Sure, you use Twitter as a social media tool, but have you ever considered it as an SEO research tool? No? Well watch and learn this week to find out how you can harness it in a whole new way.
Now that social signals (particularly Twitter) are becoming more important in the engines, they can help you pinpoint when a keyword is going to trip the 'Query Deserves Freshness' switch. If you can figure that out, you can gain a big competitive advantage by publishing fresh content in a targeted, timely manner.
Rand mentions a couple of tools for using Twitter to target and time your content. One is Trendistic, which helps you see trends in Twitter; another is our very own Blogscape Social Media Monitoring prototype (inside PRO Labs), which monitors and analyzes a few million key content providers across the fresh web, including over 250,000 influential Twitter accounts.
Wait a minute! You're recording Whiteboard Friday's on WEDNESDAY?! I feel so betrayed!
Solid WBF, I like the idea of using social mediums for more than just social. If I can use free services like Twitter to help me hash out some more information about search trends and what Google's looking at, I'll use it every time.
Another nice whiteboard friday.
Get Better Rand! :)
I never thought of twitter in that way! :)
Hey Thanks Rand for another interesting post!
Hope you feel better soon!
Great view on 'flipping' Twitter to actually make it a little more useful in SEO terms. Will definitely be using this more in our SEO for our clients.
Any other tools out there for the timing & targeting element?
Cheers
Conrad
love these WBF and the new ideas, twitter is being seen as a search engine and not a mini blogger according to their CEO, Evan Williams, these tools and tips are so important for use over worked SEO's
Nice insights on some possible link in Twitter trending and Google QDF - however what was up with the 1997 quality video encoding?
Leveraging Twitter to maximize Google's answer to a failed attempt at acquiring Twitter... nice (tongue is firmly implanted in cheek).
(posted by gregg not sutho)
Really informative video,nicely describe about tweeting.
What do folks use instead of Twist now that it is no longer available on Flaptor? Trendistic seems to be buggy - at least with IE8.
Fantastic WBF Rand.
I must say, if you're using Twitter and not talking about the trending topics anyway, then you're not utilising it well!!
Cool! This is exactly what I was looking for this week! How did you know? :)
On a side-note .. who knew that SEO charts are so similar to fertility charts .... :))
Hey Helen. Nice new avitar. I'll miss the other one though. Always made me feel like I was at the beach.
Good WBF. Every company who posts on Twitter with reference, but no relevancy, to current Twitter Trends should read this and re-think what they're doing.
This is very interesting information. Especially since I just read in a forum (I can't remember which), that twitter really is does no good for your SEO. The person commenting mentioned it as a good promotional tool, particularly good in creating site branding and product recognition, but not for SEO. Great stuff. Maybe I'll recommend this to him.
Thank you for introducing this SEO tactic! I'll try it, as soon as I can.
@Rand: Get well soon!!
Very Interesting post. Truly, we have not even scratched the surface of Twitter, it's tools and where it could possibly take us. I'm sure we will see even more posts like this, showing us how to harness more power and juice from Twitter massive audience. Because the site now has such scalability, it's like a big experiment that gives very accurate aggregated results.
Interesting approach and worth experimenting with. But to get content ranked using the QDF algorithm, you're still going to need your domain have a certain threshold of trust.
True...but let's say you're regularly ranking #3 for one of your hot search terms. If you're on top of this, and get a blog post out there timed just right, you could bump to #1 for a couple of days.
Who cares about a couple of days? Well, if you get seen a lot AND have a relevant post, you might acquire a little pile of links with that topic as anchor text over those days, and perhaps now come out the other end of your 2 or 3 day window with a bump in rankings long-term due to those new links.
Keep in mind who it is who's likely to be paying attention to hot topics, searching, Twittering...it's the linkerati, NOT your customers. This is GOOD, as a much higher % of these kinds of people will link back to you (presuming your post is good) than the regular overall world of searchers.
Hope you get better Rand.
Short WBF but juicy. Surely is something I'm going to experiment with, especially because there are so many clients of mine that have a blog side of their more formal websites and this trend discovering method is going to be very important in order to create relevance for their blogs.
As I admin and coordinate blogs of any kind (from a very niche industrial one - about ultrasonic washers - to mainstreams ones - about tourism in Italy or Babies) I will start using your suggestions here and the ones maybe you're going to give in more specific posts.
