There’s rather a lot of Twitter rhetoric being bandied about in the Web marketing industry these days so naturally a common question that’s been coming from Firetop clients is “Would being on Twitter help our search engine positioning?” and my short answer on this is “Indirectly yes, but nothing momentous“.

In my opinion the biggest SEO benefit of Twitter is in providing a publishing vehicle that you can syndicate onto a website’s home page to provide an element of freshly updated daily content. We’ve known for years that Google weights pages that have daily content on them more favourably than those that stay static for long periods of time, so in this way one might argue that Twitter post syndication helps SEO. However, by the same token you could just as easily change your home page content daily through some other means like a Content Management System.

If you’ve already decided to seriously embrace Twitter for the benefit of marketing to that social medium then of course you may decide to use Tweets on your home page for SEO as it’s really not much extra work to implement (typically). Micro-blogging with 140 characters via Twitter takes almost no time at all versus full article blogging and if fresh content for SEO is your primary goal then it does the job. It’s important to remember though that saying something useful, on topic and of consequence is important on Twitter in order to drive followers who will be seeing your regular Tweets.

Your Twitter followers do provide a potential link building source if they like what you are saying and decide to investigate your main site as a consequence of your mini biog link (which incidentally is one extra back-link). If you are writing blogs you can promote each newly published blog entry via Twitter to your followers, which again means that you might more quickly generate back-links assuming followers are in a similar field and that what you have produced is useful content that they want to promote on their own blogs or ‘Retweet’.

Finally, in addition to the extra biog back-link already mentioned above, your personalised Twitter profile page does provide an opportunity to have an additional Google search result listing – separate to your main website’s. Remember that your Twitter profile name appears at the start of the page’s <title> tag (still the most important tag for SEO in my eyes) so it’s important to make use of the 20 or so <title> characters you use there… within reason! The more useful your Tweets, the more followers you will gain and the more links your profile page might gain – making the back-link you have there more valuable too.

To summarise, all of these small search engine optimisation gains from Twitter are indirect and in my opinion it’s really not worth considering Twitter for commercial gain unless you  intend to fully maximise Your Twitter experience…

DECEMBER 2009 > An update on this topic which all changed with Real Time Search Results!

Great Hitwise article on Twitter about the key uses of Twitter.

‘Web 2.0’ is defined in Wikipedia as ‘the trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users’. It is by that definition that I say it should be entered into wisely by a B2B publisher – dipping a toe in the water of user commenting to see what might happen is probably the best idea before embarking on an expensive website development project.

In my opinion there are some core factors which when evaluated can tell us whether Web 2.0 functions will be successful on a website… or just sit there redundant making the website look even more devoid of life than if did prior to the supplementary ‘comment here’ calls to action. I call my theory the ‘Peskett’s Posting Predictor’ and it is based on my experiences with different publishing clients, what I see on web platforms and what I have discussed with my peers at numerous conferences during the past year.

There are six factors which when entered into ‘Peskett’s Posting Predictor’ will tell you whether there is a poor or good chance of Web 2.0 functionality take up on a site, these are:

a) Traditional Community Spirit (Score 1-5)
b) Passion for Day Job (Score 1-5)
c) Daily Reader Isolation (Score 1-5)
d) Reader Ego / Vanity (Score 1-5)
e) Hours of Daily Internet Access Per Reader? (Score 1-5)
f) Competitive / Secretive Vertical (Score 1-10)

These scores are entered into the following success equation: e((a+b+c+d)-f)

‘Traditional Community Spirit’ (a) usually a historic ‘community’ vibe and can be influenced by external factors such as government legislation, economic and environmental factors which increase bonding where a body of people can use social tools to unite against a perceived attack on their businesses or trade.

‘Passion for Day Job’ (b) is there from the outset, white collar workers are more like to be passionate about their jobs than blue collar (but both equally passionate about ’social’ topics – hobbies & sport etc.).

Daily Reader Isolation (c) varies – often a mix within an industry sector where independents (home workers and SMEs) seek a common group, whereas corporate environments offer ideas sharing internally.

Reader Ego / Vanity (d) is probably an offshoot of (b) – more passionate areas see more individuals seeking to raise their own profiles

Hours of Daily Internet Access Per Reader? (e) – the longer somebody is sat in front of the Internet the greater the chance they may spare a moment for a comment on an article given other factors (a,b,c,d,f)

Competitive / Secretive Vertical (f) - a strong influencer of Web 2.0 participation because it can override all other factors. Money is the vital ingredient in business and nobody wants to give away a secret or get fired for sharing company information. Equally nobody really wants to help a competitor to reach a decision which might make them a more difficult rival. In this sense it is in B2B that Web 2.0 is the most unlikely to flourish unless among salespeople, SMEs and job seekers using networking tools to their advantage.

After scoring the various factors of ‘Peskett’s Posting Predictor’ for a business sector and calculating using the formula e((a+b+c+d)-f) the resulting score will tell you whether it is worth considering a web project. Anything over 25 is probably worth trialing, over 50 and you’re most likely onto a winner.

Here are three example calculations:

Road Sweepers
a) Traditional Community Spirit? 1
b) Passion for Subject? 1
c) Daily Isolation? 5
d) Ego / Vanity? 1
e) Hours of Daily Internet Access? 1
f) Competitive & Secretive? 1

1((1+1+5+1)-1) = 7: Web 2.0 FAILURE

Farmers
a) Traditional Community Spirit? 5
b) Passion for Subject? 5
c) Daily Isolation? 5
d) Ego / Vanity? 1
e) Hours of Daily Internet Access? 2
f) Competitive & Secretive? 1

2((5+5+5+1)-1) = 30: Web 2.0 SUCCESS

Students & Academics
a) Traditional Community Spirit? 5
b) Passion for Subject? 5
c) Daily Isolation? 2
d) Ego / Vanity? 5
e) Hours of Daily Internet Access? 5
f) Competitive & Secretive? 3

5((5+5+2+5)-3) = 70: Web 2.0 BIG SUCCESS

Daily newspapers have a mix of all people and will publish a variety of topics from business to social, some will generate interest and some will not. According to a speaker from The Guardian I saw last week (Tom Turcan) they get 100,000 comments a month posted online. At face value this sounds like a lot but I’d guess that probably half came from unique visitors – taking us down to 50,000 commenting individuals, from a pool of 18 million unique visitors (0.27%). This is about the same as average click through rates on a single banner advert, and given that most sites have multiple banners per page this makes Web 2.0 commenting far less of a runaway success at present than all the hype suggests.

PESKETT’S POSTING PREDICTOR

“Anything over 25 is probably worth trialing, over 50 and you’re most likely onto a winner.”

These two statements: A Harvard study “found that than half of all people using Twitter updated their page less than once every 74 days.” and “Research by Nielsen also suggests that many people give the service a try, but rarely or never return.” seem to me to suggest that the very same experience of blogging is true of Twitter. For the masses it’s a trial of curiosity which even at just 140 characters a go is a micro-blog of effort too far in our busy lives…