Squidoo Lens Critique: Great Gardening Gifts

Over the next several weeks, I am going to critique a few Squidoo lenses by new lensmasters in the hopes that some of the lessons that they can learn to improve their lenses, can help everyone who looks at the critique.  I will be looking at the lenses from the perspective of how effective the lens is at grabbing Google attention, how it is structured, and how it could be improved to make more money through lensrank, and sales.  I am not going to judge the level of truth in the content, nor will I be researching where the information came from.

The first lens that I will be looking at is by lensmaster Jeri Baker.  Jeri has four published lenses, which means that she has taken the time to work with the Squidoo platform, but has barely gotten her feet wet in the online writing community here.  So, first of all, welcome to Squidoo, Jeri.  Jeri’s lens, Great Gardening Gifts, is the one I am going to critique.

Great Gardening Gifts Critique

I would like to start off by saying that it was obvious to me that Jeri was working to create a high quality lens, that would be a useful page for readers, and that was a pleasure to see.  The areas that need improvement on her lens are the type of improvements that many new lensmasters need to make on their lenses because they do not understand the way traffic gets to their lens on the internet, and how people read online.

The lens is meant to be a gardening gifts guide, and Jeri has obviously looked through different kinds of gardening gifts and selected gifts that she would buy.  This is good, because it is always easier to create a lens about things that we know.

Ways to improve this lens:

1. Keywords:  The main keywords used in this lens are “great gardening gifts” which is a very competitive term with little traffic.  “Gardening gifts” is also very competitive with a lot more traffic.  In order to increase the visibility of this lens in Google search, Jeri needs to find some less competitive keywords through keyword research to include in the text, module titles, and subtitles.  This will draw more search engine traffic to her lens, and potentially more sales.
2. Lens Content:  While Jeri has done a very good job at starting out this lens, it is really not complete enough to draw in the type of traffic she could expect.  This is because the content of the lens is not balanced well in text vs. sales modules, and text vs. pictures.  This lens would perform better with more text introducing the various sale modules and pictures.  Text is where the search engine traffic comes from primarily, and those additions should include the keywords she finds during her research.
3. Too broad of a topic: Jeri has several interesting sections on this lens from tools, to indoor garden, to gadgets and equipment.  I would suggest choosing only one or two of those topics to present on this lens, and then creating another lens showing gifts from another of the categories.  While it may seem counter intuitive to you, the more narrow the topic of the lens, the better it will perform on Google.

I think that if Jeri starts by improving the three points mentioned above, she will see much more success with this lens.  Winter time is the perfect time to work on gardening lenses, so that they are ready by spring.

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