No More Promotional Lenses on Squidoo??
Nah, that’s not what they said!
They said no more overly promotional lenses. That’s a big difference. They have decided to put a limit of the number of outbound links you can have going to any one place ~ which is not really a bad thing.
How many links can I have now?
They are saying you can now only have 9 links per lens going to the same place. That does not mean no more than 9 total links ~ just going to the same place.
These links do not include links to amazon, zazzle, and other sites that have their own modules. They’ve actually created a “white list” of sites you can link to as much as you want from your lenses. Click bank is NOT currently on this white list so make sure if you are promoting a clickbank product you keep the number of links to the sales page below 9 on your lens.
It also does not count links created from an RSS feed. There’s a lot of things that are not included, and you still have a lot of leeway in creating lenses.
For the whole story on new Squidoo terms of service about promotional lenses read it right from the squid’s mouth.
Junk Topics
The other big thing that may affect your promotional lenses is the “junk topics” list. This is a list of topics that Squidoo has decided they will no longer allow. Some of these topics may not seem “junky” to you, but you probably haven’t seen all the lenses that come through on these topics, and I bet some of them are probably pretty junky.
This junk topics list includes things like:
lose belly fat
Free movie downloads
hoodia
acai berry
you can see a much bigger list of “junk topics” here.
Before you panic.
These new terms of service do not go into affect until mid July so you have some time to get your lenses in order. Squidoo has outlined 4 things you can do right now to help get your lenses in compliance by that time.
If you have any questions about getting your lenses in compliance we’ll do our best to answer them or help you find an answer ~ just ask below in the comment section. 
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I just read the post that PPG put on her blog about the policy changes at Squidoo and one thing jumped out at me … “– Are you checking in Google BEFORE you make a lens? Seriously, when you think of a topic, are you going to Google any searching the already indexed lenses that are already on that topic or keyword?
Simply go to Google and type in:
site:squidoo.com your keyword/your product/your topic/etc
If there are already hundreds or thousands of lenses on that keyword or topic, don’t do it.”
I realized that I didn’t do this as part of my campaign prep (I’m working on my first campaign) and when I plugged that thread in with my topic it returned with 3,430 sites. Yikes — there’s more lenses on my topic at Squidoo than there is about diet pills.
While my campaign topic is not on the no-no list of topics, I’m wondering if I should scrap my campaign and start over. I don’t recall this particular part of suggested research mentioned in OWM or here at LISBS … am I missing something?
Hmmm well - here’s my take on that … certainly not the last word or anything.
Just because there are that many lenses on a topic on Squidoo does not = there are that many optimized for the phrase I’m wanting to rank for. Nor does it mean that the ones that ARE optimized will have as many backlinks as I am willing to put out there.
IF when I do a Google search for the phrase I’m looking at there are already Squidoo lenses on page 1, then that’s something to be concerned about. I also quickly check page rank for the rest of the page 1 (without quotes) and make sure they add up to less than 30 total (avg pr 3 or lower).
Andrea
I think this was probably not as much of an issue when Jen wrote the book. Remember, she started working in Squidoo when it was a pretty new site and every marketer in the world hadn’t found it yet.
Personally I check the PR for my kw on the first page of google (without quotes) I also look to see if any of the results on the first 2 pages are Squidoo lenses.
If they are and there is that many other lenses on the same keyword I would do something different.
There are just so many EASY keywords ~ why try to cram a square peg into a round hole when I can just easily find a smaller round peg to slide right in?
Jackie
Does it make a difference if searching for the broad keyword (the general topic) vs. the actual keyword phrase? In my situation there were still a lot of competing pages with my keyword phrase but I didn’t find any squidoo lenses ranking on the first page of Google when I used the broad term or the longtail keyword (with or without quotes.) I decided I’m going to go ahead and complete the campaign if only for the sake of getting one under my belt. It’s learn as you go and I figure I just learned something else to add to my keyword research checklist!
Thanks for your thoughts on this. Much appreciated!!
You should do all your keyword research on your exact keyword phrase. Because this is what you are trying to rank for.
The info you get from Google is most important ~ because if you can’t beat the competition in Google it doesn’t matter how many lenses there is already.
The lens competition is like the last bit of information you look at to decide if it is a keyword/niche worth putting your time and effort into.
Jackie