Best Ways to Boost SEO with Social Media: Twitter Twitter has a long history with Google, leading to a lot of confusion about whether signals from Twitter influence Google’s search results. Today I’m going to sort that out (spoiler alert: it doesn’t). Then I’m going to look at current best practices for upping your influence in search using Twitter. Google Loves Twitter: Yes, No, Maybe So? A few years ago, there was a lot of buzz about search engines using social signals to impact SERs. For a little while, Google did index tweets. Starting in 2009, Google had access to the full “fire hose” of Twitter’s data stream. A year later, Matt Cutts told us that these signals would officially be picked up by Google’s algorithm. But the partnership was over a couple years later. In 2011, Google’s fire hose agreement with Twitter ended and Google rolled out its own proprietary social network, Google+. Fast forward to this year, when Cutts went on record saying that “signals” from Twitter (and Facebook) are not part of the Google algo. The breakup between Google and Twitter would seem to be official. But even now, a lot of SEOs insist that Twitter and Facebook activity weighs into Google’s search results. Most of the arguments point to observations that there’s a high correlation between activity on certain Twitter (or Facebook) accounts and their rankings in search engines. But, come on, folks … dust off your high school stats: correlation is not the same thing as causation. The correlation is almost certainly about this: If you publish great content and it gets a lot of social shares, chances are it will also get links. Links, not shares, are influencing the search engine results. If you’re interested in a deeper analysis of what Cutts said in his announcement earlier this year, and what it means, check out Mark Traphagen’s excellent post on that. The most damning evidence against Google using Twitter data currently comes from Stone Temple Consulting’s recent analysis of how and when Google indexes tweets. Those guys found that only a few tweets are being indexed and those that are coming mainly from superhero accounts of more than a million followers. And … the indexing is slow. Conclusion: Google is almost certainly not indexing tweets in any way that brings SEO benefits to most of us. So let’s take our eggs out of that basket—at least for now. What about Bing? Now, having said that, I need to point out that Bing does use social signals from Twitter. That’s documented and you can bank on it. For the rest of my post, though, I’m going to focus on using Twitter for Google SEO— indirectly. Twitter Still Helps With Google SEO. Here’s How. Assuming you agree with my arguments above, here are some key ways you can use Twitter to help improve your resultss with Google. It’s not a comprehensive list, but these will give you the most bang for your buck. Encourage Natural Backlinks Links are still the foundation of the Web and the Google algo. They’re our best way of telling Google that our websites and content are valuable and trustworthy. And Twitter’s one of the best social avenues for building organic connections that lead to natural, “honest” links. So- the best way Twitter can boost your SEO is for building natural links. You have to start with great, useful content. Wherever you publish this—your own website/blog, Google+, LinkedIn or guest blogs, etc.,—you can use Twitter to attract readers who will want to share and link to it. To encourage this, you’re going to need to focus on Twitter habits that will: Build genuine community and connections Make your tweets more shareable
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 09:44:00 +0000