We all know that updating our Squidoo lenses is important. Google likes fresh content is one reason, another reason is it helps our lensrank. One thing that is worth remembering, when updating, is to check any dates of events that you give on the web page.

This was brought home to me just yesterday. I was updating my page Historic City of York, England when I noticed the section called Festivals in York. In it I’d put the actual dates of the festivals for the year I wrote the page – that was 2008! That’s dreadful and I am embarrassed to admit I was so careless.

Now for the excuses: this was one of my early lenses and I’d forgotten I’d put in precise dates – how stupid is that? When I’ve updated it in the past, I’ve obviously just skimmed that section without reading it at all.

When I use the Countdown module, I remember to check it. When I use it on a Christmas page, I make a point of changing the year soon after Christmas. I’m so annoyed with myself for not noticing I’d left these old dates in place even though I’d put links to the festival websites so people could check dates.

Of course, I’ve changed them now. I haven’t put in specific dates, some of the festivals haven’t published them yet for next year, but I’ve given the month they usually take place but kept the links in place. I’ve also checked that all the links work.

I’m not telling this story to punish myself! I hope that reading this might remind you to check dates and links on older pages.

One of my most personal pages, I Had a Mini-Stroke and What Happened Next, was featured on Squidoo Lens Review which is an honour particularly as the review was so complimentary.

Writing about something as personal as my health was very difficult. In my daily life I don’t go around discussing my health with people I don’t know so writing about it on the web is even more outrageous. In fact, I’m a very private person and don’t really discuss my life much with people I don’t know well. Writing about my life was a big step to take but it is one I recommend to anybody who is knew to Squidoo or other web writing.

You don’t have to reveal details of your health or anything very private, if you don’t want to do so. Bringing some personality to your writing, though, helps people enjoy reading your pages and to like you, hopefully. Just express an opinion on some aspect of the subject or write about a personal experience even if it is just how easy or difficult you found a product to use.

If you are writing a book review, tell us if you enjoyed the book and why you like it. Don’t keep it impersonal. I want to know if it’s worth buying and if you don’t tell me whether you liked it or not, then how can I know?

You can even inject some personality into a recipe page. Tell us if you make the dish regularly and how much you and others enjoy it. Think of ways to include some personality into anything you produce online. Of course, on most pages you don’t need to do this all the way through, just when it is appropriate.

This week I’ve written two new Squidoo lenses (web pages). The first one was in response to a suggestion on Get Cracking With Bonnie and Robin to write about a specific fear so I wrote about my dental phobia. As I explain, it started when I was a child in response to something a dentist said to me and it continued for many years. It was desperation that finally led me to conquering it with the help of a very understanding, patient and sensitive dentist. You can read more about it on Fear of the Dentist.

Other pages on this topic featured on the Get Cracking page are:

• Overcoming the Fear of Poverty
• Fear of Insects
• The Fear of Bees
• Needle Phobia

I’d recommend visiting the Get Cracking page if you are stuck for a subject to write about. Even if you haven’t got writer’s block, you might fancy a change of topic from the ones you usually tackle. Another good reason for checking the page regularly is that the suggestions are usually for very niche subjects. Most of us are convinced that we can’t compete with the big sites on the most popular topics so the more niche the subject matter of our own pages, the more likely they are to come up high in search results particularly if we make several pages dealing with different aspects of the same niche subject and link between them.

The second page I did this week was a book review of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, the latest novel by this author. I’d never read anything by David Mitchell before and was a bit worried that I wouldn’t like the book as Mitchell has the reputation for writing very ‘literary’ books which I interpret as difficult to read and sometimes just plain boring. Nothing could have been further from the truth. This book gripped me from the first page and, as soon as I finished it, I wanted to share it with as many people as possible so I wrote the review. Now I can’t wait to read more of Mitchell’s work.

Reviews of books, movies, music, etc, are all good topics for a web page. If you have written several pages about a particular niche, you can usually find something to review that fits the niche to expand your coverage.

Now all I’ve got to do is keep up the writing.

I guess many of us have periods when we really can’t start writing. I know I do. In fact, I’m going through that kind of period right now. I want to write on Squidoo, here on my blog and other places but can I think of anything to write about? No, I can’t.

At least recognising writer’s block finally gives me something to write about!

I’m checking out “Get Cracking” with Bonnie & Robin on Squidoo on Facebook everyday, in the hope that a suggestion there will inspire me. Yesterday, I thought the suggestion of writing about a favourite gadget was a good one for me. After spending an hour thinking about the gadgets I use, I decided to write about my bread maker. BIG mistake. I started the new lens, wrote the introduction and put in a picture. Wrote another module and a couple more pictures…then I ran out of both steam and enthusiasm. Part of the reason was the model of bread maker that I have is not available in the USA and I really don’t know much about the most recent models of bread makers.

Did I struggle on? Persevere? Succeed in making a new lens in spite of the difficulty? Well, actually, no. I gave up and deleted the lens. How pathetic!

