Are you buying or selling Twitter?

I got my start in SEO several years ago via affiliate marketing. Anybody familiar with affiliate marketing is aware that the tactics used in affiliate marketing are  a lot different than say the tactics one would use to promote a client site. Nevertheless the principles of driving traffic to generate sales are the same in affiliate marketing as they are in the business world.

Are we making more money based on our marketing efforts?

Nine times out of ten with affiliate marketing that was not the case with social media and that’s why I focused the majority of my efforts on SEO as an affiliate marketer. Because SEO delivered: Targeted. Buying. Traffic.

The mantra in my circle with regards to social media was that it was too hard to convert and that peeps who were using social media weren’t generally looking to buy stuff or to be sold stuff. Rather they were looking for entertainment and to connect with their social network. Any way you look at it when you’re short on time and man power, social media is not something you’re going to be spending your time on if things like eating and paying the mortgage are important to you. The running joke back in the day was that white hat SEOs were starving because they couldn’t get anything to rank and social media specialists would be back looking for 9-5 work as soon as their money ran out.

So obviously things have changed a bit as the whole world seems to have gone crazy over social media. When you have congressmen and politicians talking about “You should follow me on Tweeter” you know it’s something you have to take another look at.

So where does that leave Twitter?

It’s not like Twitter is a new service anymore so I think it’s safe to say that Twitter is what it is. But what the hell is that!?!?

For the life of me I don’t understand Twitter… I mean I think it’s a great tool and all but I’ve reached a point where I need to decide where Twitter fits into my marketing efforts and I assume there are many more out there just like me??? So let’s get to the meat of the potato (sorry I heard that on Storage Wars which I’m strangely addicted to…) am I buying or selling Twitter? For those of you not familiar with my buying or selling series please read the snippet below from a previous post.

I’ve decided to start a new category called “Buying or Selling.” The concept behind “Buying or Selling” is pretty simple when you think of it in terms of buying or selling stock. When a stock is going down in price you obviously want to sell and when it’s going up obviously you want to buy. So what I want to do here is look at SEO tactics and determine whether I think they’re something that’s useable and effective, in which case I would be “Buying” that tactic, or if the tactic is dead and no longer viable than I would be “Selling” that tactic.

Are You Buying Or Selling Twitter?

I like Twitter. I think it’s great. But how good is it at delivering targeted, buying traffic? Consider the following:

As far as buying or selling Twitter, right now I would have to say I am holding Twitter.  Frankly I think it can be a very useful tool for an SEO but I don’t believe it will ever be used as a ranking factor. For example I do believe it can have a reranking effect on the serp’s (provided you have legit followers who are logged in when they do a search), I do believe Google uses the Twitter firehose as a signal but not necessarily as a ranking signal (more of a discovery signal), obviously Google uses Twitter to populate news results and I think it’s an awesome tool for connecting with peeps in your niche.

But and this is a big but…

My litmus test with internet marketing, SEO and social media tools is this. I simply ask my wife, mom and friends if they’ve even heard of the thing #1 but #2 would they ever use it? And I gotta tell you not many people I know are using teh Twitter. As is the case with most of you I’m sure, most of the peeps I know use Facebook for pretty much everything social. Back to Twitter…

At this point here’s what I can say about Twitter. Twitter is great at getting new stuff indexed. As far as any conclusive evidence that Twitter has any direct  impact on search engine rankings, it does seem to have a “reranking” effect and I do routinely see Tweets in news results but it ends there. Here’s a great post by David Harry on Google Social Search and SEO with illustrations on how Google is importing recommendations from people in your social network and reranking results in the process. Basically they’re taking a page or result that wouldn’t ordinarily be on the first page and they’re inserting it into the serp because there is a social connection between the searcher and the result. Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz also wrote on the topic recently: Social Annotations in Search: Now Your Social Network = Rankings.

Obviously this a huge development in SEO as the lines between SEO and Social Media have been blurred. A social media campaign can now actually have an effect on some serps.

What do Google and Bing have to say?

Here’s the latest from Google and Bing on which social signals they use and how: What Social Signals Do Google & Bing Really Count?

Some interesting tidbits from that article:

Both Google and Bing tell me (Danny Sullivan) that who you are as a person on Twitter can impact how well a page does in regular web search. Authoritative people on Twitter lend their authority to pages they tweet.

and there’s also this:

Yes, we do use [Twitter] as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article

Here’s Matt Cutts on how Google used data from social sites:

Personally I don’t believe Google is using Tweets as a ranking factor as some have suggested. I believe it’s used as a signal to find new content and it’s obviously also used to populate news results. And now we see that it can also have an effect on serps when the searcher is logged in to his social accounts or should we just call them personalized results because it seems that’s the direction the search engines are taking us.

