Twitter SEO Tactics for the New Blogger

I still strongly believe that Twitter is the stupidest thing on Earth, but I’ve caved in with regards to its usefulness. I just find it flat out stupid that CNN and MSNBC are quoting random people’s tweets as news. But even the stupidest things come in handy, and Twitter comes in oh-so-handy if you’re a new blogger looking for any free Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and exposure you can get. These are just a small sample of facts showing why Twitter is currently the cheapest and potentially most effective SEO tool out there :

Fact : Twitter is the fastest growing social networking medium of all time. It had a 1,382 % growth rate for unique visitors between February 2008 and February 2009. Giants like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5 couldn’t come close. A free ubiquitous tool and bloggers seeking exposure go good together. Its buzzing like crazy with activity, activity = eyes, eyes = exposure, exposure = traffic.

Fact : Believe it or not the most active demographic for Twitter is working adults (35-49), yes, Moms and Dads comprise almost 42% of the site’s total audience. That’s a profitable,
well-networked demographic.

Fact : In January 2009 alone, over 700,000 people accessed Twitter through their mobile phone. A lot of exposure.

Fact : All those stats may even be an underestimation. I got this message a minute ago while trying to figure out how to upload a picture on Twitter (note, this is only my 2nd time on the site) :

Twitter is over capacity.

Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again.

WHOA. How often does that happen for a major site? (other than lame-ass Hotmail)

Therefore, its not just tweens and kids micro-blogging about superficial observations of life, Twitter is the biggest billboard sign you can advertise on ever, for free.

How do you start?

Well signing up would be nice. For your username use your site name or something catchy. For example The Undisputed Truth would be my ideal Twitter username but some douchebag took it already. I have to settle with this. This is the rudimentary phase of branding yourself.

Still branding yourself, just go start following random people. Ideally it would be other bloggers who blog about similar topics, but random people with lots of followers work good too. I don’t think its a good idea to go follow Lacey Duvalle or Jenna Haze if your blog is about religion for example, so use your common sense here. Opinion leaders are a good pick too. These would be the popular people at your workplace, university, city, etc. If you’re an anonymous blogger, still add them, the more the merrier. You can be focused and follow only people who relate in some way to topics you cover on your blog as well. Save your curiosities and interests for your personal Twitter account.

The most important yet simplest part : update your Twitter regularly. Mix your updates with interesting, personal stuff which would be exclusive to your Twitter account (giving people reasons to follow and pay attention) and a little self-promotion here and there with links back to your site e.g. ABC Blog is so excited about the new theme OMG check it out @ www.whatever.net.This is basically how you seal the deal. SEO-wise, each time someone clicks on those links from your updates counts as a vote from Twitter.com to your site in the eyes of the Google search engine. Google’s PageRank algorithm works in a way where your site is ranked in search engine results based on relativity to keywords, update frequency, etc. However, inbound links from other highly ranked sites (Alexa ranks Twitter the 50th top site in the world) weigh heavy in your search engine ranking as well.
Also, keep in mind that your tweets are like micro-websites, so choose your keywords well for traffic from other Twitter users and search eingine users searching for topics related to your blog. Use links and multimedia where appropriate and take the time to develop a page which reflects what your blog or website is about on Twitter, to get the attention of as much passerby Twitter users as possible.

Rinse and repeat. The only thing left to do is get more followers. You can do this using contests and prize-giveaways like what John Chow does. There are millions, soon to be billions of twitter users out there, sky is the limit.