Q & A: Using The Lensroll Feature

You've got questions...The Giant Squids have got answers!

Our first question comes from Lensmaster Jimmie, a homeschooling mom who loves to teach and learn, especially using living books and lapbooks....and speaking of lapbooks, check out Jimmie's fabulous Top-Rated Lens Lapbooking!

Jimmie's question is answered by Giant Squid thefluffanutta who is not only a Top-Rated Lensmaster but creator of SQUIDUtils.com!

Jimmie's Question-

On the new maxed layout, the lensroll initially shows only 5 text links from the entire list. To see the whole lensroll, a viewer has to click on MORE. Do you think that people will do that? Do you take that into account when lensrolling? If so, how does it affect which lenses you choose?

And say, for example, you have a few niches among your lenses. Do you lensroll only Niche A lenses to other Niche A lenses? Or would you cross over some Niche A lenses onto Niche B lensrolls? And along those lines, let's say that you have a high ranking lens in Niche A. Would you purposely choose some of your worst performing lenses in other niches to lensroll to that winner just in an effort to get more traffic? Or would you lensroll (in the top five) only your very best performing and very closely related lenses?

thefluffanutta's Answer-

Lenses used to show the whole list, but with the new lens design only the first 5 get shown (and I mean the first 5 to be lensrolled). I suspect that many visitors will not read beyond these first few.

The Lensroll serves two purposes; it sends traffic to other lenses, and it also creates links to other lenses. Search engines like to see links, and the more links a lens has, the better it ranks. However, those links must be relevant.

When choosing lenses to Lensroll, it's best to focus on the ones that are a) most relevant to your content, and b) are built to a high quality. The relevance issue is important, as the keywords in the URL, title and the lens itself have a direct impact one which keywords your lens will rank for.

Many Lensmasters are tempted to Lensroll their own lenses onto each lens, which is not the right thing to do. By all means, Lensroll your own lenses, but only if they are relevant. If you do not have any of your own lenses that you can Lensroll, then find someone else's that fits. Or, build more lenses.

If you have a question please e-mail me to be featured in this column!

Comments

[Jimmie]

Very helpful answer! Thanks! I think I will go do some lensroll clean up, making sure those top five especially are super relevant lenses.

[thefluffanutta]

Hmm... I think I need to do the same!