10 Twitter SEO Tips to Optimize Your Influence Marketing Strategy

Did you know that your tweets appear in Google search results and are highly valued by its search algorithm? Consequently, optimizing your Twitter SEO strategy can drive significant traffic to your web properties. So how can you improve the SEO value of your tweets?

1. Choose a brand, product or business relevant Twitter handle

Your Twitter handle (username) appears in Twitter URLs and at the front of every Tweet, so choosing a handle that is related to your brand, product or business will improve the indexing results of your Twitter profile. If you already have an active Twitter account, you can change your username in the settings pull-down menu under accounts. When choosing a name, bear in mind that Twitter handles are restricted to 15 characters.

2. Optimize your Twitter description

Your Twitter Profile Description is anchored to the top of your Twitter profile page, so these words are the first words that Google’s search algorithm reviews to evaluate the relevance of your page and index it. Google also uses the profile description as the website’s metadata. Twitter allocates 160 characters for your bio, so make sure to write a concise introduction that is rich in long-tail keywords.

3. Increase your website exposure

Twitter enables users to include a website in their bio that is classified as a no follow website in Google. This means that it does not help with backlink juice for your site, but it does expose your followers and other page viewers to your website, which will lead to an uptick in website traffic.

4. Make the start of your tweet keyword rich

The first 40 characters including your username are allocated the highest indexing value in Twitter, so make sure to optimize the first 40 characters of your tweets with long-tail keywords. Also, this means there is an advantage to choosing shorter Twitter handles, as it will give you more words to work with when Tweeting.

5. Make sure your tweets are retweetable

One of the key characteristics of Twitter is its open community that enables you to influence users outside your network through having your content retweeted. Tweets should never exceed 140 characters minus “RT @username,” as Twitter restricts tweets to 140 characters and longer tweets will not be capable of being retweeted.

6. Make sure you hashtag (#) keywords in your tweets

Hashtags reference keywords in tweets so that they are searchable in Twitter. Doing so increases the exposure of your Tweets.

7. Use a URL shortener that uses s permanent redirects

This will ensure that the links that you are including in your tweets are actually getting indexed based on the actual URL and not the shortened URL. Bit.ly is a popular shortener.

8. Increase your follower crowd and engagement with them

By increasing the number of people following you and your engagement with them, you will increase your page rank. The page rank bonus is a function of your followers and your followers’ follower counts. Thus, you should target more influential tweeters to follow and try to get them to follow you by interacting with them and their communities on a regular basis.

9. Create optimized Twitter lists

Increasing the number of lists that you are on and the number of followers that use your lists will increase your influence on Twitter and your Google page ranking. When designing lists, make sure they are public, have keyword optimized list names and descriptions and are small enough that all of the content on the list can be read. Twitter limits users to 20 lists and each list is limited to 500 users. Also, you can tweet about your lists to build a following for your list.

10. Strategic keyword tweeting

Using a targeted list of keywords in your tweets on a regular basis can also boost your Google page rank score for certain targeted keywords. Hashtagging these keywords in your tweets will also increase your Twitter search ranks.

Google’s search algorithm does not incorporate a real-time aspect into its tweet page ranks. However, rumor has it that Google is in the process of developing a real-time search algorithm to pick up the most relevant and recent tweets. When this happens, it will increase the importance of retweets and tweet timing.

If you are interested in learning more about using social media as a business tool, you should read my blog posts on Twitter as a customer service medium and how Facebook can be used as a sales tool.

Similarly, if you are interested in learning about influence marketing and content marketing strategy, I highly recommend reading Get Content, Get Customers: Turn Prospects into Buyers with Content Marketing by Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett.