I see what you are saying. For me though there are 2 factors that have me leaning towards hubpages (though I also love squidoo) 1. I quite enjoy the confrontational aspects - and tbh I have only seen it in the off topic forums on things like politics and religion. But then I have only properly been using about a month or so 2. I find hubpages rank better (perhaps because they are less generous with their linking). I have tested 30 or so lenses and 30 or hubs of roughly similar keyword criteria and have found that the hubs require a lot less work to get ranking As an aside you say you find squidoo more 'transparent'... I disagree. When you look at the stats it is almost impossible to work out how Squidoo works out income, whilst Hubpages are very clear... they give 60% of the page views to your adsense (and other codes). Considering they also allow use of Google analytics on your hubs you can get a proper understanding of how many views you are getting, what your income is, whether hubpages aren't delivering the page views % they say they will etc This isn't meant to be a Squidoo bash, I love them both, just a take on how I see it! p.s. nice to have a proper SEO conversation on DP!
In terms of getting visitors and SEO for me Squidoo is as important as EzineArticles. Plus it is much easier to start - you can join Squidoo and publish quality unique articles, adding images and feeds (it is really easy) right away. So, +1 for Squidoo. And yes, it is huge fun!
We have multiple lenses what are ranked #1 in google for decent terms, and some have gathered backlinks because of it and have PR2-3. So now we have something ranked #1 for a secondary keyword phrase what links to our site, and a good dofollow link. Cant go wrong, it just takes effort in building a great lense.
using squido is really helpful for backlinks because squido is a quality site that can give a decent backlinks to your website.
Squidoo can be one of the best places to obtain a link, but you should also understand how it works in order to gain maximum benefit. If you do not have an active squidoo account already, you are going to have to participate in the community, and that is accomplished simply by commenting on other people’s lenses. You should always check if the lensmaster has enabled the no follow on their comments, if they have, then don’t waste your time commenting on that lens. Squidoo’s domain is extremely high in authority, and trust, and by that I mean you would compare it so sites like adobe, or Wikipedia. Next comes the page authority. If you are new you will not have any page authority, but the great thing is, it’s very simple to accomplish. When you comment on someone elses lens that is “do-follow†you are gaining authority from that lens to your members page, the more comments you do the more authority will be passed. Once you have published a lens, a link to that lens will appear in your members page, and that members page then passes authority to your lens page. The seomoz toolbar shows how much authority is on a given lens, so it would be best practice to only comment on the lenses with higher page authority. Now your lens is very powerful, you can add your keyword anchor text link and point it to your site, and it’s as simple as that. P.S. Google like IP diversification, so I would not bother having more than 1 lens pointing to your site.
Squidoo and Hubpages look similar to each others but on Hubpages by default you can use Adsense but with Squidoo, you can't. Pages are indexed with Hubpages and Squidoo both, similar to other websites but I would say as they are authority websites so there is high chance for getting indexed.
Squidoo lenses are certainly do follow - Many of my lens are on the first page of google. SEO is very important to gain high rankings.
If you comment on lenses just to add a link back to your lensmaster page, you're thinking in extremely short-sighted and narrow ways. That's the attitude of a spammer or self-promoter and it won't get you anywhere in the long-run because you're missing out the biggest use and value of these comments. The main purpose of commenting is to give feedback to other lensmasters, and to build community on the site. A better approach is to leave intelligent, highly relevant comments that will help the lensmasters improve the lens, and that will encourage them and give them useful feedback. This will impress both the lensmasters who read the comments, and other readers who find your comments intelligent and want to see what lenses you have contributed or created. It will make people more likely to visit your lenses. I've often noticed that after a single well-placed comment, I see the views on my lenses edge up, and I often have a number of new people "squidlike" the lens. This boosts the ranking of the lens and makes it more likely for others to discover the lens both on the site and through search engines. More importantly, it helps you build a positive relationship with other lensmasters. What's often more valuable than the squidlikes and traffic is the feedback that you will receive from other lensmasters. Their participation can often create dialogue, conversation, or participation on your lenses discussion and other interactive modules, and they can also give you concrete tips of how to improve your lens or make it more useful or attractive. Whenever you get on your one-track-mind kick thinking about pagerank, you shortchange yourself and overlook all the most effective approaches to web marketing -- which all involve connecting with people on a genuine human level.
I have so much to say about your insulting reply, but to be honest, I don't want to waste my time with people like you. Nobody said i was spamming, you just made an assumption. My methods are tried an tested. How about you? Squidoo is all about networking, and in order for that to happen, you need to leave comments. Why would you just assume that i spam comment? jeez, some people are such idiots.
he made me think for a minute if squidoo has also started adding nofollow to links, thanks to you for replying to it
Well, I do not personally use ti before for getting traffic. I can tell you about squidoo review after using it. But if it true that Google prefer top squidoo pages in top search result then there is no harm in trying it.
timur1505, you said: "You should always check if the lensmaster has enabled the no follow on their comments, if they have, then don’t waste your time commenting on that lens." This implies that your comment is insincere. A sincere comment is one left with the intention of providing feedback, of connecting and communicating with the lensmaster leaving the comment. If you care at all about the nofollow attribute in the links in comments, it is a clear sign that you are leaving a comment solely for the purpose of self-promotion. It's a sign that you're not respecting the lensmaster who took the time to create the lens and add a comment module. This is the definition of spamming. I'm not trying to insult you here, I'm simply pointing out the basic facts and making a simple observation. You will get much farther if you can get beyond this attitude! If you are really being sincere and operating with integrity, you would not make a comment like the one you made, about it being a waste of time to post comments when there is a nofollow attribute on the links. I am also someone who cares a lot about testing the methods I've used. When it comes to website promotion, I've noticed something time and time again: when you start thinking about search engines and stop thinking about connecting with humans on a genuine, respectful level, you fail. Miserably. The times I've left comments when my motivations have not been fully respectful, the times when I was doing things like looking in the code to check for nofollow attributes, those are the times I was wasting my times. Those are the times my comments did not get approved, and I offended webmasters or bloggers. Purge your mind of the desire to self-promote. Yes, you're on a web marketing forum, yes, you want to promote your website. But you'll get a lot farther by approaching people as human beings. It's a zen thing. You only get what you're looking for when you stop trying so hard to get it. Just let go and live naturally.
Cazort, I agree that everything should be done naturally, and that is the best way if you can produce quality content for something that is interesting, but let me tell you something, if you ONLY work on garnering links naturally, you will fail. Whether you write an ezinearticle, squidoo lens, dmoz listing, blog commenting, this is all manipulation, you do that to gain links, nothing else. I on the other hand will write a squidoo lens for traffic, for my potential customers, for the link, I take full benefit from it. When I comment on someone else’s lens, yes, I have the benefit of the link in my mind, and why not? It’s one of the benefits right? You need to screw your head on correctly. Like I said, squidoo is all about networking. Go and ask the 100 top members, and they will tell you the same thing. I will repeat it again, I DO NOT WASTE TIME ON NO FOLLOW LINKS. Why should I give them my time? My content? But receive no benefits? PS. your tea review site is full of manipulative links, but I guess you're just a hypocrite.
I am by no means a Squidoo expert, I have just done a few lenses, in order to try it out, but I was quite pleased with what the links did for my sites. It seems Google likes Squidoo quite a lot, and having a few links there definitely boosted my sites a bit. So it is worth a try! (I never checked if it gave me any traffic though)