With Social networking sites gaining popularity in SEO industry, webmasters are ready to exploit all possible channels of social media marketing to drive more traffic to their websites. Twitter is the latest trend in social networking that already has left its mark in the social as well as professional arena. So, there is no wonder that SEO service providers would want to use the potential of Twitter for search engine optimization.
Does Twitter have SEO Value?
Now there is a big question whether a link posted on Twitter passes link juice or not. Well, Twitter has SEO value which may not be direct but the other way. Twitter adds a “nofollow” attribute to all the links posted by its users. Search engines like Google, MSN may religiously obey “nofollow” instructions but there are other search engines (Ask.com) that doesn’t really pay attention to it. So, webmasters who solely target Google might miss something by ignoring Twitter.
With millions of users registering every year Twitter definitely can be a source of organic traffic to your website if you know how to use it. Search engines might ignore the links posted on Twitter but they can not ignore a huge number of followers to a profile. Search engines give more importance to tweets by users having large number of followers than that of users with fewer followers.
Therefore, increasing the number of followers should be one’s prime objective while using Twitter for SEO purposes. Once you become a prominent figure on Twitter chances are your followers will visit most of the links you tweet. Thus Twitter can positively affect your site’s Alexa rank by driving traffic to your way. If you can bring visitors to your site via Twitter that will be an added advantage search engine marketers can not afford to ignore.
How to Use Your Twitter Profile for SEO?
Here is how you can make your Twitter profile work.
Profile: You need to choose your username carefully in order to rank with your profile. A crisp and relevant bio is a must to get noticed by both human users and search engines.
Tweet: What you tweet is the most important of all. Tweet regularly but not too much as it can annoy your followers as well. Like humans search engines also don’t like the idea of tweeting for marketing purpose only. Google can take frequent tweet with the same content as spam.
Hash Tags: Keywords preceded by a hash tag (#) help in getting a placement in twitter’s real time search as well as Google search. Instead of covering a broader term you’ll better focus in more specific keywords for better ranking. For example, if your profile refers to an Indian SEO company using #SEOIndia would be more accurate than just #SEO.
Re-tweet: Leverage the power of re-tweet option in Twitter by posting some really good and useful content. Use widely searched terms in your tweets; try tweeting unique and interesting facts related to popular topics. Posting useful links and content will automatically impel your followers to re-tweet and recommend your profile (FollowFriday recommendation) to their followers.
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{ 25 comments… read them below or add one }
Great Tips there Moon.
I had a question regarding links in Twitter.
If you want to direct someone to your website, which link should you put in the tweet? the original link or a shortened link like bit.ly or whatever…
Why do people use url shortners in their tweet, besides making more room for words?
Even if there is a lot of space in the tweet, I see many url shortened links…what is the reason that they use it, even when there is space for the full link?
Thanks,
Nabeel
Anytime you can increase the number of people visiting your site, will have a positive impact on your seo rankings. Afterall, that is one of the factors used by G is how many people and how long they are staying.
Great Twitter SEO Tips. Especially about picking a high search volume keyword as your user name. Its pretty easy to rank in the top 10 for the phrase you set your user name as.
Hi Nabeel, you can directly post the link. But now, as you know twitter doesn’t pass link juice whether you post shortened URL or the original one doesn’t really matter from SEO perspective. But if you want to direct visitor to your site it is better you type the domain name directly with a catchy interesting text preceding it to attract user’s attention.
And u r right that even if there’s space people still use shortened link perhaps it has become a custom.
One thing I have observed that people get curious when you post a link asking your friends to visit (by typing their twitter handle along with). For example: “View my latest post on sitename.com @tweeps1 @tweeps2 @tweeps3″ – a tweet like this makes users more curious than a plain “view my latest post on sitename.com”. You can also try that! Good wishes.
I dont necessarily agree with that last comment, nor with some of the points you raised above. Twitter direectly has (as you say) no direct SEO benefits, however having recently written ‘10 UK search markeeters you should follow on Twitter‘ I have seen first hand the viral nature of Sphinn, which has been subsequently supported by viral pickup and secondary traffic from those secondary sources – many of which do carry SEO benefit.
Whilst I do agree – if you get it right on Digg, benefits can be significantly higher, it should be added, it is getting increasingly harder to infilftrate Digg, and I would suggest certain stories are more tailored/suitered to the Digg regulars.
End of the day, it comes down to personal preference. I personally enjoy Twitter, and dont get involved purely from just an SEO perspective. It personally has given me the opportunity to interact with people I normally would not have had the opportunity to.
Traffic to your site is important. The better you have everything optimized the more traffic you will get. I am not a fan of Twitter but this method does work!
Moon,
Thank you very much for replying and answering my question.
And thank you for providing that tip to make a tweet specific to friends. I really appreciate it!
Nabeel
Sorry that was Sankar, not Moon.
But I am confused as to who wrote the article, Moon or Sankar?
Thanks,
Nabeel
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Of course, when you start on Twitter there is a great deal to be learned. In fact, if you truly appreciate Twitter, you never stop learning about the possibilities. I continue to read every report, etc. on Twitter that I can – there’s always new information, new ideas, new uses that I learn about.
Thank you for your post. I really like how you presented the information – concise and efficient! At Market Your Start up we agree with a lot of the points you mentioned: especially the importance of having an avatar.
good posting, thanks for sharing this. I should try this tips.
great!!
Nice article, Any help from anywhere can be of great help as far as SEO is concerned.
Going back to Nabeel’s comment, URL shorteners are really useful for tracking traffic to the sites you put up on your twitter page. It goes to show which links your audience is clicking through the most, that’s where you should channel most of your energy to. That begin said, those that retweet it with the hashtag gets into their network, and so on.
If any of you have tried Nambu, it’s a great Twitter application that shortens your URLs instantly and adds it to your bit.ly list of shortened links (I recommend getting an account if you want to track most of your link’s traffic). Not only that, whey you reply a tweet with a hashtag, it automatically appends the hash to the end of your reply, little things save you time.
Great article Sankar!
Those are literally the best idea I have grasp. May we expect more in-depth views on bringing the usefulness of SEO in an online business.
Nice post! I’ve been racking my brain on how to suck some juice out of twitter with out spam bombing! I like the keyword idea!
I get you now. And yeah that makes perfect sense to me. So instead of writing and publishing articles almost blindly, you write it and wait for the peak of the trend and post it then.
Hi Moon, I wish you could have written more such interesting ones in your personal blog too.
I first heard about twitter being used for SEO by an expert seo by the name of Will, definitely didn’t give it too much taught, but after reading your post on it, it’s becoming more clear for me! I think we can definitely leverage twitter as a way to increase our SEO efforts.
Till then,
Jean
I haven’t personally done a lot of work with Twitter, so it was good to get some advice. Thanks!
What do you think of pop-under exchanges? I’m having trouble getting visitors to my site,
so I’m thinking about trying one. Are they effective????????
Excellent bit of info, I had not really thought of using twitter before. I will need to get to grips with the whole social media thing.
Getting followers on twitter helps driving traffic towards a website
I hadn’t thought of that, twitter here I come!
A very useful article, having taken in the other responses I will still now go and sign up on twitter.