Twittering for SEO Success

When I first heard of Twitter I thought that it was a stupid idea. Even the word has connotations of pointless gossip or incessant chatter. I did not see the point. However, I thought that I would give it a try just to see what it was about.

If you have never heard of Twitter it is a cross between instant messaging and blogging. You register an account and the idea is that you should say what you are doing now in 140 characters or less. You can subscribe to other people’s Tweets and read what they are doing by following them. If you are lucky, they will also follow you. You can reply to messages by using the @username in your tweet. I think it still goes out to everyone but the person you are addressing knows it is to them.

Having started my Twitter account I can see the appeal. I am a sad, anti-social person so when I started I did not have anyone to Twitter and I let Twitter find some of my other anti-social friends from my address book. A few of my friends sent me a message but they have proper jobs and are not involved in marketing or SEO and so don’t have time to send Twitter messages  so I did not receive anything after the first message.

As I looked around the web I could see other influential people in the SEO world were using Twitter and I began to follow them to see how they were using it. Twitter is not the relentless jaw jaw that one might expect from this form of social media.  It was useful information, interesting links and a means of driving traffic. It was the ability to link with other prominent members of the SEO field and get the benefit of their wisdom.

As you increase the number of people you follow, people will begin to follow you and so you begin to build up a network of people that are interested in the same things you are.   Twitter can be used with your blog so that when a new blog posts are created, a WordPress plugin will notify my followers. The blog also has a follow me link so that new readers can also follow me (please feel free to follow me).

Using social media such as Twitter I have been able to increase the traffic visiting the blog from direct links and from other sites rather than through the all powerful Google. It is still early but  it is my hope that this may prove a good way to wheen the site from Google search being the dominant form of traffic on the web site.