Social media seems like a recent innovation but with Twitter celebrating its 8th birthday on March 20, it’s clearly been around for a while. It’s come a long way since those tentative early days when sceptics mocked the very need for a microblogging platform.
Now with Twitter’s 240 million users worldwide blasting out 500 million tweets a day, it’s clearly come of age and offering a huge opportunity for internet marketers.
So the question is, as an Australian SEO, are you making the most of Twitter to get the word out about your clients? If not, it’s a good time to start.
Tweet for Engagement and Brand Building
The first thing to bear in mind is that you should focus on tweeting for engagement and promotion, not for purely “SEO” purposes.
Pundits had long speculated that the number of tweets and retweets was a factor affecting the Google ranking algorithm. However, Matt Cutts refuted this last January.
Cutts noted that Facebook and Twitter pages were treated like any other pages in the web index and thus could show in the search results. However, he asserted that Twitter signals didn’t affect Google’s web search ranking algorithms.
Twitter SEO Tips
- Be sure to choose a user name that reflects your client’s brand or service. This user name is displayed prominently so is extremely important.
- Spend a lot of care on the Twitter profile page and make it as thorough and enticing as possible. Treat is like an ‘about page’ for branding and include a link to a relevant page on your client’s site.
- Make maximum use of hash tags. These are the Twitter equivalent of meta data.
- As Twitter pages show up in the SERPS, including a link could be of SEO value (despite being nofollow). Also, try to naturally include some keywords in your tweets.
- Make sure you place a clear Twitter follow icon on every page to encourage sign ups.
Getting the Message Out
Be sure not to spam or you’ll soon earn a spate of unfollows. There’s nothing wrong with posting details of promotions and new products. However, most of your tweets should consist of useful information. Your aim is to be helpful and engaging.
And what about the 140 character limit?
Making maximum use of URL shorteners can help. But more importantly, look at it as a way to express your message as vividly as possible. Being forced to search for a clear and perfect idea can help you catch the essence of your clients’ messages.
Remember, too, that a tweet makes a fine conversation starter. It can attract a user to your site where you can be more expansive. It’s rather like making a seductive remark to a woman that sparks off a first date and some deeper discourse. And after that, who knows what can happen?
