Warning: Choose Your Squidoo Lens Topics With Caution

[XRay]

I'm posting this for those of you who use Squidoo for affiliate marketing or backlinking purposes.

As you guys know (or should know) Squiddy recently adopted a new policy change on 7/17/09 where among other changes, certain topics are now considered spam & longer permitted - weight loss, x rated topics, forex, win back your ex, music downloads, any 'miracle' cure topics, etc.

Here's the link to the policy update lens:

http://www.squidoo.com/squidoo-policy-update

FYI, the update does NOT give a list of every topic they consider spammy, but from personal exp. over the last few days, I can tell you the new spam filter is VERY sensitive. Topics that no reasonable white hat would ever consider as spam are getting hit with spam reviews.

So if any of you have 4 or 5 star lenses on 'affiliate marketing' or on any 'affiliate marketing program(s)', I would quickly move them to another platform before the Squid locks them. A Squidoo staffer replied to a post re: the spam filter -- said they will be locking spam topic lenses soon [I moved two 5 star affiliate marketing program lenses to Blogger over the weekend & am adding the individual lens modules as scheduled blog posts every 3 days].

The other thing you want to watch out for is the Clickbank products your linking to from your lenses. They're not banning CB links, but I imagine that if you're linking to products in niches they consider spammy, you'll trigger the spam filter.

 

[Hell389]

Lets take down squidoo, I don't like squidoo mods attitude, they have locked my lenses before.Anyone here like squidoo ?

 

[redim]

hi:

I created my first lens about 1 week ago. not a good time i guess to create a spam lens on the topic of resveratrol related stuff. admittedly i did not bother to read the tos, but rather searched and found other lenses on similar topics and simply modeled my lens on the ones i found. not in terms of content, but rather layout and structure and link density and diversity. also added links to utube vids.

given i modelled my lens on others i found, i thought all would be ok. but i was wrong. my lens lasted 2 days, then blocked. no warning or coaching to improve. also my ip address was and is blocked. so i can not login to create a new lens or create a new account.

now, i accept that i breached the tos of squidoo. but i do not accept their method of dealing with breaches of their terms.

for example, i also created a hubpage. followed other hubpage examples in the topic of my hub. my hubpage did in fact breach their tos, but to their credit, hubpages gave me a warning, encouraging me to read the tos and edit my hub, which i did, and my hub was live again within 2 days. the hub is on the same original topic, i just reduced the number of links and their placement.

so, hubpages at least gave me a warning and some coaching. squidoo on the other hand just blocked my lens and banned my ip address. so now can not create another account. sure, i made a mistake, but now punished for as long as i remain in the same ip address.

So, others may also need to manage the current squidoo situation. have a lens locked is one thing, but having your ip address blocked preventing access to your account or the creation of a new account, is a completely different matter.

 

[tsmooth]

Thanks for the heads up!!

 

[hustlingrind]

I don't even mess with squidoo anymore because with any traffic worth getting you end up top 20 in your category and draw attention.

 

[CosmicDebri]

It was and still is a good place to get backlinks to your money sites, but not for a host of overhyped topics.

I can kind of see their point, I mean, how many sites do they need on acai berry?? What new stuff can be said or added to some of those topics??

But they do seem to be heavy handed about locking sites without warnings and stuff..... their automation efforts leave a lot to be desired....

 

[XRay]

It was and still is a good place to get backlinks to your money sites, but not for a host of overhyped topics.

I can kind of see their point, I mean, how many sites do they need on acai berry?? What new stuff can be said or added to some of those topics??

But they do seem to be heavy handed about locking sites without warnings and stuff..... their automation efforts leave a lot to be desired....

I'm with you CosmicDebri ... my primary use of Squidoo (and Hubpages) is for backlinking purposes. But there's still plenty of opportunity to make some affiliate bucks with it in spite of the policy update

Yeah some affiliates messed things up for certain niche topics. And that spam filter is way too sensitive.

To update my initial post, I was able to overcome the spam filter by researching keyword synonyms & doing another rewrite for one of my remaining lenses. So thiis is my advice to those of you who still have affiliate marketing and/or make money related lenses and want to keep your content there: remove all references to 'affiliate marketing' and 'make money' from your content. This goes for amazon and ebay modules as well.

I hope this helps.

 

[Xyon81]

is there a decent guide to what you should put on your squidoo pages to get it indexed by google.

 

[zebrahat]

To update my initial post, I was able to overcome the spam filter by researching keyword synonyms & doing another rewrite for one of my remaining lenses. So thiis is my advice to those of you who still have affiliate marketing and/or make money related lenses and want to keep your content there: remove all references to 'affiliate marketing' and 'make money' from your content. This goes for amazon and ebay modules as well.

I hope this helps.

I would concur, none of my lenses have been affected thus far, as there is no mention of marketing or money making on them, and most do not directly link to affiliate pages. Desguise the outlinks or use linkbucks urls, link to free info products (available via optin/email submit), use CPM ads, etc., there are many ways to still make money.

 

[XRay]

is there a decent guide to what you should put on your squidoo pages to get it indexed by google.

You can find out what you need to know for free - just model the top 100 Squidoo lenses.

 

[XRay]

I don't even mess with squidoo anymore because with any traffic worth getting you end up top 20 in your category and draw attention.

I know what you mean but IMO drawing attention to yourself & being copied are the price you pay for the success you create.