SEO Optimization Tips | Twitter for Link Building

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I know I just posted an SEO optimization tips article a couple of days ago but I just had to post this article I came across yesterday.

The article and slideshow below talk about using Twitter as a link building tool for SEO optimization. It was written by Dev Basu (his link and bio are below) and named How to Use Twitter for Link Building and Social Signals.

Twitter becomes more and more mainstream, search engines are increasingly indexing its social graph for ranking signals.

In this article, you'll learn five ways to leverage Twitter to rank better in organic search.

SEO Optimization and Twitter Ranking

According to preliminary data from the upcoming 2011 Search Ranking Factors study from SEOmoz, (1) the number of tweets associated with a particular URL and (2) the authority of the Twitter user generating these tweets were amongst the most important social media based ranking factors.

The following are broad metrics that the search engines use to understand the Twitter authority and trust of a given profile:

Overall Authority of Twitter Ranking Signals

• Diversity of Twitter profiles tweeting a particular URL
• Quantity of followers, friends, and overall tweets
• Tweet Engagement, the number of re-tweets, and hashtag responses
• Topical Relevance of Tweets. Do they contain topically related keywords?
• Timing of Tweets, as applicable to real time search, for example, "the royal wedding."
• Page Level Authority, traditional page authority for a particular URL, PageRank, and inbound link popularity.

Now that you have an idea of the factors search engines may take into account when evaluating Twitter links versus links from other sources on the web, it's time to give you actionable tips on using these to your advantage.

SEO Optimization Tips Using Twitter

1. Link to your Twitter profile

Link to your Twitter profile from your website, blog, and by using social media sharing buttons.

While Twitter has a high overall domain authority, your own Twitter profile requires inbound links in the same fashion as your website does to build up authority and trust.

2. Set up different Twitter accounts if you have different business units

Different Twitter accounts are used when your company's employees use their own personal accounts to re-tweet tweets from a company account.

Likewise, if you have different business units, there are opportunities for cross promotion via re-tweeting. This is also a great way to seed overall engagement of your tweet.

3. Use a friendly URL shortener

Twitter's 140 character limit often means that you can't paste full URLs back to your website. Using a friendly URL shortener such as

SEO Tool Box

• Bit.ly
• Trunk.ly
• Goo.gl

passes link juice from a tweet back to your website. (This is where the SEO optimization kicks in).

4. Use Klout.com to figure out who you are influenced by

Klout is a service which analyses your influencers and who you influence.

Keeping in mind that Twitter Authority is one of the metrics associated with higher search rankings from social signals, it's important to engage with users who have a higher overall Klout than your profile.

5. Update accounts using RSS feeds of your content

RSS feeds provide an automated way of telling web services when you have new content.

You can create an RSS feed of all the digital assets you have including

• YouTube videos
• white papers
• blog posts
• press releases
• and more

and then syndicate these to Twitter.

Dev Basu is the owner of Powered by Search, a Toronto SEO Company and Internet Marketing agency specializing in SEO, Local Search, Paid Search, and Social Media solutions for SMB's and SME's and national enterprise clients. Follow Dev on Twitter for more Local SEO optimization tips and tricks.

Slide Show - How to Use Twitter for Link Building and Social Signals

5 Tips on Using Twitter for Link Building and Social Signals - SMX Toronto 2011 by Dev Basu

View more presentations from Powered by Search Inc. 

How to Use Twitter for Link Building and Social Signals - by Dev Basu

Additional link building resources and SEO optimization tips and videos

- How to Optimize Your Website Video Tutorial Series

- Optimize Your Blog

- Backlinking Strategies Video Training | Internet Marketing Tutorials

- Nine SEO Blogging Tips

- Creating Backlinks Quickly

- Facebook SEO Tips

- How to do SEO for an E-Commerce Site Video

- How Important is SEO

This was a very good article with excellent SEO optimization tips.  I hope that you put these SEO tips to use.  I've already added my Twitter profile on my contact me page and in other places.