The power of Twitter within the SEO space

Last night I was in a Twitter discussion where SEO issues were discussed, and the issue of social signals came up.  

Many  SEO PRACTITIONERS will tell you that social signals have no influence on your search engine optimisation strategies in any shape manner or form, and personally I believe they are right.  How ever the power of  individual tweets is a whole other animal, and some tweets can have a truly astounding impact on your individual online assets in strange and devious ways that at first glance seem unrealistic.

To understand the power of an individual tweet there are many different things that need to be understood, with the two main issues bring

• Duplicate content
• Website architecture

The first thing that one must clearly come to grips with is that each tweet must be annalized and dissected as a stand alone web page.  In every social media platform, your individual posts  are actually deemed to be stand alone web pages, and most folks have great difficulty in digesting this

Now the questions start to pop into your thinking patterns and thought process.... What does the website architecture of your social media activity look like.  In this post we will deal exclusively with Twitter and how your posts on twitter carry #SEOJUICES to the rest of the internet. The SEO juices of a single tweet can be very powerful and carry a great deal of influence in ensuring that individual digital entities recieve rather serious boosts within the Search Engine Results pages

So in Twitter your user name or Twitter handle has a host of different activities, and different uses, some are easy to understand, and others are exceptionally difficult to grasp untill you realise that web site architecture can be, and is indeed used in two distinct and different ways within the twittersphere.

The first one is simple and uses a flat structure where all your tweets are chronologically placed one under the other in the space.  Twitter.com/username/tweet, most folks understand this, as that is what they see within their twitter profiles when they look online?

Think domain/folder/subfolder

The second set of twitter architecture is where all the fun and games take place. This is an exceptionally complicated space where sub domains and nested  drop down folders that can be multiple layers deep, with  rather wide sub level bases. These are found hidden in structures, much like an organisation staff organogogram 

At the top is your original tweet which lives at http://username.twitter.com/tweet

Think subdomain.domain/folder where each tweet is considered as a folder within the subdomain 


Think USER.TWITTER.COM 

Next are the first level replies / comments on this individual tweet.  This level can be very wide, as each comment / reply to your original tweet will sit in this space.

Think USER.TWITTER.COM/ORIGINAL TWEET/ REPLY

Next level down is the replies / comments to the first level of comments / replies.   Then there may be more levels going deeper down the list as each new comment / reply slots into its appropriate position within the developing nested web site architecture, leaving a mass of sub folders containing each new comment / reply in a structured drop-down set of sub folders.

 This will look very much like a company staff chart, with a single boss and a number of workers who are directly responsible to him / her.  Where each first level reply / comment will sit on this level, spreading the first level base as far as there are new replies / comments on the original tweet in question.

This is now where things get rather sneaky and very interesting, coz replies / comments to sepperate posts at this level will drop down into the second tier of the resulting website architecture. Just like the boss in the company has workers who report to him directly, So each reply / comment will have its own list of second responders.

Think   USER.TWITTER.COM/FOLDER/SUBFOLDER

Each first level response will have its own second tier, and the second tier may have its own set of responses in a third tier. These third tier responses may have their own responders who will form the next tier within that individual drop down list.

This can and does get out of hand on long twitter conversations.  So be warned that this is very complicated, and rather messy, making it difficult to put into proper perspective.

Each of these individual tweets may also have likes and shares, then also reshares of shares complicating things even further. The likes do not carry any true SEO VALUE, as they are deemed to be social signals, which most search engines tend to ignore, or give little value within the SEO environment. That being said, the share factor is some what different, with each share bring treated in much the same fashion as the original tweet

So this website architecture is looking like a simple drop-down structure that has an easy to follow make up, with the sharesand reshares taking the same structure, but being placed adjacent to the original tweet

Now that we have the website architecture under control, and can see the flow of tweets in a business staff type organogram we can get into the real meaty part of the discussion

The content of each tweet is now evaluated from a Semantic perspective, starting at the top spot, and flowing steadily through each level with all of the sepperate sublevels bring indexed and evaluated.

