As we discussed before, there are many great ways to find links for your website. Squidoo will be today’s focus.

Squidoo is a rapidly-growing site that lets ordinary people build their own pages devoted to unique topics. These pages are called “lenses,” and each user is called a “lensmaster.” This article will teach you how to become a lensmaster, create a lens for your business, and get traffic to your website through Squidoo. Let’s get started!

Sign up

Creating an account at Squidoo is extremely simple. Go to the sign up page and follow the easy directions. Enter some basic info about yourself, and click the “Continue” button.

Note: When entering your personal info, be sure to enter what you want internet users to see. Thus, your “desired username” might be a condensed form of your company name, or the username you use on other public websites. Maintain your brand.

You have now registered. I told you it was simple.

Create a lens

Now you can be a lensmaster. Click the button to “Create a Lens.” There are several steps to the process, so we’ll take them one at a time.

1. Enter your lens’ subject. What you select is up to you, but don’t forget your brand and what you’re actually marketing. If you sell doorknobs, you might enter “Find the best doorknobs at Bob’s Knob Shop.”

2. Now Squidoo wants to know what type of lens you need. The lens is customizable later, so we’ll go with the first choice – “I want to get the word out about…” It provides the basic info you need to get started.

3. This step is crucial for marketing. First, select a title for your lens. Squidoo enters your subject by default. You might leave that or slightly alter it. You’ll want to have your company name in the title and a keyword or two, such as your primary product.

Second, you get to pick the URL for your lens. For Bob’s doorknobs, you’d enter something like “doorknobs-bobs-knob-shop” You cannot enter spaces; only use lowercase letters and hyphens. Be sure you like what you pick, since it’s not changeable.

Third, pick a category for your lens. If your product or service fits in one of the categories like “cars & trucks” or “entertainment,” select that. As a fall back, select “business.”

Fourth, rate your lens. Since this is a business site, you should definitely make it fit the “G” rating. You want as much exposure as possible.

4. Enter keywords for your lens. These help search engines and users find your lens. Make sure they’re good. For Bob’s Knob Shop, the “best keyword” would be “doorknobs.” Go ahead and enter the optional ones. Maybe pick “knobs,” “door knobs,” and “bob.”

After you enter the security code, you’re ready to see the lens. Click “Done!”

Edit the basics

Squidoo now takes you to the “Lensmaster Workshop” for your lens. This is where you can tweak your lens. It’s your lens’ control panel.

There are lots of buttons on this page, but don’t be overwhelmed. I’ll walk you through the basics, and you’ll see it’s not difficult.

This image at right shows the four things we’ll focus on, with little red numbers by each one.

1. Write an introduction. Click on the “edit” button to modify your lens’ introduction. This text will display at the top of the lens. Use it to hook your visitor and show him why he should keep reading. You can also use the editing tool to create a link to your main website or blog. Click “Save” when you’re done.

2. Write your bio. Click the “edit” button by the default bio, and write a bit about yourself. You can also create links in this field, perhaps to your blog’s “about” page or a similar page on your company’s website. While you’re in the bio, upload a photo to help personalize the lens.

3. Add your RSS feed. If you have a blog, this is an easy way to give your lens fresh content. Click on the “edit” button and fill out the fields. The most important one is the actual URL for your RSS feed. Default values for the other fields should work fine, and you can optionally create a catchy title and description for the content.

4. Publish! Squidoo will not make your changes live until you click the “Publish!” button in the upper right. Once you click this, the public can see your modified lens. You can view your lens by using the “View this page” link, directly above “Publish!”

Customize like crazy

Even on your basic lens, Squidoo includes many different “modules” for you to use. You can customize all of these in a similar manner. The “edit” button lets you configure them. Move them up and down on the page with the little orange arrows. Remove a module by clicking the “x”. To add a module, click “Add Modules” at the top of the page.

There are lots of module possibilities. You can add photos from Flickr, plain text, lists, YouTube videos, and much more. Provide fun and interesting content for visitors, but always tie it back to your brand.

The benefits

Squidoo provides a free way to create a fun entry-point for your main website. More internet users are discovering this site everyday, and that means they will be more likely to find you. Squidoo has a good Google PageRank (currently 6), which means that links from this domain are valuable.

You can create a basic Squidoo lens in 10 or 15 minutes. Why not give it a try?

I started my business about 6 months ago, and I haven’t had to spend a dime on marketing or advertising. Every one of my clients has come from a referral. Keep in mind however, that I do this part time and don’t need to keep my pipeline full of clients. Currently I’m booked for the next two months with web design projects.

How do you go about getting some of this free marketing? Open your mouth! Whenever I get towards the end of a project I say something like, “Now that we are getting close to making your site perfect, who else do you know that needs a website?”

That sentence has two main parts. First, I’m telling them that we’re about done, which they like. Second I’m assuming the sale by not asking them a closed ended question. Without that question I would still be looking for clients and spending money on marketing!

Open your mouth, ask for a referral and your customers will open theirs and give you your next client!

Check out the site and let me know what you think about it!

This store had the regular free hot dogs and Pepsi’s to thank their customers. However, this store also put on display these large 4′ x 4′ water cooler on wheels.

These water cooler was the center of attention under the tent. The temperature was about 104 degrees that day, but under the tent with the water cooler it seemed to be about 85 degrees.

By putting this water cooler on display, they showed the real life uses of a product that normally doesn’t get turned on until you get home.

By the way, they sold all 4 of the units they had in stock and took orders for 7 more just in that day! Up until that hot day, they had sold about 1 per month.

Next time you have a product that would sell if it were demonstrated, put it on display turned on a let people see how it really works!