In spite of thinking it’s pathetic, I believe I did the right thing. My boredom would have shone through. I know my least successful pages are those where I have struggled to remain interested. I shall probably still write about a favourite gadget but it will be something smaller and cheaper than a bread maker. I already have an idea for the new page.

I’m also going to take my own advice and try thinking laterally on some general subjects as I’ve done in the past. For example, I’ve written a lot about antiques and collectables. When I was a little bored with the subject, after some lateral thinking I wrote My Own Collectibles and Art which consists of photos of pictures and other things that enhance my life that I have collected over a number of years together with stories of how I came to have them and what they mean to me.

Above all, I know that the cure for writer’s block is just to start writing which is what I’ve done here. I hope it’s not too boring.

We are now in the final few days of May and we really should be working hard on summer web pages for Squidoo or other web sites.

People are now thinking about their summer vacations, recipes, drinks, clothes and many other associated topics. We need to have the information ready and waiting for them now.

It’s hopeless writing about summer at the end of July or in August (unless you are in the southern hemisphere, of course) because you will be very lucky if Google and the other search engines pick up your article in time to generate much traffic. You want them available in search results as soon as possible and certainly before your potential visitors have started to think about the autumn and winter months and events.

If you wrote about summery subjects last year or earlier, look at those articles now. You can probably improve them by revising and refreshing the content. Don’t forget to update advertising for books, music and anything else that brings in an income. Companies bring out fresh products for every summer, don’t miss out on these.

Remember to interlink your summer lenses and/or web pages. If a visitor likes one of your articles, they might well want to read more that you’ve written on the subject. Of course, this applies to any subject not just seasonal ones.

Now it’s confession time: so far this year, I’ve written only one new summer lens – Summer Pudding – A Great British Dessert. I’ve also got to update other summer articles I’ve written over previous years. I have got plans for some other new ones which I must get on with writing. I also intend to revise and update the old ones.

Books for Research

Research of some kind is usually essential for all writers. I know that is a sweeping statement but, in my experience, it’s true.

No matter how well I know a subject, there are almost always facts that I need to check to ensure I’ve remembered them accurately. If a reader notices just one wrong fact then the rest of what you’ve written loses credibility.

Sometimes you might be commissioned to write an article about something you have no knowledge of at all. This happened to me some years ago. I’d contacted the editor of a monthly antiques magazine in the hope of being commissioned to write for it. She arranged to meet me and we had a very amicable chat. Then she dropped her bombshell. She said, “I’d like to commission you to write about the Aesthetic Movement. You are familiar with it, aren’t you?” I tried not to look blank and replied that I did know about it, lying through my teeth. I’d vaguely heard of it but couldn’t have said any more than that. The editor then told me the deadline was three weeks away.

I went home and panicked for an hour before I calmed down and started some heavy, intensive research. I looked online, of course, and bookmarked a number of relevant pages. I also went to the library and borrowed books on the subject. I spent about a week reading the references and making notes before starting to write. This story has a happy outcome. I had my article finished before the deadline, written almost exactly to the required number of words and it was used with almost no sub-editing. I also went on to be commissioned to write monthly articles for that magazine for several years.

If I hadn’t been prepared to put in the work researching the subject, I would have lost out on becoming a regular writer for that publication.

Usually, though, I know something, even quite a lot on occasions, about the subject of an article, Squidoo lens or web page I intend to write. Even so I find that preliminary research will throw up facts that I don’t know. Sometimes they are quirky or unusual things that add colour and depth to the article. Caution is needed, though. When I find a fact that I didn’t know, I always check it out from different sources. I don’t want to repeat somebody else’s mistake.

This is something I am very cautious about when doing any research. I never take my notes from just one source even when it’s the leading authority on the subject. There is always a danger of misunderstanding something and getting it wrong in my own writing. There is also the chance that I could subconsciously plagiarise text from my research source. By reading several different sources of information, I get different points of view, different opinions and sometimes a more complete overview. This can allow me to come to my own point of view so that I can write my own article on the subject from the standpoint of what I’ve learned about it. I don’t want to just regurgitate what I’ve read. I want to have an opinion or at least my own slant on the topic.

If you want to see one of my Squidoo pages that I had to do from research with little prior knowledge, take a look at Local Time and Railway Time.

Picture above: Copyright © Twice25 – Creative Commons License

I’ve had some of my Squidoo lenses critiqued and the ones that have been most helpful are those that point out ways to improve them. The most annoying, for me, are those that say “Great lens” or “Well done.”

Conceited as I may appear, even I don’t think that my work is perfect and doesn’t need improving. In fact, there is usually something, however small, that could be improved on any web page.

It’s fine to say, “Great lens but I spotted a typo in the second paragraph and it’s ….(whatever)”. This is helpful. Telling someone that maybe the page would read better if some of the information was moved around or expressed in a slightly different way might help too. Sometimes all we need is another pair of eyes and some suggestions to introduce us to new ways of working or doing something.

When we’ve worked hard on a Squidoo lens, we can get too close to it and we read it the way we hear it in our minds. We put the emphasis where we know it should go even if the natural way to read a sentence would put the emphasis elsewhere. Pointing this out helps us to read it with a fresh approach and we can try to forget the way we want it read.

