Using Twitter To Boost SEO

Getting to grips with Twitter

Webmasters and internet marketers have recently been taking advantage of Web 2.0 avenues for SEO purposes so that their websites will earn more traffic than ever. Social networking sites and blogs have been two of the major targets for some time now and have been delivering rave results.

Most recently, people have been getting into Twitter which falls under the social networking category, but maintains its uniqueness by being a micro-blogging service as well. Now internet marketers are on the offensive in using Twitter as a platform to boost SEO. If you are looking to join in, take note of these unique challenges and possible workarounds.

New Users have a Tough Hill to Climb
If you are getting your feet wet with Twitter, understand that, just as you have to when you join other networking sites, you need to start off slow. The first thing to do is to be a follower of other Twitter members that you may know from other social networking sites. Most likely they will do the same and follow you as well. Having lots of followers is important for targeting others around Twitter and getting your ranking up.

All Shared Links in Twitter have the NoFollow Attribute
In short, your page ranking will not be affected if people click on your link which may be discouraging for SEO marketers, but that doesn’t mean that all is lost. You can still post rewritten URLs that have the necessary keywords on the link so the search engines pick them up.

Twitter has Character Limits
There are two magic numbers that you need to understand in Twitter: 30 and 140. 140 is the overall character limit for each message or “tweet” while 30 is the character limit for live links. It is impossible to go around the 140 character limit and exceeding the URL character limit will result to a shortened URL. Shortened URLs do not index very well with search engines, but fortunately there are a few workarounds.

You can try making use of subdomains on your website that point to the URL of your longer page. Subdomains can easily be customized for free and you might be able to squeeze in a few words within the character limit. You can also create a dummy blog that has similar content but a shortened address with all the necessary words you wish to put. Just be sure that blog links to the actual page that you want people to go to.

Keyword Research is Still Important
Making tweets can be tough if you restrict yourself to certain keywords. But using them are well worth it as Twitter has such a high page ranking. Keyword searches may lead to Twitter pages that contain links to the sites they are promoting. Tap into that after you made enough research.

Depending on what you are promoting, Twitter may not meet your expectations. But don’t let that discourage you because Twitter still helps in getting your site on the search engines. It is better if you boost your SEO using Twitter along with other social networking sites for added strength.