Google, Twitter, Facebook, Bing – Oh My!!

Today was a big day for Google, Bing, Twitter and Facebook.

To quickly recap: Bing announced they have made a deal with Twitter AND Facebook to pull their updates into the SERPS (search engine results pages).

Hours later Google announced they too have a deal with Twitter and will be delivering Tweet feeds in the SERPs.

This is exciting and interesting and it confirms one thing: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Social Media are partners in your success. You shouldn’t neglect either.

No one knows exactly how this is going to play out yet but we’ve all started preparing for it already. Off the top of my head, here are some tips to help you prepare.

Since we don’t know how they will sort through the massive volume and pick the tweets to return in the results, we don’t know exactly how to give our tweets the best shot at getting picked up.

Let’s look at a little logic and a little Google knowledge.

They like history and they like quality. They also like volume.

So, get an account now if you don’t have one already. Get as much history in as you can. Accounts that have been around longer with more tweet history (and more followers) may fare better. (PLEASE don’t go overboard – the last thing we need is people to start keyword stuffing mass volumes of tweets).

Tweet often but keep it natural – and tweet quality. Tweet when you have something to ask, share or teach.

Use keywords – but don’t stuff with keywords. If the tweets are about your industry, you should be using keywords naturally anyway.

If you are going to retweet your messages at different times of the day to be more likely to catch your audience, make sure you vary them a little bit (and again, don’t go overboard).

Use links in your tweets back to your site (to relevant content on your site) and share the link love – link to other quality sites out there. Make sure you use your keyword in your bio and if you are just setting up your username, maybe in your username too? This may or not help. Again, I must say – do not stuff keywords anywhere – not in tweets, not in your bio, not in your username.

This is a good thing, but if people abuse it and bring the overall quality of Twitter down, we will all be sorry.

If you have a feed that sends your tweets to Facebook, or your Facebook status to Twitter, you may want to consider turning it off. If you have the same message in both places you are missing an opportunity for Bing to pick up both. If they are unique, you have 2 chances to get in there!

So, get tweeting and Facebooking! It’s going to be a fun ride!

About the Author: Jennifer Horowitz, Dir. of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com, has written a book on SEO and has been published in many SEO & Marketing publications. She is the editor of Spotlight on Success: SEO & Marketing newsletter. Over the past 10 years Jennifer’s expertise in marketing & Search Engine Optimization has helped clients increase revenue. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media & more. https://twitter.com/EcomBuffet