It’s been two weeks since I did a “Squidoo And SEO” experiment so here are my observations with regards to Google rankings, LensRank and how you can take advantage with Long Tail keywords.

1) Visitors
Squidoo provides a simple page to show your lens’ statistics, including the number of visitors for a given period, traffic sources (i.e. from Google, other websites or direct type-ins) and tags/keywords that were searched on Squidoo to reach your lens. The Singapore SEO lens received only 34 visitors altogether, likely because the lens is Singapore-centric and SEO being a niche subject.

2) LensRank
LensRank is how Squidoo ranks the lenses since there can be more than one lens for each subject - much like how Google ranks their search results. Can you game Squidoo’s LensRank? By participating in lens exchanges, you can easily raise your overall LensRank from the 170,000 range to the 1,000 range with just 10 votes. The biggest challenge is maintaining your LensRank because Squidoo recalculates it everyday and actually uses a number of factors in their algorithm, e.g. ratings, lensmaster reputation, CTR, lens freshness, outbound clicks and revenue generated - from the last two weeks! As can be seen below, my LensRank surged from #16,980 to #1,488 and then gradually fell to #5,689. Personally, I don’t see the advantage of having a strong LensRank unless you can rank in the Top 100.

3) Google Rankings
This is the part I’m most interested in because it proves the amount of “trust” Google has on Squidoo and which is why the lenses rank favourably for less competitive searches. You can see from the screenshot below that my lens ranked #6 out of 1,660,000 results in just two weeks for the phrase “singapore seo”. This is important because the phrase is targetted by local SEO consultants and if it can out-rank their results, just imagine what you can do with Long Tail keywords (hint). One observation is that a new lens tends to get a temporary boost when ranked on Google for the first time. The lens then disappears from the search results for a couple of days and re-appears again with even better rankings.

In conclusion, this experiment is proof that certain websites tend to achieve a higher rankings (read: trust) on Google, courtesy of the sheer amount of backlinks and fresh content they receive, e.g. Squidoo, Wikipedia and EzineArticles. By leveraging on this knowledge and by targetting less competitive local or Long Tail keywords, you now have a new and powerful yet FREE online marketing channel.