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Tuesday, 23 March 2010 12:30

Social Media and Real Time Search

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Web site owners are well aware of the importance of Twitter to Social Media programs. Due to the implementation of Real Time Search, Twitter, one of the most popular social networks today, now also benefits Organic Search Engine Optimization programs.

The top 3 Search Engines Google, Yahoo and Bing all have agreements with Twitter to access up to the minute Tweets for inclusion in the "Real Time Search" results now included within the primary search results. So just how does this influence your Social Media and SEO?

Authority and Relevancy  Google has historically depended on the authority and relevance of a web site to determine which pages were included in search results for a specific search request. Although these two factors depend on numerous elements the two issues which relate to these within the Twitter context are: Authority  and Relevancy

•    Links: The number and quality of inbound links to a web site Relevancy

•    Words and phrases used in content Twitter Authority Google has apparently reworked their Page Rank Algothrim which evaluates the quantity and quality of a web site’s linking environment to evaluate the value of Tweets and Retweets. In the Twitter equivalent of Page Rank it is not how many links and who the links are from, but how many followers and the quality of these followers which is taken into consideration.

Number of Twitter Followers The number of Twitter followers you have is taken into consideration when including specific Tweets into the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) similar to how the number of links are considered when including specific web pages into the SERPs. Growing the number of people following you on Twitter can assist to improve your visibility in the Real Time Search Results. Just like links, more is better. A large following can also assist by providing a larger audience who will potentially retweet your Tweet.

The number of times a Tweet is Retweeted is also likely to be a factor in Google’s Real Time Search Algorithm. Quality of Twitter Followers The quality of Twitter followers is also taken into consideration by the Google Real Time Search Algorithm, which is similar to the quality score used to rank the value and authority of inbound links to your web site. Ideally you want to keep your Twitter followers focused on your keywords and your business niche. Targeting within your niche will be important. Keywords are obviously a large part of this strategy when determining who to follow with the hope you will get a follow in return.

Twitter Relevancy Keywords are again the driving force behind building relevancy. The use of topical keywords within Tweets will be one of the primary elements which assists Google and other Search Engines to determine the primary topic of your tweet, and when to include it in the SERPs for a particular search query.

In Summary... It is still early days with regards to Real Time Search and without doubt all will be involved in a learning curve. However, by including some prior knowledge of how Google interprets and evaluates web pages and putting this information into a Twitter context, it is clear that the number and quality of a Twitter accounts followers and how keywords are integrated into the Tweets will be dominant factors in obtaining visibility in the Search Engine Results Pages.

Read 867 times Last modified on Friday, 27 March 2015 11:46