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Major search engines like Google evaluate your incoming links to help determine your search engine positions. However, a link is much more than just a ranking factor. A quality inbound link can bring your website a steady stream of targeted traffic and buyers. You can use a Squidoo “lens” (explained below) to increase the number of authoritative inbound links to your site, position yourself as an industry expert, announce the latest news within your niche, or promote your podcasts.

How do I Squidoo? Well in this part we shall find out more about what is Squidoo and the meaning of the terms lens and lensmaster.

What’s Squidoo?

With Squidoo anybody can make their own web page (known as “lens” in Squidoo) for anyone to see. Squidoo is absolutely free!

Seth Godin is an authority in marketing and has published many books on the subject. He is also the founder of Squidoo and strongly believes that “Everyone is an expert.” If you are skeptical about this, then you should read his Everyone is an expert free eBook.

What’s a lens?

Seth says that a lens is a place where a stranger can go to get insight and meaning - and then leave that site and go somewhere else. Leave to go back to work, or leave to read your best blog posts, or leave to go transact somewhere else online. A lens should be the best place to start. An online lens is a page, a single page, that highlights one person’s view of the Web - not the whole Web, just one tiny part of it. A lens is a guide. Provide the meaning, and the surfer will go ahead and take the action. Lenses don’t hold content. They point to content. And like all good guides, they comment on what they point to.

What’s a lensmaster?

Seth calls the person who makes a lens a “lensmaster”. A lensmaster uses the tools available online to provide links, feeds, abstracts, and lists to users who are trying to make sense of a topic. These are users in search of meaning, users in a hurry, users who won’t wait. Lensmasters are individuals with strong personal agendas, expertise, causes, products and even opinions. They are not employed or directed by a corporation. Lensmasters build their lenses for fun, or for ego, or to drive traffic to their corporate sites or their blogs. Lensmasters build lenses to raise money for charity or to earn royalty checks for themselves.

Squidoo will host your lens for you at no cost, makes it easy to build and you can even generate a profit. Your royalty payments can be sent directly to you or to your favorite charity or organization.

In the next part, we shall learn how to start a lens and so till then think about your area of expertise. Squidoo makes it possible for you to write about it.

Commenters Note: I use the “DoFollow” plug-in.