When I read these non-critiques in Critique Me, I assume the poster is just trying to get a bit of exposure for their own work – often comfirmed when they ask for a visit in the same post.

Next time you see someone ask for a critique, read the page carefully. Look for ways to improve it. Here are a few questions to ask yourself.

• Do you get a good first impression? If not, why not?
• Is there a bio and picture in the top right or is it the default text and orange blob?
• Are the pictures good and relevant?
• Are the ads relevant?
• Are there any typos, wrong spellings or errors in grammar?
• Is the text well written?
• Does the page flow well from one point to the next?
• Does anything irritate you about the writing or layout? If the answer is yes, analyse what it is and assess whether this is a personal foible or whether most people would react the same. If you think other people would feel the same, then it is worth mentioning in your critique.

These aren’t the only points to consider but they are probably the main ones. Don’t just point out what you think is wrong, make suggestions on how to fix the problem.

There are benefits of doing critiques – you become aware of problems that you can avoid in your own writing and page making.

Squidoo user names, the ones that appear on every lens as well as the lensmaster’s page, can tell us something about the person behind the name.

Many people, myself included, use a nom de plume and there can be many reasons for this. When I joined Squidoo, I predominantly wrote elsewhere and I wanted to keep the two activities totally separate so I chose the name ‘Stazjia’ for my writing on Squidoo. I did, however, put my real name in my information. I didn’t feel it was absolutely imperative to conceal my identity.

I can understand, though, why some people do feel it is essential. The reasons can be many and varied. Someone might be shy about their writing or perhaps write on a controversial subject and don’t want to become involved in arguments with people they know. One lensmaster writes about real life experiences of bullying affecting children she knows. She carefully conceals her identity and hometown to avoid any chance of anyone working out which children she writes about.

More recently, there has been an upsurge in strange user names. They are names like ‘malwareRus’ or ‘earn$$$quick’ or ‘gameboys-cheap’. These are names I’ve just made up and I hope they give you the idea of the kind I am talking about. Apparently advice has been appearing online and in e-books telling people to join Squidoo with a name that reflects the products they are going to write about in an attempt to add keywords to increase the chances of appearing high in Google searches.

I don’t know whether this strategy works with Google but I do know that I would never buy anything from somebody with this kind of spammy name. To me, it just screams SPAM and ‘don’t believe a word of this because I want you to buy something’. I’ve also noticed the content of pages posted in the Critique Me forum with these sort of names are, nine times out of ten, just copied and pasted from the original spammy page – against Squidoo’s Terms of Service.

My advice is ‘Give up the spam’ because it doesn’t work. There are too many people on the web who are far better than amateurs taking silly advice to use Squidoo like this. The network is also getting far better at detecting spam pages and closing them down. If you want to earn money online, honest, interesting content works better because most people can recognise spam for what it is.

I hope none of you are working on new Valentine’s Day lenses or web pages right now. You’ve almost certainly left it too late to get much profitable traffic this year, if you are.

Easter, though, is nine weeks away. This gives you time to get a lens or two online. You’ll have time to choose a good subject, hopefully one that puts a slightly different spin on the usual Easter eggs and little bunny rabbits. You don’t want to compete head-on with the top Easter pages, do you? Maybe you know about some Easter customs unique to your area, or your family has its own traditions or recipes for the festival.

The good thing is, you have time to look for a different perspective. To try to give you some ideas for thinking laterally, here are three top-ranking Squidoo lenses about Easter:

Easter Music for Your Church Choir – it doesn’t have a lot of original content but it’s a great resource for anybody looking for Easter music.

Simple & Affordable Little Girls’ Easter Dresses For Spring & Summer – I would never have thought of writing about Easter dresses for little girls but it’s a great idea.

Painting Wooden Easter Eggs – the lensmaster tells us about her family custom of painting wooden eggs for Easter and she also tells us how to do it.

Can you think of something about Easter that will rank highly on Squidoo and, better still, get picked up by Google and other search engines?

I picked up many tips just by looking. It’s what I’ve always done to learn to improve my writing and web page building. Look at what the experts do and learn from them.

I am amazed at the number of new lensmasters who ask how to improve their lenses or get more traffic but a quick look at their profiles shows that they have not rated or favourited any other lenses. That always leads me to assume, possibly wrongly, that they haven’t bothered to look at any or many others.

It truly appalls me when a quick look at their lenses indicates they have no idea at all how to make one that is appealing to the casual visitor.

Who would stop and read a lens that is text heavy with no graphics of any kind unless they are desperate for the information and can’t find it anywhere else? Well, not me for a start!

Even worse, if you do begin to read because you are desperate or perhaps kinder than I am, and you find it’s poorly spelled, ungrammatical and full of text-speak, would you persevere? I think most people would give up.

Why does anybody think this is acceptable? Why would anybody assume this is what other people are prepared to read? I have no idea. What I do know is that too many people new to lens or web page building or blogging think this is perfectly acceptable.

Guess who has seen too many bad web pages and lenses recently!