Squidoo plays a major role in Web 2.0 marketing. This innovative website allows authors to create a 'lens', which is a one page website that highlights a single subject. A specific lens can glean information from several sources and assemble it all together on one page so that it makes for easy viewing and reading. What makes this service even better? It's free.

A lens maker has the option of creating several lenses on one subject, concentrating on different aspects of the topic in different lenses. The other option is to create several lenses covering a wide variety of topics, reflecting the lens maker's varied interests and fields of expertise. This remarkably simple idea offers internet marketers an extraordinarily resourceful platform for leveraging their business. Content rich, informative lenses attract quality traffic, add credibility to the product by offering valuable information and also establish the author's credibility as an expert in the field.

Squidoo offers authors several tools, called modules, with which to build a lens-or multiple lenses. These modules help set up separate, individual sections on the combined web space. Some of the other tools that authors can benefit from include the lens headline title, RSS subscription for readers, the author's biographical area, a lensroll and a keyword list, also known as a tag list.

Basic Modules

Authors can use basic modules in several different ways.

- To write short, informative articles on various facets of the lens's subject.

- To list and describe links to offsite information that is relevant to the subject of the lens.

- To drive traffic to their own business by linking the lens to their own website

Interactive Modules

It is the interactivity of several modules that makes Squidoo eligible to be included in the Web 2.0 category. These interactive modules offer users the opportunity to add their favorite YouTube videos or their favorite pictures to the list of videos and pictures already included on the lens.

Users can also add their comments, respond to questions posed by the author of the lens, or vote on a listing of favorite resources. In effect, these interactive module features generate fresh content for the lens, which in turn makes the lens more visible to the major search engines, boosting the lens maker's overall search traffic.

Syndicated Content Modules

Syndicated content modules use syndicated content extracted from other websites. Lens makers who have blogs on subjects that are relevant to the lens can direct the blog posts automatically to the lens every time a new blog is posted. The lens maker can also automatically draw related content from specified magazine and newspaper articles refreshing the lens on a regular basis, thereby increasing its visibility to internet search engines.