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AKA Loyalis AKA Joe

We continue on with our series of old cob-webbed interviews that took place last year. I’m dusting them off one at a time and republishing them (or in some cases, publishing them for the very first time). No doubt each of the Lensmasters have progressed significantly in success, experience and understanding, but there are still some interesting lessons to be learnt from some of the gems of wisdom they have had to share.

Glen: How did you discover Squidoo?

Loyalis: I was actually looking around for some different ways to promote a blog I write. Needless to say, my involvement with Squidoo has been way more successful than that particular blog has .

Glen: What is the process you choose to decide on a keyphrase(s) for a lens?

Loyalis: Lately, I’ve been focusing on this step more and more with a lot of success. I actually do it a little backwards from starting with a keyword. I’ll sit around and think up of a genre, topic, or entire segment of information that may be under-represented on the web or have a lot of information but it is scattered across many sources. From there, I’ll do some keyword analysis using GTrends or Aaron Wall’s excellent SEO for Firefox plugin on google searches. If it looks promising, I’ll lay out the framework to create a giant pile of lenses, a lot of which will share similar keywords. In a nutshell, I try to find a group of 20-30 lenses that can fit under a single primary tag and still be unique.

Glen: Is there an ideal number of modules you like to include and why?

Loyalis: Usually 5-7. I do have a few ‘epic’ lenses that have tons and tons of modules, but for the most part I find that short , relevant, and unique lenses have performed great for me. I’m targeting visitors pretty far into the ‘buying’ process, so they already know what they want, I just organize it and present it for them in a unique and easy to use way. A lens is a signpost, not a destination or even the journey…

Glen: What success secret can you divulge?

Loyalis: If you have some hosting space and can upload images to it to show on your lens, do it. Linking to an image hosted on your site with good ‘alt’ text can pass some nice rank to your site, and kick but in the google image search pages. Since Squidoo ‘breaks out of frames’ when people visit it (to avoid ‘paid to surf’ scams), everytime someone sees you in the image results, the become a new visitor. Warning: may cause traffic overload and have many of your lenses ranking too highly for comfort. See? I even warned you.

Glen: What are you doing to generate traffic to your lenses?

Loyalis: Choosing niches that have minimal competition with a moderate amount of searches; Using Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Blog search submit, Jumptags.com, and Propeller to get lenses crawled initially; Using proper tag management to keep the internal backlink profile of the lens fresh, relevant, and passing as much juice as possible; Creating a giant pile of lenses and then a ‘directory lens’ for that topic, leaving all the lenses interconnected and me to build external links to the ‘directory lens’; Waving my magic pirate hook in the air and jumping up and down.

Glen: How often are you updating your lenses?

Loyalis: Enough.

Glen: Do you have a favorite html trick?

Loyalis: See the Image linking trick above. Since you asked though, I’ll give you another trick. Want to get an RSS feed indexed by the search bots? (currently the RSS module is NOT search engine readable) Of course. Just use the ‘Site:’ operator in the Google blog search module. For example, inputting ’site:www.captainsquid.com’ will return a list of only blog posts from the Captain Squid blog. And guess what? The Google Blog Search Module IS indexable by search engines. (although I have seen the links showing up as ‘nofollow’ now and then, not sure why…). Does that count as an HTML trick?

Glen: Do you have any tricks for encouraging your lenses viewers participation through any of the interaction modules?

Loyalis: I think the Plexos can be powerful for this. The idea I use them for is this: create 10 or 20 lenses around a topic and copy the same plexo to every one of the lenses. When a user votes on one plexo, ALL the other plexos are updated. This creates instant dynamic content across all the lenses that is also indexable by the Search Engines.

That’s probably the trickiest of the things that I do interaction wise. Besides that, build lenses on stuff that people want to put their 0.02 in on. I’m not as good at soliciting comments as some of the other prolific lensmasters, but comments can be great for a lot of things…

Glen: Do you start with an idea and then figure out how to monetize it, or start with a product and then figure out how to promote it?”

Loyalis: I’ve done both. Sometimes I’ll take and affiliate program and build lenses around it, other times I’ll take a topic or a niche with potential and build lenses around that. I’ve had pretty good successes with both ways.

Glen: Do you focus on a specific, narrowly-defined keyword or phrase, or do you get traffic from a variety of different phrases and keywords?”

Loyalis: I get pretty focused on the target of the lens. I’ve found this actually brings more long-tail traffic than creating general lenses.

Glen: What’s your favorite SEO trick?

Loyalis: Right now, it’s the tag system on Squidoo. How else can you instantly get 20-40 pages linking to your lens that pass Rank and trust? It’s probably the most under-utilized aspect of Squidoo, but I’m not complaining too loud

Glen: What non-Squidoo book or other resource have you found that helps you with your lenses? (SEO resource, marketing book, Seth Godin post, whatever.)”

