Today, social media plays a major role in SEO. With this in mind, why not tweak your social media profiles for search engines? Believe me, it’s a must. Search engines utilized links from social media sites, including Facebook, Google+1 and Twitter for ranking purposes. Moreover, Twitter streams are also being indexed by search engines in real-time. So here are 5 easy-to-do steps to use one of the social media giants—Twitter, for SEO.

1. Regard Your Twitter Username as a Domain Address


Do you still remember the rules for choosing an effective domain name? Let’s do a recap. Avoid using underscores between words. Make your domain address short and easy to remember. These rules also apply to choosing a good Twitter username.

Additionally, Twitter username must not exceed 15 characters but you know, it’s best to actually not exceed 10 characters, if possible. Now, if you want to use your company name for your brand name, abbreviate and combine it with keywords. For instance, let’s say your company, Prime Movers Corporation, provides shipping services, you may use @PMCShipping as your Twitter username.

2. Do not Use URL shorteners. Link to Your Real URL


If you make use of URL shorteners on your Twitter profile URL section, your profile visitors are more likely to doubt your account. Build up the credibility of your profile and further the trust of your profile visitors in your brand by using your real site or blog URL. This will encourage them to visit your actual website.

3. Optimized Your Twitter Bio


Your Twitter Bio content also functions as the meta-description of your Twitter profile on Google search results. With regard to this, you have to maximize the 160 characters limit to craft a keyword-rich Twitter bio. Always make use of good content and keywords that represent your field of expertise or industry. This is a perfect recipe to rank high in search results. Good content means compelling, relevant, informative and catchy.

4. Optimized Your Twitter Profile Photo


In order to have a keyword-based name for your Twitter profile photo, separate the filename using dashes before uploading. For example: paris-clothing.jpg. Keep your image limited to 250×250 pixels for best page loading speed.

5. Use Keyword Phrases and Hastags on Your Tweets

This will assure better visibility on search results. In fact, many studies have shown that including keywords in tweets regularly can significantly increase search engine rankings. Moreover, save the important tweets in category favorites.

You can also boost your social authority by receiving numerous retweets, hence will help give your ranking a kick.

6. Link Your Twitter Profile from Every Source Possible


You name it, you can link your Twitter profile from your Facebook page, Newsletter, Blog posts, Forums, LinkedIn profile, etc. Popular Twitter directories like WeFollow, TwitterHolic, TrackingTwitter, and more will also improve visibility and link building.

Twitter is a very popular social media site that has more than 190 million users and more than 60 million posts daily. This is why it is an ideal promotion tool for a website. Even though twitter links are “nofollow”, there are still ways to use this social media site for promoting a website. Twitter pages have a direct influence on Google’s SERPs so it is very useful in improving search engine visibility.

Basic Twitter SEO Tactics:

Using Twitter for Traffic

Tweet about every post that you make on your blog or site. Many Twitter users also use it to search for useful and informative tips. Make the tweet interesting in order to catch the attention and curiosity of Twitter users. Make sure that the topics of your posts are useful to other web users.

Link Building with Twitter

Obviously, it is important to have as many Twitter followers as possible so that more people will see your posts. Choose followers who are within your niche or those that have similar interests. Around 25% of the users you follow will follow you back. It is also highly probable that your followers will make posts regarding your latest content. This results to great link building. Google doesn’t index shortened URLs but instead index the actual URLs so this is definitely a great website promotion opportunity.

Other Important Tips

Keep in mind that all your tweets shouldn’t be about your own website. This turns other users off and usually causes fewer followers. If the tweets are always about your products or services, it would appear spammy and this discourages followers. The posts should be interesting, engaging and useful to your followers.

How to Optimize Your Twitter Page

First of all, your username should be relevant to your business or particular niche. It’s a part of the URL of your page and title tag so it greatly affects website promotion. The account name should also be relevant in order to boost Twitter website traffic. This is because the account name is also included in the page title. Build links to your Twitter profile for promotion. Pasting a link to your account on a noticeable part of you website will do the job. Choose your bio text wisely because it also serves as the meta description tag. Think about website promotion when choosing your bio text.

Twitter tactics are very easy to implement. It is definitely worth your time and you will experience very good benefits from doing so. This social media site is absolutely full of potential in terms of SEO.

Twitter – the cool application that has been used by everybody today is a great resource for building links to your site or blog. Backlinks have always been very useful in determining the ranking of a site in the search engines. Though the overall process is termed as SEO, but building quality backlinks is a major step in achieving higher search engine rankings.

There are tons of articles on the web that describe the best link building techniques, which you can refer to. In this post, I will discuss on how you can use Twitter to build quality dofollow backlinks which will not only increase traffic to your site but also pass on quality link juice.

Twitter offers three opportunities to pass links from your profile. One through the status messages, second through your Twitter Bio and third through the application(s) you use for tweeting. Twitter had nofollowed the links that we pass on in the status messages since a long time. They had kept the links in the Bio field dofollow, until Matt Cutts made the Twitter Bio links nofollow. And I bet, you never thought about the third option as a means to pass links.

Bob ArdKor has written a great article on achieving dofollow links from Twitter. Though his original post is written in French, but you can find the Google Translated version of the same in English.

Bob says,

On twitter, users post their tweet from customers for I-phone as Twitterfon, Nambu … others use Firefox extensions TwitterFox to post their message on Twitter, others pass by scripts that use the API and Of course, others go directly from Twitter.

When you post from these applications, as appears tweet posted a statement containing the date of publication of the tweet and at what support you have posted the message with a link to the site of application.

This link is dofollow and followed by search engines.

Bob has explained the method of customizing those links for leveraging the link juice. It’s a great find by Bob who has implemented this strategy in his Twitter profile and seems to benefit from the same. But with Twitter becoming a threat to Google with the ability to search real time updates, it’s a matter of time when they will make those links nofollow as well. Therefore, start using this method right from today and give a boost to your SEO efforts.

PS: I have not tried this method yet, but it seems to be effective. Please note, this method is not black hat; after all you are just customizing the look and feel of your Twitter profile.

In the last 5 years or so, we have seen many websites turning into successful businesses. Be it Google, Digg, Facebook or TechCrunch. Of course its an incredible moment for the founders of these sites, but sometimes the popularity just bigger and bigger.

Twitter is one such website that has become a household name now. Today, even a kid knows the significance of a tweet or RT or @ (reply). The fact that people use the word twitter as a verb or noun shows its popularity and global appeal. And considering such a massive attractive appeal, Twitter has added another feather to its cap by finding a place in the dictionary.

The Collins English Dictionary has decided to include the word ‘twitter‘ in its 30th anniversary edition to be published later this year. Here’s how twitter would be defined:

As a Noun: “a website where people can post short messages about their current activities”

As a Verb: “to write short messages on the Twitter website”.

About 3 years ago ‘google‘ was added to the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary. Though twitter is a pure word and google is a revised version of googol, but the fact that the names of websites/businesses are making their way to dictionaries is self explanatory about their popularity.

If this trend continues, then we might see businesses being set up on existing words (duh. its already happening) and becoming popular enough to replace the original definition of the word with that of the business in dictionaries. Irrespective of its effect on the businesses, such a phenomenon will surely screw our English. What do you think?

The popular microblogging service Twitter has made people go crazy. Developed as a social media site to tell people, “What are you doing?”, Twitter has come a long way.

Twitter has made connecting with people so easy, just requires 140 characters, or even lesser. And for this reason, everyone signs up on Twitter and starts streaming with information on their profile page. But this massive popularity has cost a few reputed and well known people dearly. Account hacking, tweeting with a false account, impersonation or even mistaken identity has become a common thing now. And to tackle these problems, Twitter is testing the process of verifying the accounts (still in Beta).

So, what is a verified account?

To prevent identity confusion, Twitter is experimenting (beta testing) with a ‘Verified Account’ feature. Twitter is working to establish authenticity with people who deal with impersonation or identity confusion on a regular basis. Accounts with a Verified are the real thing!

This is how a verified twitter account looks like -

Look at the top right side. Every verified account will sport a Verified Account badge ensuring authenticity of the account.

So if you are competing against impersonation, you better get your Twitter account verified. Also, this verification process is not for individuals alone, its meant for businesses as well.

Do not let anyone take your reputation for granted while you try hard to build it by tweeting.