How to Use Twitter for SEO
Like MySpace, Facebook and Digg, Twitter is a useful tool in any web manager or blogger's arsenal to increase site traffic using the techniques of search engine optimization (SEO). SEO involves properly placing keywords likely to come up frequently in Google searches. What makes Twitter unique is how easy it makes it to research what people are actually talking about instead of just guessing what someone might search for. Use SEO on Twitter to maximize traffic both to your Twitter account and webpage.
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Instructions
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Go to the Twitter homepage, www.twitter.com.
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Search Twitter for any keywords related to the topic on which you wish to post or tweet using the search bar in the right-hand panel. For instance, if you are posting on the president, search terms such as "president," "pres," "POTUS," "Obama" or "commander in chief."
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For each search term, check the frequency of tweets. An easy way to do this is scroll to the bottom of the first page of 20 search results and see when the 20th was posted. If the 20th tweet containing the word "president" occurred 30 seconds ago and the 20th tweet containing "POTUS" occurred 90 seconds ago, people are using the word "president" more often. This tells you that "president" is a more valuable SEO keyword than "POTUS."
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Search popular hash tags. Hash tags group popular topics on Twitter by placing "#" in front of specific phrases. For instance, #Obama might be a way people are labeling current posts on the president. Using one or two hash tags increases the likelihood of someone who is looking at all tweets with that tag seeing your tweet. This is particularly important for newsworthy or other popular topics.
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Include the most-tweeted words early in your tweet or article (preferably in the first two paragraphs of an article).
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Tweet out a link to any article, blog or website you post elsewhere. Use the same popular keywords and hash tags.
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Mention your Twitter account on your blog or website. Be careful not to come off as too self-promotional, but remember that traffic to your Twitter account will increase traffic to your site and vice versa. Every outlet you have (website, blog, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook) should be working together to increase traffic to the other sites.
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Tips & Warnings
Popular Twitter topics change every hour, so be sure to do your research right before you post your article, website or tweet. What is popular with web users today might not be tomorrow.
