If you remember my blog from day four on the job, I recently put together several e-books for professional development. This week, Dana has assigned each of us a different one of these books, and I have been reading a Hubspot manual about how to attract customers with Twitter. I’m familiar with recreational Twitter use, but it’s not my favorite social media platform, so I have never really taken it upon myself to do more research into how to use Twitter for business purposes (beyond the basics). 6 Steps to Optimize Twitter for Search was one of the chapters that really appealed to me, and I’ve shared some of the tips below:
1. Make Twitter handles spam-free. To ensure that your Twitter page is one of the top hits on Google, Bing or any other search engine, try to avoid using numbers in your user name. Since many spammers’ Twitter handles include numbers (e.g., @Name456781), when Google’s algorithm scans links on Twitter, it often disregards such usernames because it cannot differentiate what is a legitimate username and what is spam.
2. Include keywords in your bio. With only 160 characters to create a valuable Twitter bio, don’t waste space with too many industry keywords. Instead, reflect your business in an accurate and meaningful way that will help improve your search visibility. Also, since search engines often display Twitter bios in the links’ description on the results page, make sure you bio is attention grabbing!
3. Build your reach. Simple concept, but apparently overlooked by many. According to Google and Bing, both of their algorithms check the authority of every user tweeting, so make sure to gain a following for better SEO.
4. Create a special subset of keywords. Make a list of keywords or phrases that your business attempts to rank in search engines. For instance, key phrases Clairemont would want to rank for include “Public Relations” or “Raleigh PR agency.” Shorten longer key phrases and pick a smaller subset of keywords for Twitter. Then, use theses phrases regularly in your tweets to boost SEO.
5. Keep tweet lengths in the retweet safe zone. To ensure that your SEO keywords and phrases are not deleted when another user shares your tweets, give your tweets about 10-20 characters of wiggle room. This keeps those keywords safe from being deleted when ”RT @username” is added to the shared tweet. Plus, data indicates that 120-130 character tweets have the highest click-through rates.
6. Create your own inbound links. Lastly, make your content interesting enough that other influencers on Twitter will retweet it. Both Google and Bing take the value of Twitter authority figures and correlate it with the value of the link. So, the number of followers a user who retweets your content has is important for search engines that are measuring the value and importance of the retweeted link.
Any other Twitter tips worth sharing? We’d love to hear them!
