Most of you already how to use Twitter – for status updates, exchanging messages, posting on-the-go photos or even for link dissemination. What you probably don’t know is how to tap the power of Twitter for SEO.

I’m not about to say that it is the best place to start planting backlinks. No. Well, okay, it can be beneficial in rare occasions but it is more often than usual, not. Read on to find out why.

What is Twitter

Twitter is social networking at its simplest. The platform allows a user to send short blurbs called ‘tweets’ to his ‘followers’. Links and images may be attached to each tweet but the entire message must stay within the 140 character limit.

Many businesses sign up on Twitter to use it as an advertising medium. When a user tweets about something, his followers instantly receive it. If the tweet is interesting or compelling enough to share, the followers may re-tweet (RT) it, and then his followers may re-tweet it again – and so on. So here, the more followers, the better.

Twitter SEO

As far as backlink building is concerned, you must know that Twitter links are ‘nofollow’. Although SEO experts have concluded that these types of links are not entirely deplete of backlink juice, it is still not a one-off deal. Google may only credit a nofollow backlink if the post goes viral or if somebody with authority (huge network, well known brand) re-tweets it. On the bright side, Bing and Yahoo doesn’t care for the nofollow attribute and will credit the backlink towards your site’s ranking.

But backlinks aren’t the only stuff that drive SEO. With the right followers, Twitter can be a great channel to direct targeted traffic to a website.

Keywords also play a role in Twitter in the form of hashtags (#topic). Frequent use of hashtags enable the platform to determine trending topics and at the same time allow users to easily search for related tweets.

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Wider Reach

Twitter’s privacy setting is as simple as a yes/no question. Tweets from a public account may be accessed by anybody, so a quick hashtag search can expose it to more users. The wider the audience reach, the higher the probability that your messages are passed along, and so the links on it get more visits.

Another great feature of Twitter is its integration to other social platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Digg, and many others. Each tweet also has its own URL so even somebody without a twitter account can access the it.

Tweet Tips

Twitter is really one of the sweetest things that happened on the internet. Its user-base is growing by about 1.123 million new accounts per day! There’s no doubt that it’s a great place to tap SEO juice.

Here are my short and tweet tips on how to effectively use Twitter for SEO:

• Blast out RT-worthy tweets everyday (tweet funny, tweet useful, tweet current)
• Engage and interact (reply, re-tweet, favorite tweets)
• Follow the trends (hashtag it!)
• Don’t be a snob (mention, follow back, thank your followers)
• Don’t buy followers (real people followers are better than robots)
• Integrate Twitter to your other social media accounts
• Promote your presence (provide ‘follow me’ links on our website, fan page, etc.)

Got more ideas? Share them here by leaving a comment!