Twitter SEO can help you take one more step towards owning your online reputation.
When people think of Twitter, they don’t usually think of it as a SEO or reputation management tool. Yet, when optimized correctly, a Twitter profile is yet one more URL that anyone can get to rank for their name.
Here are 4 simple Twitter SEO tips to help your profile rank:
1. Optimize your title tag.
Your Twitter title tag will be this formula: <Actual Name> (Username) on Twitter
The key point here is my name. My actual name is written in my Twitter profile as ‘Matt Leonard’, so that’s how it appears in my title tag. I do not call myself ‘MJ Leonard’, ‘MattLeonard’ or ‘Matt_Leonard’. It’s very important to remember that if you’d like to rank for your name, just as with any form of SEO, use the correct anchor text. In this case, it’s your name.
You can fix this by logging into your Twitter account and clicking ‘Settings’. From there, change your ‘Name’. Do not change your ‘Username’.
2. Optimize your meta description.
Let me clarify, first, that meta description is not a true Google ranking factor. It does, however, insure that people get the impression you’d like them to have and help CTR, which is a ranking factor.
What you may not realize, is that your Twitter ‘bio’, is actually your meta description. When I realized this, my ‘bio’ quickly changed from some fun-loving comments about cheeseburgers and chocolate to the more professional description you see above (which in no way infers that I will not give out even more tips in exchange for junk food).
If you’d like to optimize this even more, talk about yourself in the 3rd person in your Twitter ‘bio’. You can get your name bolded in the meta description by doing so. I personally try to only talk about myself in the 1st person.
You can fix this by logging into your Twitter account and clicking ‘Settings’. From there, change your ‘One Line Bio’.
Note: Google will sometimes include your ‘Location’ in the snippet. So, depending on how seriously you take this, putting your location as ‘Planet Earth’ may not be as funny as you once thought.
3. Build ‘followers’, links and PageRank.
Twitter will internally link your ‘followers’ to your profile. Higher PageRank ‘followers’ can give your page a boost as well. As always, you’ll pick up outside links naturally if you tweet high quality content just as you would with conventional SEO.
Note: If you don’t already, the 3 links referenced above are all SEO greats to follow….
4. Link to your Twitter profile using your name as anchor text every now and then.
Don’t just link to your blog. Throw in a link every so often pointed to your Twitter profile and share the wealth.
Have you ever experimented with different ways to rank your Twitter profile? If so, what did you do and why? On a lighter note, are you as impressed with Yahoo Site Explorer as I am for picking out 3 great Tweeps in the above screenshot? Please share your Twitter SEO experiences in the ‘Comments’ below.
Matt Leonard currently directs SEO, SEM and Revenue Management for Cruise Critic, the world’s largest cruise site and part of the Trip Advisor Media Group. You can follow Matt Leonard on Twitter to keep up with his updates.
I never really thought about it but my Twitter profiles already seems to rank on Google for my name. I already had the title done as you describe here. Now I just need to refer to myself in the 3rd person. Gerald is a nice guy. Gerald is an SEO from planet earth um I mean Houston. ;-) he he just kidding.
That’s simple but wonderful tips to make your twitter profile rank better.
Thanks,
idris
retail-ecommerce.com
Great post Matt. After looking at my profile I saw a few things I could optimize a little better.
Good stuff.
We have a lot of traffic come to our web site from Twitter. SEO for twitter just makes sense.
Great tips – I had not thought of the bio as the metatag for my twitter page. Similar to what you mentioned above I have put links on my LinkedIn profile, blog and other social networking sites with my name as the anchor text.
Great points!
I have my Twitter account optimized for my website. I also have included my Twitter URL in my Facebook, LinkedIn and Blog Catalog profiles.
I tried to make the name change as suggested but have limited space. I only get “Scott Boren (scottbo” then it cuts me off. Can you tell me what I did wrong?
Twitter is very misunderstood! The value it can bring is enormous…keeping it simple always works!
Nice post Matt!
Twitter is very misunderstood! The value it can bring is enormous…keeping it simple always works!
Nice post Matt!
Great and Simple tips. Thanks Matt.
Great Post Matt!
Twitter has become an amazing tool to help build relationships and thanks for the tips to help with SEO and gaining even more traffic through the search engines.
All hail the Twitter King! Good stuff, man. I’ll give it a shot.
Great tips, the most importnet thing is links. You need to get more and more and your twitter SERP will be good.
Nice post. A couple of points:
- Links from other twitter pages to yours will only really do anything if you’re towards the top of their list. Otherwise the link is buried on their followers list page, possibly several clicks deep. (yahoo didn’t pickup any to my twitter profile)
-Don’t forget Twitter directories – when you register your profile on sites like twibs, etc., you can get backlinks that way.
Hmm…google isn’t using my Bio for my meta description but some default Twitter promo text…suggestion?
Great tips, Matt!
I never thought of looking at inlinks on Site Explorer! Yahoo! offers a Twitter stats tool! :-)
Wanted to add to discussion about changing username. I shortened mine from @danalookadoo to optimize & have more room for RTs, etc. However, I lost all SERP value. Twitter doesn’t offer 301 redirects to indexed tweets. If you change username, ALSO, sign up for the “original” user name as a separate profile. Then put your new user name link in the bio link.
