Oh! Squidoo AND a Blog…

I swear sometimes I must be the slowest person on the planet. I know when I joined Squidoo, I read all kinds of tips on promoting your lenses and a biggie was to blog about them. What I didn’t realize was that, in return, your lenses could also help your blog. At least, I think that could be the case. I’m still new to the whole blogging thing so stick with me here while I think this through, but last night, while working away on research for a lens, I noticed something – something I hadn’t seen before.

I have Page Rank enabled on my Google toolbar which tells you the Google rank of any web page you’re visiting. My little blog has been at zero, of course, for…well, the whole three months that I’ve been working on it. But not tonight. Tonight that little bar says I’m at a Google Page Rank of 2! I know it’s not 5 or 6 – or even 3. But it’s not ZERO anymore!

Happy Dance

Now, I wish I knew how that happened. I understand the concept of how page rank is determined, but I want to know how exactly I achieved an increase in page rank for THIS blog. I have only three back links, I have no significant volume of content yet and my mom is my biggest fan (and I love her for that and a whole host of other reasons). My mom is good – in fact she’s amazing – but I doubt she’s the single reason for the page rank lift.

Of course, I can’t let anything go without trying to figure out the “how” so I did a little digging. While I still don’t have the answer, I did have a major a-ha moment. I went and checked the Page Rank for a few of my Squidoo lenses. Most also have a Page Rank of zero but there are a couple that draw in some strong Google traffic and those lenses have Page Ranks of 2 and 3. And you know what? I wrote those pages. I can edit them all I want. I can put a dofollow link on those lenses back to this blog. Those lenses get pretty good traffic and now they’ve just shown me what additional benefit I can gain from having both a Squidoo presence and a blog. I can link them to this blog. Right? I’ve already done the opposite but I can share a little Google juice from those lenses over here to this blog. That’s a really good reason for having Squidoo lenses that rank well and get good visitors – even if they don’t earn very much money. Heck, even if you donate the money you do earn on Squidoo to charity (which you can do, by the way, directly through Squidoo).

I continue to be amazed at how each day gives me a nugget of new information. It’s okay – laugh at my naivety. I can handle it. it doesn’t take much to keep me entertained and I’m good with that. Excuse me, though, while I go off to do a little happy dance right now on my own account.