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Using Twitter for SEO
Published on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 10:55pm under Social Media.
Twitter is the talk of the town these days. Everyone is weighing in on Twitter’s business model and features like trends and search, and what they all mean for industry giants like Google and Facebook. In my opinion, there’s another important aspect to the Twitter question™*: SEO.
Twitter is the next big thing in SEO techniques.
It’s actually very simple. Twitter is becoming a huge player on the web, and as such, it’s gaining more power and better ranking on SERPs. Anyone on Twitter can count on that to improve their own visibility.
Title Tags
With a relatively small change they made a few weeks ago, Twitter all but proved that they’re diving into the SEO game. Just a few weeks ago, Twitter’s <title> tags changed. Using my username as an example, the tags went from “Twitter / tjkelly” to “TJ Kelly Web Design (tjkelly) on Twitter.” Placing my “real name” and username first in the title scores big bonus points for my SEO efforts.
Analytics Evidence
I’ve already started to see evidence of this Twitter-victory (twitctory?) in my analytics. In the past few weeks, Twitter has jumped from near the bottom of my “Traffic Sources” list to the #4 spot (after “none”, behind Google and Facebook, interestingly enough) with about 10% of my visits coming in through Twitter.
A pretty substantial change, and it happened FAST. There could be any number of factors involved in this, but one of them is definitely Twitter’s search ranking success.
So what?
Users, businesses, organizations… whomever wants to capitalize on the Twitter-SEO opportunity, should take a few steps to improve their ‘Twitter-to-homepage’ conversion rates.
1) Include keywords in your “real name.”
I added “Web Design” after “TJ Kelly” so my keywords will appear with my name in the <title> tag. It also immediately tells visitors what your Twitter stream is likely to be about.
2) Make a “badge” or some other descriptive background for your Twitter profile.
Twitter won’t let you add CSS or HTML to your profile, but that doesn’t mean it can’t say anything about you. The one drawback: no clickable links. But, if your URL is listed along with some compelling info about you, the “Web” URL listed on your profile ought be just fine.
3) Add keywords to your “Bio.”
These probably won’t help searchers looking for “website design” find my Twitter profile. But it will tell visitors to my profile figure out what I do.
4) This one’s extra. Remove the “www” from your “More info URL” in Twitter’s “Settings” page.
Now visitors to my Twitter profile will see “http://tjkwebdesi…” Compare that to the alternative, “http://www.tjkweb…” For my money, the “www” is unnecessary anyway and removing it reveals more of my URL to the visitor. (Side note: I tried removing the “http://” too, but Twitter added it back in.)
Afterthoughts
Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was recently fined by the NBA for using Twitter to criticize referees. In a response to the fine, Cuban twittered, “can’t say no one makes money from twitter now. the nba does.”
Twitter is awash in capital from a healthy pool of investors, to the tune of $20 million, according to Wired Magazine. Soon enough, they’ll storm the market with an ambitious business model and the user-base to support it.
* Not actually trademarked
Update: DiggBar NOT an SEO-killer
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[...] 6 Apr 2009 · No Comments Twitter is the talk of the town these days. Everyone is weighing in on Twitter’s business model and features like trends and search, and what they all mean for industry giants like Google and Facebook. In my opinion, there’s another important aspect to the Twitter question: Twitter SEO. [...]
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I agree with you 99% but wonder if you have really looked at the whole picture. DOn’t mean to be critical just food for thought.
Thanks for this article, seems like you have found a solution
Needless to say that I will subscribe to your RSS feeds now. Keep it up and thanks for sharing.
Manuela
@Neitz – Thanks for the feedback. I’m sure my list isn’t exhaustive. What other factors might you consider? I’d love to hear some new ideas.
It’s nice to read well written articles. I love to read on blogs managed by people that know what they write
Greetings from Italy, i’m here for vacation in a wonderful hotel!
I agree with your suggestions, but twitter alone is not the option to go. It is a part of it. I know this because as a new blogger I have tested this theory. How to start getting hits on your page when you start as a nobody on the web? I tried twitter, it gives you like 40-50% of hits to your page. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great way to start, but, consider other options/techniques like Digg, leave posts on other pages (like how I am doing right now) and once in a while release some great news on your blog like I did with ESET’s licensing blunder.
Great stuff!
Nice post. There’s a similar topic thats related to this in Yahoo answers or Google groups, I think. I’ll find the link and post it back here.
This is an excellent article! I hope to check back for more
Your Twitter post is good and brings up some valid points, glad I found your post! I believe that social media is going to be the future home for any and all advertising and marketing. With Google’s real-time search and other search engines catching on quickly you will see many SEO Companies becoming Twitter SEO Companies very soon! I wrote a post that you may be interested to read about Twitter SEO
I am an avid Twitter user and focus on building the value that I add to the rest of my social network, I help to promote any and everyone that asks me for help (as long as they are not loco in la cabessa!). I believe that optimizing your profiles is very important, just as optimizing your website is, but the most important part of any SEO efforts is having quality content. The same goes for Twitter, you need quality content and updates for people to read and link to. If you tweet about the right subjects you will notice more and more incoming links to your twitter profile when your tweets start being republished on other people’s blogs (provides some temporary page rank). Also you can do your own personal “Social Media Press Release” and some good old fashioned article directory link building with your Twitter profile.
Social media is the first step to an “open-source” media and news. My twitter username is @gohewitt for anyone looking to follow. I am excited to see what comes of all of this and feel that we still don’t have a clue what being “Connected” really means just yet!