This weeks blog post I will be discussing how to use Twitter to increase your social signals for SEO and how this can benefit your website.
Twitter is a social media phenomenon. The numbers associated with Twitter are astounding. Its mission:
“To give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
According to its own “About” web page, Twitter has:
- 241 million monthly active users
- 500 million Tweets sent per day
- 76% of Twitter active users on mobile
- 77% of accounts outside the U.S.
- Support for 35+ languages Source: About Twitter
Given that social media signals are an increasingly strong SEO element, and the rise and prominence of Twitter, it’s an obvious off-page activity to engage in to identify dating trends, news, influencers and traffic sources.
Use Twitter to Promote
There are a number of ways to use Twitter to promote dating sites, articles and blog posts. The general rule of thumb is not to have more than one in seven posts as promotional posts. So it’s important initially to post non-promotional tweets to build a following and also to avoid complaints from followers about being spammed with too many overtly promotional tweets.
Creating a Twitter account is easy – but also think about setting up separate accounts for different dating niches. The messaging for traditional, romantic dating is very different from swingers or casual sex dating. The easiest way to do this to create an email account on a dating site domain in each niche you are promoting, and then use these to register different Twitter accounts.
Once registered, and the email account has been validated to activate the Twitter account, use the search box at the top of the page to find everything on Twitter about “dating” or other site related keywords and topics:
Use the filters on the left of the page to focus on people, photos, videos, news and collections – the extract above is for collections. Click on the profiles that appeal and “follow” them. Twitter is a very good reciprocal platform, where followers will follow back, especially if a profile fits with their own sphere of discussion.
Allow a few days for a following to build, and spend some time initially on following a number of others each day. Than start tweeting – but what makes a good tweet? Check out this infographic from Entrepreneur.com:
Easy Tips for Writing Better Tweets (Infographic)
Follow this guideline, as well as the rule of thumb of one in seven posts being promotional in nature, to grow a Twitter following. Also track sources of traffic in Google Analytics to monitor traffic which comes from Twitter.
A key element of tweets is the #hashtag, which enables tweets to be categorized by keyword, and will enable tweets to be returned in searches by other tweeters. Information on how to use tweets can be found here on Twitter’s site “Using hashtags on Twitter”. A great source of trending hashtags to consider using to classify posts can be found at Hashtags.org.
In Summary
- Set up a Twitter account for each dating niche as the messaging and audience is very different for each.
- Use a dating domain in each niche to create an email account to register on Twitter
- Search for profiles to follow by keyword and follow them
- Wait for follows to reciprocate and follow back
- Start to tweet using the best practice infographic tips above
- Don’t over promote sites – one in seven posts to be promotional as a guide
- Use hashtags in posts to enable them to be classified and categorized in Twitter searches
- Use trending hashtags where relevant to give your tweets a better chance of being seen to generate followers.
Good luck!