Groups on squidoo

[Katinka Hesselink]

I've been annoyed at squidoo groups for a while. What groups essentially do (especially the kind where hardly any lenses get featured on the group page) is funnel a LOT of link love to the group page and the lenses featured there.

That is: the groupmaster gets free links to their lenses, and the members don't get any wiser.

This is why I wanted to highlight great groups (you know the kind where your lens actually does have a chance to be permanently featured). I started my great groups lensography.

Recently I went a step further and added several groups to my portfolio.

So far I have the following groups. They are all great groups: in each you get a chance to get your lens featured. If not by me, then in the link plexo. In the smaller groups all lenses get featured (they do have to be good enough to get in obviously). In the larger groups the link plexo gives you a chance to feature your lens - and yes, that's a backlink that google counts.

So here are my current groups:

Humor and Hilarity Group: This group is designed for family-friendly funny lenses.

Nederlandse lenzen. In the idle hope that there are Dutch lensmasters here: if you've made lenses in the Dutch language, please submit them. So far it's filled with just my own lenses, but that can change.

Holland - aka The Netherlands: for lenses about my home country: The Netherlands. Not just be me, if you can believe it :)

Women and Girls Shopping Headquarters. Just what it says: full of lenses with products for girls and women.

Sleep Disorders and Insomnia Solutions. For lenses about that tricky problems so many people face: how to get to sleep and stay asleep for a reasonable amount of hours during the night.

Consciousness, Awareness, Psychology & Neurology headquarters. Now we're slowly moving into my niche, but with a twist. This group is meant for lenses that inform about consciousness, psychology or neurology. Not just inspiration, but information.

A lot of people were entering spiritual growth lenses to the previous group. So I started: Spiritual Growth, Healing, Awareness and Self Help HEADQUARTERS for self help lenses, spiritual inspiration etc.

Close to my heart is this group: Interfaith - religious dialog, if we can't try to get along, how will the world ever get peace. [All we are saying... is give peace a chance...]

I also started three groups around religions I've made many lenses about.

Christianity Religion Headquarters

Buddha & Buddhism

[edit] My newest group is one devoted to spiritual gifts and products. Most of the 46 lenses are my own, but others are also welcome and stand as much a chance of being featured as my own lenses. [/edit]

[Katinka Hesselink]

Yes - generally speaking there are only two reasons to join a group:
- the link from the group page (if you can get one, which is why small groups, or groups with link plexo's are to be preferred)
- the topical link: having the keyword of the group on your lens may help some; the link from the group page (again) being on topic would be a help, especially in google.

[ValerieR]

thefluffanutta, your 'A Guide to Groups' is interesting. I would tend to think then, that very specific Groups are a better group to join if your lens fits the group, then Groups that say "Free for everyone to join" (which I've always avoided).

[thefluffanutta]

With the demise of tag pages, groups have the important role of passing PageRank around Squidoo, though only to lenses that they feature on their homepages.

This lens has tips to help you find relevant groups to submit your lenses to: A Guide to Groups.

[Dean McNamara]

It is interesting to learn the SEO benefits are that good. I must say I haven't found them to do much else for me :-/

[Katinka Hesselink]

The thing is: groups that actually do feature our lenses can be an enormous help to our SEO efforts. After all: they have links relating to our subject matter pointing towards them, which makes a link from a niche group a very valuable link. And while it may be better for our ego to have a lens featured (picture and all) for the link it doesn't matter if it's a link plexo instead.

[ValerieR]

Katinka, I think you've bridged a subject that has hardly been touched upon. I would tend to agree that many groups appear to be more self-promotional. Thanks for pointing out what you consider better groups.