Loyalis: I’ve been reading. www.seo-theory.com/wordpress/. It’s an excellent blog by Michael Martinez that really talks about WHY SEO works and the theory behind it instead of ‘10 great linking tips’ kinda stuff. Really gets your brain working outside the box. Warning: it’s pretty technical and if you aren’t a super duper nerd like myself, you may have a little trouble getting into it.

Glen: What common mistake do you see even experienced lensmasters make (that you think you have a solution to)?

Loyalis: Poor Primary Tags. Not using sub headers on modules when appropriate. Using images as the intro module. Poor Grammar.

I’m not perfect at this stuff (especially grammar, I’m sure Glen has edited these answers in quite a few different spots ) but here are some ideas for solutions (unfortunately, most would have to come from HQ).

1. ‘Suggest’ a Primary tag that is NOT the title of the lens.
2. Offer a list of tags for a lens and have a # besides each tag showing how many times the tag had been used.
3. I think Firefox has an ‘auto-spellcheck’ feature somewhere (maybe it’s the google toolbar). Find one and use it.
4. If you can’t read your lens aloud and have it make sense, no-one else can either.
5. Sub Headers are <h2> tags. Google likes those, but not when you just blatantly keyword stuff them.

Glen: What mistakes have you corrected as you’ve built up your Squidoo expertise (answer presented in a live-and-learn type way)?

Loyalis: One of my first attempts at building a ‘lens template’ to create a lot of lenses at once was when SquidVids came out. I think I created 12 or 15 lenses in a few days. I didn’t tag them correctly, include enough content outside the videos, and chose saturated topics. I think I’ve had like 20 visitors TOTAL to those lenses since they were made 8 months ago. In contrast, most new lenses I build now usually shoot up to 20-40 visitors a week apiece (80% of the time) just from some of the tweaks I’ve learned from building a couple hundred lenses.

Squidoo is nothing if not a constant learning process. I look back at lenses I made even 3 months ago in January ‘08 and I go ‘what was I thinking!?!’ . As you learn more about Squidoo, your style changes and adapts. The more you stick at it and watch the results of your actions and try to improve, the better your lenses come out (I know, what a unique idea… but it’s true!)

Glen: What are your three favorite things about Squidoo?

Loyalis: 1. The Responsiveness of HQ, 2. The Community, 3. The money

Glen: Do you have a schedule or management tip for managing multiple lenses?

Loyalis: I usually focus on lenses with more traffic after they first get indexed. Out of every 20 or so lenses I make, I’ll probably have 5-7 that shoot right up to 20+ visits a week. I work on building backlinks to those first.

I also use Yahoo Pipes and some other tools to create various types of RSS feeds so I can promote a bunch of lenses at once instead of one at a time.

As far as content goes, I usually design the lenses to have enough evergreen content that I don’t have to go add content to them unless I find something that fits very well. I’m a launch ‘em and leave ‘em kind of guy. If the signpost (module selection / lens design) doesn’t work, I need to revisit my overall lens design, not content on specific lenses.

Glen: How do you choose when to make several lenses on different angles of the same topic, or when to just make one very long lens?

Loyalis: If I use a lens as a timeline (like www.squidoo.com/squidconomy for the Squidoo payout history or www.squidoo.com/toyotatacoma for my truck) I’ll make a lens long. Besides that, I virtually always choose to make more lenses than one long one. The financial payouts of Squidoo and the way the site is set up provide the stronger incentive for multiple targeted lenses rather than a single broad lens. Being an economics / systems nerd, I love analyzing how incentives work in open marketplaces, this is a classic example. If I can build 10 lenses that will consistently rank in the second highest pay tier in the time it takes you to build one that ranks in the top pay tier, who wins? I do, because if I find the one lens out of those 10 that is doing the best and promote it just a bit more, now I have a lens in the top tier and 9 more in the second tier and you still just have one in the top tier.

I don’t want to have the #1 lens, I want to have the most lenses in the top two pay tiers.

Glen: At what point did you realize how much you loved Squidoo?

Loyalis: I really enjoyed Squidoo right up until the first Giant Squid contest began. Through that contest I REALLY started to love Squidoo and appreciate the community, system, and really cool thing that Seth and the rest of his team have going here.

Glen: What is it about Squidoo – be it a person, feature, reason – that has caused you to stick around?

Loyalis: I think that HQ’s willingness to actually listen to ideas, feedback, and comments and then actually implement the good ones has been a huge factor. Squidoo is not a democracy, and it shouldn’t be. But recognizing that change is good and you can always make something better is a rare find anywhere, online or off. I respect that.

Also, the forum is pretty fantastic. I’ve also become pretty attached to the IRC chat channel that we set up to talk about Squidoo. It’s amazing how fast the ideas flow through there sometimes.

I’ve met some pretty cool people also which always provides good incentive for hanging around

Glen: What is your own favorite lens and why?

Loyalis: Hrmm….. Thats a tough one. I really enjoy my lens on Slam Poet Taylor Mali. He has some pretty powerful stuff. I’ve done some personal finance related lenses that I really like, I need to do more. The tribute lens about Star Wars Boy that I made in honor of Glen when he stopped being forum moderator was also a lot of fun.

