March of 2006 saw the launch of an incredibly successful Web 2.0 site, Squidoo.com. This innovative community allows anyone to build a page (known as a “lens”) which offers just about any kind of information to visitors that the lens master sees fit. Squidoo pages feature built-in income generators, such as Adsense and affiliate programs such as Amazon or eBay (which the lens master shares with the Squidoo).

What many people don’t know about Squidoo is that lenses have a tendency to earn top Google rankings in the search engines. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that top Google rankings mean lots of traffic. Many webmasters pay a small fortune to get pages indexed within the top Google rankings.

Before you go crazy and start building hundreds of Squidoo lenses, it’s a good idea to have a look at some of the more popular lenses. Whenever you are entering some kind of new market it’s usually a good idea to take a look at the competition. Look at many of the top ranked lenses and see what the owners are doing with their lenses.

After all, lenses that are top ranked have to be doing something right. You should next take the time to write out a plan of what exactly your lens is going to look like. Decide who your lens will target and what kind of content you will provide on your lens.

The next step is to do some keyword research for your chosen niche and uncover some low competition keywords that you can use for your Squidoo lens. The low competition keywords you uncover will serve as the headline for your lens. Having Squidoo lens with the keyword you are targeting in the title will give you a huge head start in battle for search engine rankings.

The best keyword research tools available on the market right now are nichebot.com and Keyword Elite. I personally use nichebot.com and their research tools are absolutely top notch.

For your Squidoo lens to do really well you need to add as much high quality content to your lens as possible. You can actually use articles you may have written in the past to use on your lens if you are not up to the task of creating new content. Fresh private label rights content is a great way to get content as well but make sure that you purchase the freshest content possible. Adding some professional graphics can go a long way in making your lens look more professional. Consider hiring a graphic designer to create a few unique graphics for your lens.

The best way to use Squidoo to send traffic to your website is to use the RSS feed module. The RSS feed module is an option offered to you when you are first building your lens. All you really need to do to make the RSS feed work for you is to load the RSS feed from your website or blog and the Squidoo lens will then update automatically as you update your website. After you have started a few lenses you should start to notice a substantial improvement to your websites traffic.