Case Study: What to do with a Squidoo lens that is too big!

Recently I came across a Squidoo Page by RawBill: Improve Your Life with a Raw Food Diet. I was very interested in the good information that RawBill passes on about the benefits of a raw food diet, but was also very distracted by all the additional information that he shares. It is related information. It is good information, but it made me think about how so very often we make one lens when actually we could be making two, three or even four.

So I dropped a note to RawBill and asked if he would mind if I used the page as a Case Study about how one lens could be split into multiple lenses and how the layout could be improved.

The first two articles in this series will look at how the layout of the page can be improved and which topics could make new pages, a third article will look in more detail at the lenses that could be made about related topics and the fourth will cover the keyword research Bill will need to do BEFORE he decides on the URLs and titles of the new pages.

I would emphasise that if you are happy with the performance of your larger lenses, then you may like to leave well alone. I have to confess that my best performing lens: Bullying at Primary School would probably be a series of lenses, had I been making it now, but you don’t mess with a Tier 1 Lens!! If it ain’t broke DO NOT fix it

In this case Bill currently has no intention of splitting his lens. However, what I am going to say may give him some ideas about making some related lenses that can all be interlinked and as I went through the lens, I spotted some things which, in my own personal view, could be moved around to improve the flow and the focus of the page.

When you have a large lens that has just grown and grown like Topsy as you discover you have more and more information you want to share, if you are considering splitting it the first thing you should do is back up the content onto your hard drive. That way you can always retrieve the content if you change your mind.

Then take a long hard look at the lens and decide which is the core topic that you want to keep on the original page and then see what related or sub-topics have crept in.

Check, via the Traffic Stats on the Squidoo Dashboard, which phrases are bringing searchers to your page and be VERY careful that you DO NOT delete these phrases if you rewrite the text. However, these keyphrases may also give you some hints as to which keywords may bring traffic to new pages.

In RawBill’s case, it is obvious that the key topic is Raw Food. However, as you scroll down the page, there’s so much information about related topics, that in my view this lens could be split into multiple lenses and this will be discussed in more detail in subsequent articles.

So let’s have a look at the layout of this very big lens and go through the modules in turn as we scroll down the page.

First of all the intro is too long. It launches straight into the topic, whereas an intro should be a general summary of what people are going to find on the page and why they should read it. An intro is your shop window. Outline the features of the page and the benefits of reading about those features. Tempt the window shoppers into crossing the threshold into the store.

Because the key para to the intro is the second one, I would move that to the start of the intro and move the other paras into their own modules. That paragraph is VERY powerful because it establishes that Bill has personally benefitted from switching to a raw food diet.

Genuine personal recommendation is the BEST recommendation. It establishes your authority on a topic and why people should believe what you say. I would just expand on that in a second paragraph of the intro by writing a bit more about what visitors will learn on the lens.

Put the Table of Contents after the Intro followed by the Affiliate Link to FoodMatters – yes, it is generally agreed that an affiliate link at the beginning of the page is better for clickouts and sales – followed by the ad on the YouTube Video

The next module can then be “What is a Raw Food Diet?”

I love using quotes to break up chunks of text – the Black Box Module is good for this (and you have a choice of colors) or you can create your own boxes using HTML – I often use Soujorn’s Lens to help me create boxes and borders: HTML Borders and Backgrounds. Putting all the quotes together means that each quote has less impact. Feature a quote in its own module and it will stand out.

I would move the Raw-Pleasure.com.au module towards the end of the page – apart from a clickout, there’s no financial benefit to the module so you don’t want someone going off the page so early in the lens, unless it is to buy something. Add it to a module that recommends more reading and resources.

By the way, something we ALL need to do – remove all references to lens and replace with page – most of our visitors do not know what the heck a lens is! Remember, we are writing for Google NOT Squidoo

A note about Wikipedia – the way it is used here, Bill is basically repeating what he says in What is a Raw Food Diet? I suggest Bill takes anything from the Wiki article that he has not already said in What is a Raw Food Diet?, rewrite in his own words and integrate into the What is a Raw Food Diet? module.

The Wiki Module could then be deleted, but credit Wiki as a source in a link list at the end of the lens. This is a very personal view, but if you are an expert on a subject, and RawBill clearly is, why then directly quote from a source used by people who are NOT experts?

The Debate Module is a great idea and I would integrate everything Bill says in the intro module about the environmental benefits of a Raw Food Diet into the text in the Debate Module.

There’s another affiliate link in the Food Does Matter module. It is too soon after the first Banner. Probably best to move it to the end of the page.

And here’s a note about the Affilliate Banners – sorry Bill, but in my view, there’s too many throughout the page. So, unless they are ALL actually making money, I would leave in any that are getting clicks and making sales and remove the rest. Save these for the new pages that will be made

The module on Snack Foods is full of good information but it is a long chunk of text, eventhough Bill has split it into smaller chunks with good use of paragraphs. There’s an affiliate banner at the end of the module. If it is one that is being left in, then this could be used to split the text by placing in the middle of the text.

However, it is when we actually get into the detail of snack foods and recipes that I am thinking we have found our first topic for a new lens. So at this point, if Bill was thinking about splitting the lens, I would use the module The Joy of Raw Food to introduce foods and recipes, which could then link out to a completely new page about the topic. Actually, each of Bill’s Raw Food recipes would make a good pages in their own right – but keyword research would need doing, more about that in a subsequent article.

And I do know from personal experience that people DO click out to recipes because this is what happens on my Wheat Free Diet page. I cover all the benefits of a wheat free diet, how to go about it and what it has done for me and then I link to pages I have created on Squidoo and Wizzley about specific Wheat Free Recipes. I am sure that the clickout rate to these pages is what helps to maintain the Wheat Free Diet page in Tier 1.

Portion Size and Weight Control…hmmmmm….all very good info but this too seems like it could do with being on another page.

The Raw Food and Permaculture module is another hugely interesting angle to the topic, but again, if more research is done about David Wolfe, I am thinking that, providing the right keywords are used, this would make yet another page.

So far, I have only covered about half of the lens. In the next article I will continue through the rest of the modules to see how the lens could benefit from some changes to these.