When I will a sufficient amount of statistical data, I'll share them in a YouMoz post (if it will go through approbation ;)).
Thanks to be with us always even when sick, Rand
Interesting WBF and get well soon Rand...
This is just a random thought/question which is related to what you said gfiorelli1 and using twitter trends of course...
I haven't really gotten the hang of company blogging quite right yet. But let's assume there's a company website which is about, wedding planning in New York and the current trends on twitter is the Chile Earthquarke (I just checked the Trendistic tool, really good stuff too!), would you then create a post about the earthquake which obviously is not related to Wedding planning or New York to get more traffic?
I'm of the opinion not to, because it's not in anyway related to my company site, if it was a personal blog, definitely, but not a comapny blog. But I'm wondering if that's just me being myopic...?
Would love to get your take on this and anyone else please...
Hi Tola,
I think that it's all about the focus.
Obviously you're right when saying that if a blog is about "Wedding Planning" and the highest trend in Twitter is about Chile Earthquake, is wouldn't be clearly logical to write a post about that topic in that blog (but if the blog talks also of planning weddings in exotic places, you could always find a way - with the classic 'concepts correlations path' - to use that argument).
What I was trying to express in my comment was that instruments like Trendistic could be used to check out how many people is talking about the topics related to the subjects of your blog.
I'd try to give you a couple of practical example.
1st example:
a blog about Italy and Italian Tourism and Way of Life:
it would be good to use trendistic to check trends for phrases as "Milan Fashion Week" or "Spring Break". For instance, this last one is showing an increasing trend, therefore it could be good to start planning a series of post dedicated clearly to travel's ideas for the Spring Break.
Even better would be to refine the search of trends checking out more specific derivations of Spring Break.
2nd example.
On a more more limited way (due to be niche topics) this could be done also for less mainstream topics.
For instance, a farmaceutical has a blog. Right now is not the case to post something about the H1N1 grip (even if it's still a quite top argument), but maybe it would be good to start a series about allergies (spring is coming...) as Trendistic is showing that people are starting talking and commenting they begin to suffer them.
I hope I could explained better my comment.
Right!
I get you now. And yeah that makes perfect sense to me. So instead of writing and publishing articles almost blindly, you write it and wait for the peak of the trend and post it then.
Planning, planning planning.
Thanks for that gfiorelli..
You're wellcome
Hi Rand,
excellent WBF, this is a very interesting topic. You can even - if you make it right - create the peak yourself a bit with having your own twitter feed and some followers that will talk about it.
Hope you get better soon.
Cheers,
Fjonan
Ouch Rand! It hurt just to watch you. Hope you get over whatever it is you're fighting soon.
I'm one of the semi-anti twitter people you mentioned, but looked at from this different angle you mentioned, I can see the worth.
Not a tactic I could see myself employing often, but a good specialized tool for the toolbox.
Thanks for going above and beyond for WBF while you were under the weather.
Rand the cold looks good on you. You're like the Dennis Haybert of SEO (aside from the coughing).
Interesting, I'm not anti-Twitter, but not a Twitter user. This is a great idea for research for highly competitive keywords. thanks!
Rand,
You are a trooper. Great idead to leverage those trending topics on Twitter to drive timing of blog posts. Key insight was your mention of tapping use of Google's QDF algorithm. Lower the barrier, raise chance of success! Brilliant!
Look forward to using this going forward.
Feel better!
Killer nugget about using Twitter as an SEO tool, I just started looking at the Trendistic tool and it makes since to jump into the foray of communication when a topic has peaked or right after that.
Can't wait to see more tips and feedback from others on this.
Thanks Rand hope you feel better soon!
I ever like to read this type of informative post,keep posting.
Now that social signals (particularly Twitter) are becoming more important in the engines, they can help you pinpoint when a keyword is going to trip the 'Query Deserves Freshness' switch. -- Jen removed link
And hopefully, as soon as Jen gets back from SMX, we'll see less and less of SPAM Señor Linkslondonlouisvitton.
Kapow!
I think you should have some kind of superhero avitar. You know, with a cape or something.
I know...Wonder Woman! I don't think she had a cape, but she had a shield and some super cool wrist guards