Updating an Old Familiar Squidoo Lens

The Life of a Squidoo Lens

On a periodic basis, I review my lenses, especially if they are showing an upswing, or are near the top of my dashboard.  The lens that I am showing you the traffic pattern on here, is currently riding somewhat near the top of my dashboard right now.

As you can see from the chart shown above, this lens has been around since January 2009, and for the first year of its existence did not get that much traffic.  But over time, the traffic has increased to the point where at this current time, it gets over 1000 visits per week.  This is the type of Squidoo lens that does well traffic wise, which is good, but rarely gets any sales.  One of the lessons from this lens, is that sometimes it takes a while before a lens gets a lot of traffic.  In the case of this lens, it took a year.

Another lesson from this lens is that although a lens may get a lot of traffic, that doesn’t necessary mean that it gets a lot of sales.  And as we all know the lensrank payouts are very competitive, so that it can only earn so much each month from lensrank payouts.

Therefore, as I examine this lens to update it again, I look for ways to improve traffic and sales.

To improve traffic, I am reexamining keywords.  Are there keywords that I am missing on this lens that could bring it more traffic?  I did some research, and indeed, there are.  So I will tweak the lens by changing some text, module titles, and subtitles to add those words.

To improve sales, I am going to look at placement of the sales modules, and what I am selling.  Can I improve this?  In examining the lens, I decide to move some modules around, and add some sales modules, one to the very top of the lens.  I won’t know the success of this trial for at least a few weeks.

There are other ways to increase traffic to the lens.  It is already in the top spot on Google for the main keyword, so now I can add backlinks to drive it to the top spot for other keywords.  However, first I will see what the result of what I have just changed will do before adding more effort to the success of this lens.  Now it is time to move on to another project.

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