Whats Going On At Squidoo?

Posted on July 7, 2009
Filed Under affiliate marketing | Leave a Comment

There has been a lot of talk about Squidoo lately over at the Wealthy Affiliate Forum.

Squidoo are having a change of policy which comes into effect in the middle of July 2009. I am sure that if you are using Squidoo as part of your affiliate marketing campagains you have already received an email from them and read lots about it. If not you can read the Squidoo Policy Update here.

They say that 99% of us will not notice any difference, if we are making great unique, useful, content-filled lenses.

But lenses that are over promotional and lenses that have more than 9 links to the same website could be locked. This does not include squidoo modules like Amazon or Ebay or Feed modules like the RSS module or the Zazzle module etc.

Also they are saying that certain subjects will be classed as junk or spam including:

Free movie downloads.
Hoodia Gordoni.
Acai berry reviews.
Toenail fungus sales.
LoseBellyFat!
Pharmaceuticals.
WoW gold farming.
Forex reports.
Adult content.

So many people with lenses on the topic of weight loss are feeling rather concerned. Personally I do not think they will just go ahead and lock ALL weight loss lenses. This is just my opinion and I could be wrong. My advice would be to make sure you are giving good quality information and have no more than 9 affiliate links on your lenses.

Also Squidoo are talking about certain domains that will become Whitelisted or Blacklisted!

They are saying:

“Sites that consistently show up on lenses that are consistently spam and overt junk and take advantage of readers, domains and programs that have earned a bad reputation because of spammers… we’re putting them on a no-no list. This means: Blackhat SEO sites. Reverse phone lookup sites. Paid people finder sites. Lots of dating websites. Many affiliate websites that have proven to be a community of spammers.”

Apparently all it will take is just one link to a blacklisted domain and your lens will become locked.

Also they talk about Clickbank, which affects a lot of us affiliate marketers. They are saying that although Clickbank will not be Blacklisted it will not be Whitelisted either. This is because “the number of people using Clickbank and spamming their lenses around the web, is ruining it for the good guys.”

So no more than 9 outbound links to the same domain also applies to Clickbank affiliate links.

If you haven’t done so already, you still have time to check your lenses, make sure you are not being overly promotional or spammy, that you are giving good quality information and have less than 9 outbound links to the same website. I have to be honest and say that when I was checking some of my lenses I was suprised at the number of affiliate links I had put – I suppose it is easily done if you have written quite a long lens with lots of modules. All fixed now of course!