Again, nice post!
Great tips, Matt.
For SEO of my professional brand, I use my real name as my Twitter screen name and my brand (which is Top Communication Coach, shortened to TopComCoach) as my “real” name. I’ve had great SEO with this approach.
I have the same problem described above by Scott. Any way around this?
Why didn’t the three names referenced above, Lee, Chris, and Lyndon – link to their Twitter profiles? One of them even returned a 404.
very interested. i´m gonna change a couple of things based on your tips
Scott and Alejandro – it`s either a Twitter issue you are having, or your name has too many characters to fit (unfortunately). Alternatively, ensure that you are attempting to change your name and not your username.
I personally am unable to change my name to Stephanie Woods to show up on my Twitter profile as it still shows steph_woods. However, because I changed my name it does show up in the search engine results pages as `Stephanie Woods`.
My twitter page already ranks very well for my name. But there were still a couple of tips that I can use from this article.
I have the similar results like David, but the tips are beneficial for all tweeples alike, especially the ones that are just starting out.
Thanks for these great tips!
I thought I’d optimized for the keywords I wanted to be found under but have been ignoring optimizing for my name.
I did a quick check and Googled my name and my facebook account shows up #2 worldwide!
I should have thought of this… when I’m checking someone out to see if I want to have anything to do with them I Google their name.
Landscapers often have crappy yards… this SEOer forgot to optimize his own name!!
That problem is solved now thanks to this post
Thanks, David. I’m glad it helped. On the subject of your name, you may want to add it to Google Profiles as well. It’s another easy way to control your Page 1 name rankings. If you’re unfamiliar, Google ‘me’ when not logged into a Google account and click the paid link for google/com/profiles. From there, you can add your info. You can Google my name ‘Matt Leonard’ and you’ll see an example at the bottom of Page 1.
Good stuff. Thanks for the excellent tips. Also found the Comment about Google Profiles interesting.
Hmmm. This idea of speaking about myself in the 3rd person is starting to grow on me…
Good Article.
Good Company on the link test.
=)
Yes this interesting. I have been examining some top SEOs profiles (not just Twitter) and they can be interesting. Especially if the profile link is dofollow – it would be worth building link to the profile.
Very creative tips ! never knew you can also the twitter profiles.
One problem is when you have a big name – twitter Title has got some character limits and it cuts off the name at a certain number of characters. For example My full name is “Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury” but my twitter profile displays only “Saptarshi Roy Chaudh” as a result it doesn’t show up for a search on my name. Probably the only way to overcome this would be to drive keyword targeted anchor text links to the profile page
Excellent tips! Especially the one about linking to your Twitter profile sometimes instead of just always your website pages.
I also recommend putting a good picture icon up. People with a real picture seem to get quite a lot more followers than someone with an empty pic.
I am linking my profile here with my name :) .Thanks for your tips.
Writing “insure” when you mean “ensure” is bad enough but misusing “infer” should be a capital offence. Haven’t you even seen DOA?
helpful tips, thanks! Will get on with it and add your follow suggestions
I’ve also seen the most recent tweet listed as the “description” (from whenever the page was indexed).
Hi,
I don’t read english very well.
I don’t know where you find this
3. Build ‘followers’, links and PageRank.
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/clip_image006_0006.jpg
Thank you and excuse my english.
3. Build ‘followers’, links and PageRank. Build “suiveurs”, des liens et de PageRank.
Twitter will internally link your ‘followers’ to your profile. Twitter interne sera votre lien “suiveurs” à votre profil. Higher PageRank ‘followers’ can give your page a boost as well. PageRank supérieur «adeptes» peut donner un coup de pouce de votre page aussi. As always, you’ll pick up outside links naturally if you tweet high quality content just as you would with conventional SEO. Comme toujours, vous allez chercher en dehors évidemment des liens si vous Tweet contenu de haute qualité comme vous le feriez avec les SEO.
Great post Matt. You know what also seems to help build PR and backlinks to twitter pages? When peple add you on FriendFeed!
Hi Matt,
Thank you for your answer.
But I don’t know where I find that we see on the picture.
Thank you
France,
#3 picture is from Yahoo Site Explorer.
Matt
Ok
Thank you very much
Good post! The title optimization was great idea!!!
im gonna do that know
very good 4 simple tips, now i am trying to do with my twitter
P.S. thx Matt, i followed you in twitter, now waiting for your posts :)
Thanks Matt,
I enjoyed this post and will be putting what I read to action today.
Never thought of making my twitter profile SEO friendly, but why wouldn’t I really? It comes up on Google! Thanks for the tip!
Thanks for sharing. Very useful post. my twitter id is @priyeshdas
Some good reputation management tips here.
Always nice to get another expert’s perspective.
wow, I am using twitter to get leads. But never thought it can be used for SEO too.
Thanks for the article.
Awesome post, after a could changes to my twitter settings, and some blog posting with anchor text, I noticed big changes!