I guess I’m more of a fan of the experience than any one lens. The challenge is what I truly enjoy the most.

Glen: If you were given a day at Squidoo HQ what would you do?

Loyalis: Well, I would of course have to arrive in some ridiculous pirate outfit or something.. It would only be fitting. Then I’d be really interested in talking to Gil and Corey and RealNerd a bit about squidoo theory (okay, as much as they could stand). I wouldn’t mind taking Seth out to have a tasty beverage with after the day was over either. I think watching Megan handle the million e-mails and other things she does would be a sight to see for a while also.

Glen: What would be your ideal Christmas gift from Seth Godin?

Loyalis: A trip to HQ to consult on Squidoo, of course!

Glen: Where do you write the content for your lenses?

Loyalis: Almost exclusively at home. I pull information from so many sources and have so many plugins and tools installed on my main computer that I feel dead in the water without them. I Think about ideas pretty much all the time

Glen: You wake up in the middle of the night if a fantastic lens idea,do you: a) hope you remember it in the morning, b) get up and fire up the computer, c) grab the pda or notepad and pen that’s ready and waiting next to the bed for times like these, d) rouse your partner from their blissful slumber and put the responsibility on him/her to remember your grand idea.

Loyalis: Definitely B. I am usually so busy with Squidoo stuff that I’m only getting about 3-4 hours of sleep a night as it is. If it is cool enough to wake me up, it’s worth getting up and acting on it.

Glen: What’s your favorite module and why?

Loyalis: I think the Plexos are my favorite in theory, but I’m still trying to crack the formula to really use them powerfully. I think that’s going to be a big development in Squidoo over the next 6 months, someone’s going to figure out how to use the plexo modules to do some very powerful stuff. The potential is certainly there for it.

As an aside, having a more community-based module development scene would be awesome. I have some great ideas for modules, but there simply isn’t enough examples out there for me to hack together what I want to do. Fluffanutta is a great coder, but if there was a whole community of module builders (similar to what Drupal has) then I think the ROI for HQ could be gigantic..

Glen: If you could spend the day with a fellow lensmaster, who would it be and why?

Loyalis: Wow, there are so many…Fluffanutta, GypsyPirate, Katiyana, Zack, Glen,….. I think the real question is when and where is the first Squidoo convention and how do I get tickets .

Glen: How did you get your username?

Loyalis: I’ve had ‘Loyalis’ since the early days of AIM, I wanted a name without any #s in it so it was easy to remember. Loyalis has just kind of stuck since then.

More recently, I’ve adopted the moniker of ‘Captain Squid’ . I’ve always thought pirates are pretty cool, and the name just fits I think. My fiancee actually helped me come up with that one. It’s working out so far

Glen: Tell us a little about your Squidoo related endeavours: CaptainSquid.com, SellMyLens.com and IsleOfSquid.com

Loyalis: Captain Squid – This originally started as a blog to talk about Squidoo. I noticed that there weren’t a whole lot of blogs out there dedicated to Squidoo and it is something that I really enjoy talking about. Since then I’ve added a ‘learning center’ that has some free training videos for squidoo and some premium content on using affiliate networks to make money with Squidoo. I’ve gotten a great response from it and I really hope to keep it growing. One of my goals with it was to make it as transparent as possible that it really is possible to make some decent money with Squidoo and have a lot of fun doing it. The Chat room that I added a few months ago has really been a boon as well, I’ve learned a boatload there.

Sell My Lens – This is an auction site I set up in May of 2007 for Squidoo Lenses. I recently remodeled it and updated it a bit. With it, I’m really trying to provide a place that’s easy to buy and sell Squidoo lenses from. The current market for lenses for sale is growing, and I really think it will continue to grow over the next year. Buying and selling things in a forum is just not as efficient as having a dedicated place for it. One surprising challenge I’ve encountered with it is that people get so attached to their lenses, they often don’t want to sell them . The resource is there though, and it’s another project I hope people find useful.

Isle of Squid – This is a hand reviewed Squidoo Directory that I built. One of the big problems that I see people having is finding places where they can submit quality lenses to get a little exposure. Every lens that comes through is reviewed by myself or GypsyPirate (who does an awesome job!). I’ve got a few ideas to make it even cooler in the future, but it was a great learning experience for me (still is) and can hopefully help some lensmasters a bit.

On Deck – I’ve got an idea for yet another squidoo-related site, but I may have to code it from scratch (or pay someone to). I’ll let people know a little more as this one develops.

Glen: What’s the topic of the next lens you’re working on?

Loyalis: I’ve got a batch of 15 or so lenses for a niche laid out and waiting to be made. I also have another niche I’m working on that probably needs another 10 or 20 lenses before I feel I have it fully fleshed out.

I may turn this little question and answer session into a lens to tell you the truth . It’s not a lack of ideas, just a lack of time.

Glen: What three words best describes your fondness for Squidoo?

Loyalis: Innovation, Creativity, Potential

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