publicise what you have written becomes just too much. You want to share what you have written and yes, you want to put yourself through the nerve wracking process of getting feedback. After all, someone may just like what you wrote.

And that is how I started trying to find out what you needed to do to get found on the Internet. Welcome to the world of Search Engine Optimization or SEO as it is commonly known.

SEO involves various strategies but one of the most important is Keyword Research and I was lucky in that after just a few months on Squidoo, one of the most knowledgeable Lensmasters Spirituality offered to pull apart one of my lenses, help me with my keyword research and see if we could get it ranked high on Google.

We knew it would be hard because I had chosen one of the biggest (and most spammed) topics on the world wide web – dieting. Yes, shock, horror, AJ published a lens about dieting!

But it wasn’t just any old dieting lens, it was all about how I lost weight by going “wheat free” and of course “wheat free dieting” is a far narrower niche than dieting – and that is the point. For any topic to rank high in Google it must be a narrow niche BUT people also have to be searching for that niche.

Doing keyword research BEFORE you grab a lens or blog URL is absolutely crucial because having a URL that has a strong keyword is the first weapon in your armoury as you attack Google. Yet so many people grab the URL and then embark on their research.

Not only will this keyword research give you the best words and phrases for your lenses (or blogs), it will also show you what information people are searching for and it may also give you prompts as to what you should include in your content.

The keyword research will also show you if you have made any incorrect assumptions – remember, your lens needs to focus on what people are definitely looking for, NOT what you think they are looking for.

The Squidoo Step by Step Guidebook has a very comprehensive chapter on Keyword Research and I have also published a lens on How to Research Keywords, in which I document the processes and my thinking as I researched  the keywords for a new recipe lens. Not only will you find out how to do your Keyword Research, but also the optimum placement for those keywords.

Did you know that in addition to the URL and the content, there’s at least SIX other places on a lens, where you should have some keywords and phrases?

AJ is Always Juggling on Squidoo, online and between various blogs including Ask AJ on 10-finity

AJ

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