What is Squidoo?
Squidoo is the best of blogs, content sites, video sites and Networking communities rolled into one website.
Each page (subpage) on the main Squidoo website is called a “lens.” For example, Squidoo.com/Foodforeveryonefoundation.
Squidoo is considered an authority site by the search engines. That means that it is a “high ranking” site. Higher ranking lenses are trusted. As with all websites on which people can create subpages, the evil spammer and “black hats” have tried to monopolize using Squidoo for their own monetary benefit.
The good news is that Seth Godin and the Squidoo team have taken countermeasures to keep the spammers out by shutting down lenses, and even entire accounts, of people who have exhibited ongoing spam activity.
Now that we have discussed the bad possibilities, let’s move onto all the great things you can and should do with Squidoo.
For the first lens you create you should use your company or organization as the name of the lens. As you can see by the above example, I used the organization name Food for Everyone Foundation as my lens name. You should use this same technique for every tool on Change the World U. By doing this you are building your brand and also helping to assure that you dominate the first page of the Search Engines.
Ok - now on to the fun part. What are the different things you can with Squidoo?
Each section that you can add to your lens is called a “module” and there are OVER one hundred modules you can choose from. Just to give you an idea, here are the three favorite modules that I include in every lens. Note that in order to become “live” on Squidoo you must have at least five modules for your lens. So add these three and pick four or five more that sound interesting to you.
1. The text module.
This is the module you use to add your core written content to the lens. You can add up to ten thousand characters per text module. One of the very powerful features of the text module is that you can certain HTML code and it is super easy to link from your lens to your websites using your anchor text of choice. This is called a “back link.” A back link is simply a link from another website page to your website page. The actual text used is called an “anchor text.” Why is this important? Because the Search Engines strongly factor in their rankings how many back links you have in YOUR WEBSITES and what anchor text you use. For a quick example, go to Google and type in Sustainable Gardening Non-Profit and you will see that our Squidoo lens comes up number one.
2. The video module
This module is great because you can add your Youtube videos along with the following video sites:
Youtube, Vimeo, Revver, Howcast, Aniboom, Godtube, Metacafe, MySpace TV, and Veoh.
The really cool thing is that if you do not have any of your own videos you can search within your topic area and find videos to insert. This is a great way to learn about your topic/niche area. You can also follow up with the people who created the videos. This is a great networking technique and a wonderful way to meet new people with your similar interests.
3. Guestbook module.
This is a MUST HAVE module. The guest book allows you to communicate with people who visit your lens. You can allow people to add HTML to their message. Just be sure to watch out for spammers. The other great thing about this module is that you can use it as a Networking tool by visiting the lenses or websites of people who leave messages.
This is just a sample of the many things you can do with Squidoo. Squidoo will help you build your brand and also get more visitors to your website. Above all, think “quality over quantity.” It is better to have five high quality lenses than one hundred lenses which you do not have time to update.
"Change the World U is designed to help people help themselves by helping others." 
