Hi, here's a method that I hope you all find useful.

As you know, when dealing with Squidoo, you want lenses that have a high ranking in the results of search engines, but also to have a high ranking in the categories of Squidoo itself. We want those pages to send use affiliate money, don't we?

How to Do It:

Select a Squidoo URL that's relevant to your primary keyword. Dead easy. For example: www.squidOO.com/here-is-your-primary-keyword.html. Of course, the most popular the keyword, the best results you'll get.

Keyword Research. VERY IMPORTANT. Look around until you find a Squidoo lens that is similar to your keyword and that ranks well. Then, view the source on your browser page (View->Source if you were wondering how to do it)

Ok, now type all the keywords you see on the source on the Tags of your lens. You can't afford to be lazy and skip some. You have to enter 30 or more keywords in order to make this effective.

Title. Titles and subtitles should be kept related to the content of the lens. Due to the many filters in Squidoo review filters, this might take a few tries before you can come up with something that satisfies them.

Modular Content. Squidoo lenses require 8 modules. I recommend that you make 4 text modules, one video module, one feedback module and two modules that recommend something on Amazon.

The objective is to get that so sought after 5 star rating. For this, you should really add some value content to the modules. The content should be keyword rich while avoiding being spammy or looking like spam. It should be something that people would actually want to read or see. It isn't really hard to pull off as long as you know your topic or do some research.

Links. Ok, this is really up to you. However, I usually follow one of three strategies>

a) Aggressive. Right from the start. People will immediately see your link, so there's no chance they will stop reading before the end and miss it. On the other hand, some reviewers find this unappealing or think immediately that your post is a commercial.

b) Non-aggressive. Right at the end. The complete opposite. People tend to like this approach better but they will miss the link if they don't read down till the end.

c) Indirect. The link doesn't go on your Squidoo lens, but on the youtube video in your video module. Your link will completely be hidden from sight (and won't affect your reviews). However, you must make sure to make the video the main feature of your lens or visitors won't even get to see the link.

Images. More work, but worth it. Not only the image files should be named after the primary keyword, but they should also have relevant tags (right click on them to add extra tags).

You should do both methods for uploading images. Both by uploading them within the module and by using an image hosting server, such as photobucket (where you can add even a few more tags).

The images should be relevant to the content and pleasant to look at. They are there to make your lens look better, so invest some time to make it look nice.
Follow-Up

It's time to put your lens to the test. Send it to everyone you know and ask them to rate it honestly. AVOID RATING EXCHANGES AT ALL COSTS!!! That's just begging to get banned and then all your hard work would have been in vain.

Instead, what you should do is track how your lens is doing. Fortunately, Squidoo will let you know by displaying your lens' ranking on the upper left corner. You should have a ranking by category and by overall. If your ranking gets stuck, then you should run a check and Squidoo itself will let you know how you're doing on every category I mentioned so far. Improve the weak areas and continue tracking and checking up how your lens is doing.

Oh, and if you have articles or other sites, link them to your lens.

Updates.

Squidoo's system will always give some priority to "fresh" content. While you should make ANY change (adding or deleting a comma, for example) everyday to keep your lens "fresh" in the eyes of the system, you should also work on actual new content from time to time to keep readers interested and coming back. That means updating modules or even adding new modules.

That's it. It requires some work but it's worth it as most of it is done only once and then it's just maintenance. Most importantly, you will get results.

I hope this helps you, and if it does, please post up your comments.

Thanks

Web 2.0 websites can be brilliant for ranking for keywords as they do usually hold some sort of authority over other new domain websites!