Squidoo seems easy enough to navigate. Once you figure out how it works, you can put together a nice enough looking lens in all but 15 minutes. But appearances can be deceptive. The apparent ease can lure you into a false sense of confidence. The fact is, there are a few things that could trip you up.



And the frustrating thing about them: You may never notice. Or at least not for a while. Meanwhile, you wonder why your lens doesn't bring you the visitors or the sales you thought it would.

So here are three tips that will help you avoid those embarrassing mistakes:

1. When you start a lens, make sure you have enough time to set up at least 4 modules or so. Why? If you try to leave earlier than that, Squidoo sometimes won't let you publish it. Instead, it will try to lure anyone else who may happen to come along into taking over YOUR lens! And after you've just spent all this time and energy coming up with a cool lens name and concept, you wouldn't want that, would you?

2. When you insert links, be sure to remember to include the ?http://? bit! Why? Just as an experiment, try to leave it out and watch what happens: If you click on the link, it will take you to an "under construction" Squidoo lens. That lens will have the name of your link and Squidoo will invite you to take it over! Ouch! Imagine someone else had clicked on that link.

3. After editing or modifying your lens, don't forget to hit the ?Publish? button! Sure, you may have ?saved? the individual parts, but that's not good enough. If you don't click ?Publish,? your lens will remain exactly like it was before you invested all that hard work in making your revisions. Ouch again!

No, none of these is necessarily a big deal. Not for some people. But they can be for you if you think your links lead back to your website, yet what they really do is invite your hoped-for visitors to build their own Squidoo lens -- with YOUR website's name on it! Not only does this defeat the purpose, it also makes you look unprofessional.

So you have to be on your toes: Make sure you allow enough time to finish what you start ? or at least make enough progress that your lens is solid enough that Squidoo won't try to take it away from you.

Then, double-check all your links after you've saved your lens. This, or course, really should be ?good practice,? but how often do we skimp on that step.

And lastly, make sure you re-publish your lens after any and all changes. Because if you don't, the changes won't stick. Easy? Yes. Insignificant? Not if you miss even one of them!