On page SEO for Squidoo is one of the easier components of the entire optimization work that you need to do for your lens. Why I say it is easier, is because most of the backend work is already done by Squidoo. If you were building your own website, then we would have to take about title tags, header tags, meta description and a whole bunch of other jargon that I don’t want to bore you with.
So lets get down to business. What in the world is On page SEO?
In very simple words – it is the stuff “ON” your page (or lens) which the search engines crawl through and try to decipher what the page is all about. It is your job through On page SEO to “help” the search engines in this task. In earlier days, the term “help” was easily replaced by “manipulate”. But as days go by, search engines are getting freakishly more human-like and see through most of the manipulations. So we stick to our credo – which is “Helping the Search Engines”.
Helping the Search Engines – How do we do that?
Different Search engines have their own ways of analyzing a webpage – but there are certain “sweet spots” on your page which most search engines look at and lend more emphasis on. It is going to be our endeavour to ensure that we place our main keywords for our lens in these key spots on our page. That’s the crux of On-page SEO. We need to make sure that we don’t overdo it – since that could be considered as “keyword stuffing” which the search engines do not like.
Where can I find these sweet spots?
A. Text
1. URL of the Lens
2. Title of the Lens
3. Title of Introduction Module
4. Introduction Module Text
5. Titles /Subtitles of all other modules
B. Images
TEXT
You need to place your keywords in all the areas that are mentioned in #1 to #5 above. However what is important that you try to write for your readers. Make the Lens title appealing. Keep your module titles exciting. Use synonyms and variations of your keywords so as to not sound repetitive throughout the lens.
For example – if your main keyword is apple pie recipe, consider the following titles
- Delicious Homemade Apple Pie Recipe
- How to make yummy Apple Pie
- Best Apple Pie Recipe ever
Get the drift? Try incorporating the keywords in your titles without sounding boring.
As I said at the beginning of this post, Squidoo has done all the hardwork for you by incorporating the code into their modules. So what you actually see as module titles are “header tags”. Your introduction text is the “meta description”.
So without getting too concerned about jargon – just ensure that you have your main keyword of their variations in the key areas I showed you. Go for your main keyword in your URL though !
IMAGES
Although the search engines may be eventually able to read as humans – they still aren’t able to see as we can. Once again our buzz word – “Helping the search engines”. We can help the search engines by naming our image file appropriately and adding a good “alt” tag.
As an example – an image file named, “apple-pie.jpg” will always be a better choice than “D00epu88.jpg”. I always prefer using hyphens while naming my images and I guess the search engines love it that way too.
If you are hosting your images on sites like Photobucket or your own servers, you will have to use the tag to insert your pictures. It also gives you the flexibility to add an “alt” tag to your images.
See example
<img src="urlofphotosite/apple-pie.jpg" alt="apple pie recipe"></img>
This will help the search engines to know what your images are all about. Don’t let this opportunity go by. Its one of the more tedious tasks, I know. I have been lazy in doing this for many of my lenses. But the ones I have done it on, it has also brought me traffic through the image searches. So it can turn out to be a dual advantage.
To sum up – For On-page SEO on Squidoo – ensure that you have your keywords in all the right spots and make sure that your images have good naming conventions and relevant alt tags.
Our next stop is going to Off Page SEO for Squidoo in Part 3 of this Series. If you haven’t checked out Part I you can do so here
image courtesy Paloma Gomez via CC 2.0
