Improve Search Ranking by Tweeting

Back in December 2010 Google and Bing admitted using Twitter and Facebook on their organic search ranking. Although Internet marketers received the news with some doubts, a lot of them made their own tests to analyze how tweeting can really improve a website’s search ranking.

Jen Lopez of SEOmoz, on her article about Tweet’s Effect on Search Ranking wasn’t really looking at it but discovered its effect unexpectedly when Smashingmag tweeted about their Beginner’s Guide to SEO. The said tweet was retweeted too many times. Not long after, SEOmoz ranked high on ‘beginner’s guide’ keyword when previously, it wasn’t anywhere in SERP and they were not getting any traffic from the said keyword.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, who brought out the news about Twitter and Facebook’s effect on search ranking, as admitted to him through his interview, said something interesting that caught my attention. He said that when it comes to Twitter, they look at the person tweeting about a webpage. If you get a tweet coming from an authority figure, the person’s importance is then transmitted to your webpage.

Let’s look at a concrete tweeting study made by John Doherty of SEOmoz. I will just summarize his findings here, but if you want more details, try to check his post. It’s more than worth reading to understand the effects of tweeting for your search ranking campaign.

The case studies he made was using less competitive keywords twitted by authority figures, effects of authority person tweeting about a highly competitive keyword which is already ranking, and less competitive keyword which is expected to get its own rank on its own without tweeting. The result was quite interesting and here’s what he found out.

1. The number of tweets coming from people with tons of followers can greatly improve the rank of a less competitive keyword. The sudden rise comes after it is tweeted and retweeted by authority figures.
2. A competitive keyword tweeted by non-influencers doesn’t have an effect on ranking.
3. A less competitive keyword, which is expected to rank on its own without any tweet, may sit longer and not be found on SERP. After a tweet is made, it made its way to the first page of SERP.

In conclusion, John Doherty suggested that tweets and other social media signals are getting really important when it comes to search engine ranking. When new articles are tweeted, the webpage gets discovered and indexed right away. When the person who tweeted about it is an influencer, then the page gets ranked. The quantity or tweets and the number of people who tweeted about it can also affect how high your webpage can get to the top.

My suggestion:

1. When you publish a new article, tweet about it.
2. Contact your friends to retweet them. You can also hire someone to build a lot of followers and retweet all your tweets.
3.  Create interesting and compelling articles and build a relationship with influencers. It may be easier said than done, but it’s worth it.