There has been a lot of buzz (and some ‘noise’) around the recent changes on the inside of Seth Godin's Squidoo. At the same time many marketers who have been focused on Squidoo have reported ranking drops on Google - and have branded this the "Squidoo Slap."

To catch up on the conversations here is some light reading:

• Squidoo on Lens Spam
• My friend Ed Dale
• Timeline from Search Engine Land

For my part, I figured I would do something different and “JUST ASK SETH”

Why am I doing this?

First off, I have tremendous respect for Seth Godin. I read “Permission Marketing” in 1999 and it has had a big impact on how I have marketed online for the past 8 years. The "Don't Miss A Word" box you see on the top of this blog is even a plugin called "What Would Seth Godin Do". . .

Secondly, there have been a lot of theories and personal opinions on what happened with Squidoo / Google and if marketers should continue focusing efforts on Squidoo – so instead of just adding my own two cents I figured why not “JUST ASK SETH”?

We often forget that these Web 2.0 properties (and really any online business) are run by real human beings and that we can reach out and ask them questions and share our concerns.

(Note: I will write another post in the near future on reaching out to authorities in your market for interviews . . .)

Without further ado, here is the interview:

The "Squidoo Slap" and the Internet Marketing Community

Searchingdot.com:

Many Internet Marketers (IM) are taking Squidoo's recent policy changes "personally" (not publishing lenses with less then 3 modules, removal of Iframes, etc). The IM community feels that "they" helped build Squidoo to where it is today, by contributing so many lenses in such a broad range of niche markets.

1) How do you respond to this and what relationship do you want Squidoo to have with marketers of information products and pure affiliate marketers?

Seth Godin:

“Marketing has become a consensual process. In other words, you can't yell at people (on TV, on the radio, on the web) and hope that you can earn enough to yell more. As a result, the most successful marketers are the ones who have a product that people are eager to use and talk about (think iPhone). This is great news for people who have useful information to sell, because human beings are drawn to insight and knowledge and things that help them succeed.

I couldn't be more certain of this: if you've got something great, this is the best time ever to be in marketing. And that includes using Squidoo to help people understand your message.

The Squidoo pages that make me the saddest are the pages that some info marketers have built that are clearly the result of hours of labor. They include all sorts of HTML tricks I didn't know were possible, with plenty of pictures and text. But they don't say anything. Worse, they don't help anyone. They seem designed to attract attention (from search, I guess) as opposed to actually being useful and earning attention (from people telling people).

Like the booth at the carnival that has a great barker outside bringing people in, but not much in the tent, at least as far as I can tell.

On the other hand, when someone makes something truly useful (check out any of the 365 lenses of the day for the last year), people flock. They tell their friends. They engage. They give permission. It works.

Squidoo's promise from the start has been simple: we give anyone an easy-to-use platform where you can help people understand your little part of the world. A page where you can include links and content and pointers and a bit of community to help people figure out what's going on. That hasn't changed and won't change. Along the way, Google and other sites rewarded these pages with plenty of search engine traffic. No surprise. If we can help search engines find meaning for those that are searching, it's all good.

I'm afraid a few people got obsessed with the search traffic part of the deal. Squidoo is not some sort of magic search engine amplifier.

We still get a huge amount of search traffic, and my expectation is that it will increase, but if that was the only reason you were on Squidoo, if you were focused on a free ride without giving anything to the reader, then it wasn't a great match for anyone.

We love our lensmasters, the IM good guys especially. If you are building great pointers to great stuff and profiting by being an expert, by engaging people as they look for something to help them, we need you and will continue to work to help you.”

SearchingDot.com:

2) Do you have any examples of affiliate marketing lenses that you feel are "working within the system"?

Seth Godin:

I think the semantics matter here. There are many "affiliate marketers" who believe that affiliate marketing has to have a certain look and feel (I think you can visualize what I mean). It might be the opportunity-seeker pages that are many feet long, making promise after promise, or the certain look that banners inserted into a page have. There's a population that responds to these pages. But don't mistake a tiny early adopter group from the masses.

I think embracing tired tactics isn't a great strategy. As the web matures and develops, so will the tactics that people use. There are hundreds of examples of affiliate marketers who have succeeded over time, but they don't necessarily look like what worked last year on a given website.

SearchingDot.com:

3) On the "3 module minimum" - which modules do you personally suggest / like the best (for marketers)?

Seth Godin:

What Squidoo does when it does things well: it gives people meaning. Squidoo is not some sort of amplifier where you can place a paragraph or two of text and maybe a banner and get some juice. A great Squidoo lens is a hand-built piece of insight into a given topic. You list your offering, perhaps your competitors. You point to pictures or videos that teach people about what you do. Include links to customers who are also giving testimonials. Include a book or two that if someone bought it from Amazon and read it cover to cover, they wouldn't need you…

Wouldn't need you? Exactly. Because most people probably *won't* read it, but the fact that you are being upfront makes it even more clear that they need you. Think about the marketers in the 'real world' that have had a positive impact on you. The ones you trust and recommend and continue to do business with. What did they do? How did they do it? After spending 21 years in the information business, writing more than 10 bestsellers, being translated into more than 25 languages, I've learned exactly one thing:

There are only two kinds of marketers:

Marketers who spend all day trying to do more and give more to their customers.

And marketers who try to do less and charge for the rest.

So, use your lenses to be the expert and to give it all away. The more you give away, the better you'll do.

SearchingDot.com:

4) Iframes, Iframes, Iframes — The biggest concern that I am hearing from legitimate marketers (not the minority of users who are spamming) is the removal of Iframes. "Legitimate" marketers have been using Iframes on Squidoo to build opt-in lists. I fully support and understand the Iframe removal to stop 'sneaky' redirects and spammers . . . But as the author of "Permission Marketing" (which I read back in 1999) you understand the importance of list building (and actually taught this to many of the marketers reading this interview!)

Seth Godin:

Well, the first part is easy: we got rid of iframes because the bad guys made us. They abused our trust. We can't find a way around that, so, unfortunately, they're gone.

SearchingDot.com:

5) How can marketers build a list on Squidoo today?

Seth Godin:

I've done it two ways:

1. Use an RSS feed and links to various readers. RSS is far more powerful than email and it's where you want to be in the future.

2. Ask people to send you an email.

A real person sending a real email to sign up for something that is anticipated, personal and relevant is still the secret to growing a true opt-in list. Way better to have 200 people that really and truly want to hear from you than to have 1,000 who tolerate you.

SearchingDot.com:

6) what new features are you planning on adding to support list building on Squidoo in the near future?

Seth Godin:

We've got some cool new features on the way, and I'll ask Gil and Megan about list building. If you have suggestions, we'd love to hear them. Even better, we make it easy for people to build their own modules and submit them to us. If they fit into our point of view, we can have them up pretty quickly. The details are here: http://developer.squidoo.com/

SearchingDot.com:

7) The Google Drop — The other concern that marketers have been reporting is a drop in rankings for their Squidoo lenses on Google. These reports are expanding outside of just the "IM community", as reported on Techcrunch. Also, can you comment on the Google ranking changes that you are seeing?

Seth Godin:

It's pretty easy to see that our Google traffic declined last week. Google changes their algorithms often, and we are confident that as our lenses continue to increase in quality and quantity, our traffic is going to surpass what it was. Our current traffic is what it was in May, which was only 7 weeks ago. Google has historically rewarded pages that ought to be rewarded, which means ones that offer value to the people who visit them. If we keep doing that, I'm pretty confident that we'll get what we deserve.

SearchingDot.com:

Alexa is reporting a slight dip over the past 7 and 30 days (if you believe in Alexa's rankings . . .) http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=squidoo.com

Seth Godin:

Alexa never precisely matches our Analytics data, but there's no argument that we lost a few weeks worth of growth.

SearchingDot.com:

9) Squidoo "Blocked" — Squidoo has been "blocked" by Netscape (for adding "stories" / bookmarks). Can you comment on this?

Seth Godin: 

The social networks are always working on their filters. My expectation is that in response to legitimate requests, they'll fix this soon. Netscape has never been a key contributor of traffic, but we hope it will soon.

SearchingDot.com:

10) Selling Lenses I am starting to see more "action" around selling Squidoo lenses, and I think this is a very interesting trend and opportunity - a) how can marketers best position their lenses for sale?

Seth Godin:

I think the best lenses to sell are the ones that aren't "google- bait" as much as the ones with vibrant followings, with plexo rankings, with a reputation for being a go-to source around the web. For example, I could imagine someone building the definitive guide to people who trade baseball cards. If I were a baseball card dealer, I'd love to buy a page like that.

SearchingDot.com:

11) what is your opinion on selling lenses - is this a good thing?

Seth Godin:

Markets that enable transactions without side effects are always good. I can't imagine anything more pareto optimal (!) than someone building great lenses and then selling them to people who can benefit.

SearchingDot.com:

12) Promoting Your Lens What have been the most a) effective and b) the most unique marketing techniques that you have seen for promoting lenses? (I have been testing including my lens in press releases and in article syndication, my next test will be producing online videos and promoting links back to my lenses.)

Seth Godin:

Those are both great ideas. I think once a lens gets better over time (with plexo, with guestbook, with new content), then you get the benefit of both return traffic and viral activity. The number one way to reach strangers is to have friends. And the best way to have friends is to give them insight that they need.

SearchingDot.com:

13) "Permission Marketing in a Web 2.0 World" Continuing my questions on list building on Squidoo - I wanted to get your opinions on how "Permission Marketing" fits in a Web 2.0 World (both in and outside of Squido) The IM community has seen so much Myspace "friend spam" and the abuse of social networks - what is the "right way" to build relationships (and a list) on Web 2.0 communities?

Seth Godin:

Make promises and keep them. Nothing much has changed about that in the last eight years, as far as I can tell. The web has made it really easy for people to make promises. It sure seems to me that marketers need to do a better job of keeping them. The ways marketers abuse permission have expanded beyond my wildest dreams. At the same time, the marketers who actually keep their promises (check out dailycandy.com for an example, or cdbaby.com, or a great blog) are doing better than they've ever done before. Human beings crave respect. They detest trickery. They don't want weasel words or fine print. The more complicated the world gets, the simpler it seems to be.

 +++ END OF INTERVIEW

SearchingDot.com Summary

So what do I think? I think that Squidoo is still worth the effort. Marketers should continue building lenses and promoting them. Did Google rankings for my lenses drop also? They sure did. Will they ever come back to the pre-Slap levels? I have no idea. Enough said - I have some more lenses to build now that half my competition ran away scared

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