SEO – search engine optimisation – is an odd creature at times. A sure fire tactic to increase traffic one month can become the exact same reason your website doesn’t rank at all the next. Ultimately, your site’s search engine rankings are in the hands of an extremely secretive and very complicated algorithm locked away at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.
There are ‘knowns’ and ‘unknowns’ when it comes to the way search engines work, but a factor that definitely sits in the ‘known’ category is that social sharing is very important for your SEO.
So here are a few tips to help you get the best results for your SEO activities using one of the most popular social media platforms – Twitter.
A strategic twitter handle
If you have a brand – it could be a company, it could be your own name – be sure to use it in your twitter handle. A good twitter handle will often rank very high for that term. Having a branded Twitter handle ranking that you own is much one more search engine result that you are ranking for.
Optimise Your Bio
It’s surprising how many accounts neglect to utilise this. Feature your website URL in the bio. This link has the rel=”nofollow” attribute added to it, but in conjunction with the strategic handle strategy above, this is a URL featured on a page that ranks highly for your brand term.
Use 301 short link redirectors
Short links are not indexed by search engines, so it is important that when you do select a URL shortener that it is one that uses a 301 redirect code. 301 redirects ensure that any link juice from your link is attributed to your website. Link shorteners such as bit.ly and goo.gl use 301 redirects.
Make your content easy to share
Adding that little ‘Tweet this’ button to your site could be one of the greatest SEO activities you ever do. The Tweet this button allows users and visitors to your page to share your URL across the web with the push of a button. More information on how to add the Tweet me button to your site, visit the Twitter resources page.
Tweet to get tweets
Just like in real life, networking is the best way to gain and spread information. The same principle applies for Twitter. Be sure you build Twitter relationships with like-minded, influential and industry-related accounts. If your content is interesting to these people, they in-turn are more likely to retweet your content, ultimately promoting links to your website across the World Wide Web. Great for link building!
Twitter Cards (Saved the best for last)
Twitter cards (a.k.a: Expanding Tweets) are Twitters contribution towards Open Graph Protocol. Twitter Cards essentially allow you to customize the way your content will be presented within twitter posts when shared across the web.Twitter cards allow content such as images, links or video to expand out, showing more information to the user and making your tweet far more dynamic than the generic 140 character post you are used to.
You can find out more about Twitter cards here. It’s well worth implementing.
There are of course many more tactics that you could implement to help your site get exposure in search engines but the number one thing you should be doing is getting out there. Twitter is just one tool in your arsenal of marketing weapons. It’s quick, easy and has a massive audience. Find your audience and start tweeting like your SEO depends on it…because it does.
