The Squidoo effect on SEO

Although I have only recently started using Squidoo , I have to say I am really impressed by the way Squidoo is conceived . While I was browsing through Squidoo and trying to create my own lenses , I noticed that there are some options that are responsible for the search engine optimization of your lenses .
The first thing I noticed was the possibility of adding keywords in the title . Although at a first glance the way their titles are created didn’t look too promising , the possibility of adding keywords in the title and properly formatting it made me stick around a bit more .

In the case of my page , the title was :

Blogging Tips with CristianR on Squidoo

Now , what I would like to tackle in this article is the effect Squidoo can have on blogs . I am almost certain that Squidoo is optimized for search engines , but how well , we’ll find out right now .

1)Tags : Giving free hand to lens-masters to choose their tags at all time is for sure a bonus , via the ‘Related Tags’ feature . Although a problem some people have spotted among the code is that on the page the tags appear at the top of the column but in backstage , in the code these tags are featured quite low .

2)Meta tags : While there has always been a keen discussion about meta tags and their role in SEO , there’s actually no harm in optimizing them . Meta tags on Squidoo are actually the 5 ‘related tags’ . The way meta tags are built on Squidoo made me thinking of two things :

a) either these tags are used for AdSense optimization , meaning keyword relevancy thus resulting better targeted ads.

b) either they’re used for SEO but in a way that will help Squidoo and not you .

I have only come to the conclusion stated at point b) because I noticed that their description tags use only a small part of your introduction text .

3)Linklove : The way Squidoo designed it’s interlinking scheme is actually deficient , instead of offering a link named ‘Explore related lenses’ why not offer a small number of related lenses .This way they will increase their traffic and also with SEO , as bots love interlinked sites .

4)Age : Although this is quite a new factor , in the last few months I have discovered that domain age is very important with SEO.This has only started when Google decided that older pages rank better than their more younger correspondent .This is not very important , but every detail counts . I am sure that in due time , Squidoo will achieve it’s legal age to attend to the Council of the Elder Websites and get ranked higher .

How would the above 4 factors affect a blog

For the time being , I am not very sure that it would be much of a deal and the effect you could have on a blog wouldn’t make much of a difference , but I dare you to try it and see for yourselves . It takes only 10 minutes to set-up a lens and it’s quite fun .