This isn’t something very frequently said in the world of SEO, but there is a new way to get your business to the top of the rankings within minutes. No, it’s not some under-the-table black hat technique. It’s actually something that Google itself is trying to promote. It’s Twitter.
There’s a lot of hype about Twitter, and there has been for the last couple of years. Google has finally caught on, and seems to be giving the site a lot more attention. Everything from keywords to actual results is being sourced from the mini-blogging site. It’s the results that should interest most business owners.
Why is Google interested in Twitter?
Twitter has many qualities, but there’s one that is getting tweets featured by Google. The thing about Twitter is that it’s fast. With social networks being increasingly used as alternative search engines, it is clearly in Google’s interest to boost the timeliness of its results. This need for new results is the key to getting your Twitter posts at the top of the search engine results pages.
It’s fairly simple. When internet users click on the ‘most recent’ tab when performing a search, Google boosts newer results to the top. Because of the huge number of tweets on every subject, and because of an increasing awareness of search engine optimisation on Twitter in general, a lot of those ‘most recent’ results happen to be tweets. If you’ve used SEO tactics for your Twitter campaign, your tweet has a good chance of appearing for your keywords. Of course, it won’t stay there, but the more often you appear at the top of the SERPs, the better coverage your business has on the net.
How to get to the top with tweets
Getting to the top of the SERPs is never an easy matter, but it’s much easier with Twitter posts. To get there, you have to stick by the rules of Twitter optimisation:
- Create quality, catchy posts
- Use links where possible, to bring traffic to your site
- Include your keywords and search engine optimisation techniques whenever possible
- Tweet regularly – Twitter is all about constant contact with others, and the more regular your tweets are, the more chances you have of appearing in the search results.
It’s interesting to note that Google doesn’t yet appear to be taking a Twitter user’s popularity into account when featuring tweets as most recent results. Although in the usual scheme of things the amount of followers you have on Twitter would affect where Google places your tweets, for most recent results Google seems to care only about the time factor. This means that your Twitter campaign could be helping your business from the start.
Note: It’s important not to replace your whole SEO campaign with social media and Twitter. As mentioned above, tweets appear for mere seconds, and you can’t count on users asking for most recent results. The Twitter approach is a good support for your site, though, and worth considering.
