By the staff of Work Media

Squidoo is an interesting concept – sort-of a cross between an online encyclopedia and a social networking site. It works by letting users create topic-specific web pages called “lenses.” A user can create as many lenses as he wants on any topic he can think of. Active Squidoo users with many high quality lenses can be awarded the title of “Giant Squid.”

To prevent spamming, Squidoo lenses do not automatically show up in the list of lenses or in site searches for lenses. Before that happens, it has to have strong content. So there is definitely work involved. However, Google seems to love Squidoo pages, so if you operate in a category that is very competitive in terms of search traffic, then Squidoo can give you some ammunition and a roundabout way to get your site ranked or your firm’s name seen in competitive markets.

As you set up a Squidoo lens, there are various modules you can install on the page that perform all kinds of different content-related functions. Examples are a YouTube module that displays videos and an Amazon module that displays product results based on a seed keyword. If you don’t take the time to configure some modules, eliminate some automatically installed modules, and add some content, then your lenses will look bad. The lenses that are created by default will do nothing for your promotional efforts. So you have to spend some time manually setting up your lenses.

As I stated above, Squidoo lenses are not automatically added to the site directory or search of lenses. So after creating lenses, it is a good idea to link to them from your main site or use another technique to make sure search engine spiders find your lenses. Ironically, even if your lenses are not considered good enough to show up in Squidoo searches, they can still show up in Google searches.

The site has a very high Google PageRank, so a link from Squidoo to your site can be quite valuable. This can easily be accomplished through the use of tags. Every lens is tagged with relevant keywords. A tags page on the site that features your tags will link back to your lens. Your lens can in turn link to your main web site. Pass the PageRank, please.

Squidoo is very new so if you get in now there is still a lot of opportunity. For example, there are many rich keywords available that have not been used to create URLs for lenses yet. Every lens set up for a specific keyword gives you the possibility of greatly improving your visibility for that keyword. So go sign up for an account and start creating some lenses.

For ideas of pages to create, you might start by combining your geographic market with your practice areas. For example:

Houston + automobile accidents
Los Angeles + workers compensation
New York + wrongful death

You get the idea. Create pages with these types of names and then give them some relevant content combined with Squidoo’s modules. The result will be strong, content-heavy pages that rank highly for keywords related to your firm.