Standard SEO evaluation by search engines is applied to each comment in the comment stream, taking into account this list and MANY OTHER ISSUES

• where in the nested loops the comment resides
• What the semantic context of the tweet consists of
• are there any out bound links to pages that expand the conversation
• What is the site authority and page authority level of any such linked to page
• are there any inbound links to individual comments
• Is this comment stream part of an embedded twitter post
• Who are the folks commenting
• How fresh are the comments
• Are the comments relevant to the conversation
• Should the comment get spam treatment
• What was the purpose and intent of each tweet in the comment stream

Because each comment is seen by the search engine as a stand alone web page, the interlinking between each comment is evaluated, where the level within the site architecture is used as a link referral base and out bound links add tremendous value to the SEO link juice of those tweets which contain them, adding SEO value within the entire conversation chain.

This can thus add true value within the Search engine optimisation flow patterns to all the out bound links, with any out bound links in the original tweet getting the lions share of this link juice. The closer to the top of the conversation an out bound link is found, the more link juice it should carry, but this is not always true, as there are many different factors that influence the flow of link juice from a social media conversation.

It can thus be seen that the SEO value of a Twitter conversation can become a very powerful and much appreciated boost to the individual online assets which may be linked to from within the comment streams of a tweet

By on line assets I mean web pages, blog post,  social media profiles or any online content such as images, videos or PDF documents

 Twitter is thus an extremely powerful link building tool
 

What is the purpose of your blog?

The purpose of a blog is not easily defined, and every business should  have its own set of documents describing the purpose, aims, objectives and intent of  their own company blog.

 

When documenting the purpose of your blog be sure to have your business plan handy, as the company purpose, aims, objectives and intent will be used to describe the purpose, aims objectives and intent of your blog.

 

Document your blog and change your attitude to blogging

Once you have taken the time to document the purpose, aims, objectives and intent of your blog, you will find it an awful lot easier to  write clear instructions for your content creators , and ensure that the content that they create and assemble is more suitable for your intended target market audience.

 

From a FUFISM based  marketing perspective the primary purpose of your blog is to act as a supplemental marketing strategy to your website, and support the purpose, aims, objectives and intent of your website.  Your blog will of course have many secondary purposes just as your website has many different secondary purposes.

Your blog should be viewed as an essential asset that acts as part of your online presence, and be treated as the second most important online communication channel that you own, remembering that your web site is the primary online communication channel that you own.

One of the more important purposes of your blog,  should be to act as a link building, and content marketing  channel for your web site. Your blog and your web site are owned by you, making them your digital assets, whereas your social media is just leased online space, where you have very little control over the activity that takes place there.  You have total control over your blog and your web site, so you can dictate the activity that is allowed to take place within these two digital assets that you mange and control.

Your blog should also complement your website and act as a content marketing platform for your web site, where you add extra value to the content and context  of your web site by expanding the conversation started in your web site, through posts and pages in your blog,  that attract comments and on going conversations around specific topics as listed and discussed in your web site.  These conversations should then be extend to the social media, so that the social media may then be used as an extension of your blog to market your online content within your web site further and in more detail,  to the search engines as well as  your intended target market audience.

Your blog should also be used to solve consumer issues with your products, services and related information flow patterns , by answering specific questions picked up through your social listening tools, or queries raised by your audience within the online environment.

 Your blog is not a sales house, and you should not be pushing sales within your blog, but rather sending viewers to your sales pages within your web site, from blog posts that form part of your sales funnel, or pages within your blog that are dedicated to sending visitors to specific landing pages within your web site.


You should have a blogging policy, and a set of documents describing the purpose, aims, objectives and intent of your blog.  This set of documents should also descibe where your blog fits into your totsal marketing plan, along with who is in charge of the SEO issues, and how these are integrated into your web sites SEO issues, as well as how your blog will be integrated into your social media marketing tactics along with the marketing roles played by
1) your web site
2) your blog
3) your social media tactics
4) your offline marketing tactics and staregies


Besides direct marketing, content marketing, link building and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  issues your blog should also play a number of other important roles in many other areas of your business including but not limited to

• public relations issues
• after sales issues
• customer education issues
•  community building issues
• business networking issues

The power of your blog should not be underestimated, and you should review and update the documentation describing the purpose, sims, objectives and intent of your blog at least once every three months, but once a month would be best practice.