I know day after day I harp preach encourage you to properly link your lenses so you can get ranked in the search engines and get traffic and make sales.
I’ll be straight up with you here… I suck at linking. I hate it. I find it super tedious and BOORING. I have recently picked up an additional accountability partner to really kick my butt on linking and staying focused on one element of my business.
With the knowledge I would have to face him at the end of the week and tell him if I did or didn’t do… I decided to make a spreadsheet. 
You know how much I love to check stuff off.
Here’s what I found… (and it surprised the heck out of me)
I haven’t been doing half the linking I think I thought I was doing. YIKES.
I had general terms on my spread sheet, free ad blogs, wp blogs (my own network I use for linking) etc. I found I quickly became confused by what I had and hadn’t done for each keyword I was working on, and quickly realized I generally quit this linking process long before it is actually complete. HMMMM…
I changed my spreadsheet, and added each specific site I link at so I can make sure I have linked for each keyword/lens. This has helped the confusion and it really made me realize how much I haven’t been actually getting done.
So my guess is, and this is just a guess, if I ain’t doing it, neither are you. Which just might explain why some of my lenses don’t rank ~ and yours as well.
I have this crazy brain that says “If I don’t do it, it’s cheating” which thus far has really eliminated me using any kind of automation.
Since I’m doing more and trying to spend less time I’ve realized I have to let go of that. If a tool can do a bunch of the things I’m doing ~ exactly how I’m doing it ~ except by itself without me ~ well DAMN ~ let it do it!
Here’s what I’m talking about.
Traffic Bug.
This software does the RSS submission, directory submission, bookmarking submission, pings, and more. These are all things I would do if I could get my stuff together and actually do it, I do currently submit to RSS directories, but look at all the additional links I am now getting by letting it do it for me!
Anyway, I thought this software would be super expensive, but it’s not. It’s very affordable and actually gets the job done. I still do my own linking through other sources, but this is where I start now. The machine doesn’t get bored. It doesn’t give up half way through because it doesn’t feel like doing it anymore. It gets it done, over time, nice and slow and steady ~ just like I like it.
If you are having trouble getting your linking done I highly suggest you try traffic bug for at least 2 months. It will take time for all the links to get created, and even a little longer for Google to find them all, but it will happen. With the level of competition we use for Squidoo lenses it shouldn’t take much more than traffic bug to get your lenses ranking.
Just so you can see exactly what I’m doing (and I’m still doing a lot of doing) here’s my linking spreadsheet. (it is an excel spreadsheet. You’ll need excel to open it) It’s exactly what’s printed out and on my desk right now ~ today’s my Squidoo day so I’ll be linking my brains out. If you want to have the boxes printed out so you can make your checks inside boxes here’s the instructions.
I spent an entire day a month or so ago going through and researching every link building process I could find. Traffic bug fit all my requirements and was about 90% cheaper than the next closest option. This is a new site, but it is working quite well thus far. I know for a fact the price will be increased, so if linking software is something you’ve been thinking about I suggest you get it now while it’s still very affordable ~ it probably won’t be for long.
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