Google has confirmed that yes, they do in factor social signals into how they rank websites. Can you use your Twitter account for a quick SEO-boost? Well, it’s one piece of the puzzle. Google won’t treat Tweeted links quite the same as web-based links, but they will consider Tweets and Facebook mentions (visible on public Facebook accounts) in page ranking. Author/social authority of the person sharing that link will be closely considered, as well as your own influence.
What factors contribute to your social authority on Twitter? Some possibilities:
- Your number of followers
- The “authority” of your followers (getting RT’s by influencers is ideal; bots will probably get filtered out of results)
- The consistency of your topic/subject matter according to your Tweets, links, language and followers
Some people are wary of the real value of social signals, emphasizing the need to first focus on great SEO practices like creating good content, on-page optimization, getting inbound links. So while we may still be figuring out just how much your Twitter account plays a part in page ranking, one thing is for sure: Twitter is a great way to build a relationship with your target audience and influencers in that space. Those people may blog about you and share your content elsewhere. These potential inbound links and the traffic your fans drive to your content are worth the time invested in running a Twitter account.
A lot of these are basic tips on how to best leverage your Twitter account in general, but they should boost your social authority as well.
Create Great Content
This is objective number one. People follow, share and link to great content. Helpful, informative, entertaining – whatever your style, it needs to be good, and that will attract the right followers. Write a good blog post, have a good headline, and share that on Twitter. At oneforty I like to not only just share content on Twitter with the blog post headline, but we like to “sell” it and show the value proposition of the post by pulling out one particular tip or tool to “tease” our followers with. Use a tool like CoTweet to schedule Tweets of your content throughout the day (use a light touch – you don’t want to spam people with links to your blog posts.) This will get you ReTweets, followers and build your social authority. When you create great content, you draw in a community of relevant people who can talk about you and link to you on other sites, and all that helps boost your page rank.
Getting Followers
When you’re just starting your Twitter account, the only way to get more followers is by following people. You have to get on their radar before they can start engaging with you, and then through relationships and exposure your network will grow. But initially, you want to target the right people to follow. Use Listorious to find people listed by subject matter. You can also use Follower Wonk to see who is following your competitors and discover people who may be interested in your content as well.
Blast Follow is a tool that’ll follow people in bulk for you, but this isn’t the best Twitter practice and an easy way to run into a rate limit. Auto-following with a tool like SocialToois also a way to grow a following, but this tends to attract a lot of spammers and bots who are just looking for a follow-back. Target the right followers in your subject matter and build the right audience.
ReTweets = Exposure
Engaging your followers on Twitter and generating ReTweets is a good way to leverage their networks and gain exposure. Some effective ways you can do this:
-Tweet button – Be sure you are offering a way for your blog readers to share your content on Twitter.
-Offerpop – Have a coupon code to share or a webinar you want promoted? Have a prize that you’ll give away to one of the people who shares your news on Twitter? Offerpop enables you to run Twitter promotions and contests, a great way to gain attention from your audience and mobilize the influencers in your network.
-Run a Twtpoll: Ask your followers a question related to your subject matter. This engages them in a conversation but also keeps it targeted on your keywords and topic.Twtpoll offers embeddable code for you to share the results graph in a blog post. Share the results of the poll with your followers as they may be interested in learning what people’s opinions were on whatever you asked.
-Pay with a Tweet – Have great content to share, like an ebook or white paper? Pay with a Tweet enables you to get your followers to “pay” for whatever you are offering by Tweeting about it. This helps expose your content and Tweets to their networks, helping you garner attention from a broader audience and enhance your Twitter account.
-Rowfeeder – Identify who your influencers are that are ReTweeting your content, and see what seems to resonate with them. Set up a search term for your company and see who is Tweeting about you. Rowfeeder puts the Tweets into a spreadsheet for you. This requires some manual labor of picking through the spreadsheet, but you can see who your Tweeters are that have the most followers – who your influencers are. You can upgrade your Rowfeeder account to include Klout score for a more inclusive measure of influence.
Optimize Your Tweets: Language and Timing
Targeting your audience with the language that resonates with them at the time that they are most willing to engage with you in conversation are two more tactics that will help you make the most of your Tweets and build social authority. SocialFlow offers a fantastic language analysis tool that helps you identify the best language to use when communicating with your audience. Sysomos has a great feature called the Buzzgraph that shows you which words are most commonly used around your brand. Tweeting with the right keywords will help boost your social authority by proving your relevance in your subject area.
Timing your Tweets is another great tactic. Crowdbooster and Timely are two tools that will help you identify when your Tweets get the most click-throughs and when your audience is most receptive to your content. When you really target your audience like this, you can generate more ReTweets and exposure for your content.
On a more tactical level, don’t forget that you can go through your Bit.ly links and see what your most-clicked Tweets are. What headlines and language in Tweets did you use that worked? Take a moment to analyze that and repeat what was successful.
You may have noticed a common theme here: great content. All these Twitter tips are ways to make sure that your content is exposed to the right crowd at the right time – but it all starts with having a good link to share with them in the first place. Plus, beyond the scope of social signals and how they may or may not be indexed by search engines, good content gets links. Start there, and then you have a good base to build off of to enhance that content with good SEO practices.
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