I finally have enough lenses at Squidoo that I have a pretty good idea of what it takes to get a lens to tier 1. There are several factors that play into lens rank, but the most important two factors seem to be views and click through rate, or CTR.
A lens with 200 views a week, will generally rank in the top tier. If it's got that many views and it's not making it to tier 1, look at your CTR. You can find the CTR on the Stats page under traffic. If it isn't there, you will need to visit SquidUtils.com and download the add on. Once you have the add on installed, you'll be able to see your CTR on your traffic screen. The CTR I shoot for is 30%. If it is lower than that, it may drag your lens down in rank.
How do you get your CTR up? That's easy, add more links. If you don't want to spam up your lens, by adding obvious links and ads, you can always add text links with html. Link to other lenses, products, or articles by creating a link within the text. Adding featured lenses on the same topic is also efficient for boosting CTR. This has the added benefit of boosting views to other lenses.
A mistake I often see new lensmasters making is failing to link to their other lenses in the related lenses tab. This is in the first module you create under the related lenses tab. (It's right by the tab to turn on the table of contents.) Linking to your own lenses helps generate a lot of traffic at Squidoo.
Only 1/2 to 1/3 of my traffic comes from Google. The other 1/2 to 2/3 comes from backlinks or from within Squidoo.