But how much can the search engines actually use Twitter signals beyond that?

Can you rely on it and incorporate it into your organic search results (not personalized results) algorithms if only a fraction of the population is using it? Consider the following:

• FaceBook  has 600 million visitors and half that visit every day.
• Twitter claims 175 million users but a closer look by Business insider shows us that:

1. There were 119 million Twitter accounts following one or more other accounts.
2. There were 85 million accounts with one or more followers.
3. there are 56 million Twitter accounts following zero other accounts, and 90 million Twitter accounts with zero followers
4. there are 56 million accounts on Twitter following 8 or more accounts

So long story short, Twitter is a lot smaller than we think and if we were to actually measure “active” users I think it would lose most, if not all, of it’s appeal to investors. And here’s a little somethin’, somethin’ about the Twitter demographic from Information Week:

Most Twitter users are between the ages of 26 and 44, college graduates or still in school, and earn between $25K and $75K a year. This means services aimed at retirees, for instance, or big-ticket buyers, may fall flat. Or, they may only reach a too-marginal segment of your prospective audience, people who don’t have much of an audience of their own and don’t serve to spread word effectively about your brand.

If you ask me, Twitter is as big as it’s going to be and it’s not going to get any bigger. And that’s why I’m only holding Twitter and not buying it. Look as a SEO I’m no where near as seasoned as a lot of the SEO veterans out there and I’ve already been into several niches where Twitter is barely used, if at all. How much are the search engines going to be able to rely on Twitter signals in those niches? And my experience with Twitter also echoes the data above. Twitter has become a spammers paradise, it is primarily used by other SEOs and social media specialists and of the real followers out there very few are actually active.

Personally I love Twitter. I think it’s a fascinating tool with many uses for an SEO. But do me a favor and take your I-do-this-for-a-living-and-love-every-aspect-of-it cap off for a second and think from the perspective of someone who doesn’t work on the internet all the day. What is the use and purpose of teh Twitter? And what kind of return-on-investment can your client expect from using Twitter?

If you’re anything like me, your brother, wife, momma and friends don’t have a Twitter account. And how many people do you know have the time to follow the “authorities” of their favorite hobbies or the interest to be updated in real time?

While Twitter is a great tool, I think the decision on whether or not to use it should be made on a niche by niche basis with an eye on ROI. It is not now nor do I believe it ever will be a ranking factor. So your decision to use it should be based on something other than organic search results.

Related posts:

1. Buying or Selling: Paid Links
2. How Viral Marketing Can Be Meaningless
3. What Are Anchored Back Links And Why Are They So Important?

I’ve done it myself on numerous occasions when I first got into the affiliate marketing industry and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen my own clients and prospective clients make this mistake…

The two biggest mistakes I see when regular folks start to optimize their own websites or blogs for the search engines is they

1. target keywords that are too competitive
2. optimize their website for their company name

Now anybody can rank for any term in the major search engines but what you have to realize is that when you target terms like “credit card” or “mortgage” is that you’re competing with the likes of Bank of America, Chase and Citibank and as we all know these businesses have an endless amount of resources. So what do you do if you’re a mortgage broker?

What I usually recommend for mortgage brokers is going after long tail keyword phrases or local keyword phrases.

This means instead of targeting and optimizing for the term mortgage, which would be virtually impossible to rank for, you would optimize and target something like Los Angeles mortgage instead which you would have a much better chance of ranking for.

The second mistake is just as bad however…

I can understand wanting to brand your company name on the internet but what you have to understand is that the search engines don’t work that way.

Also what you have to ask yourself is how many people are going to Google and doing a search for your company name?

Probably not too many and that’s why it’s a better idea to target keywords and phrases based on the product or service that you sell because there are most likely people that are searching for that and more importantly optimizing for these terms will deliver targeted traffic and be a more effective use of your time and money.

These little intricacies of search engine optimization and internet marketing are why it’s a great idea to speak to a professional seo before you venture into the world of marketing and promoting your business online.

Related posts:

1. What Are Anchored Back Links And Why Are They So Important?
2. How Viral Marketing Can Be Meaningless
3. Not All Links Are Created Equal

Los Angeles SEO

I’ve talked to a lot of small business owners that automatically think about viral marketing when I bring up internet marketing and search engine optimization. Viral marketing is great but the thing you have to understand about viral marketing on the internet is that it typically occurs in social media. You know places and websites like YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter, Digg and email as well and the unfortunate thing about those types of websites is that they tend to bring in a lot of traffic that is only looking to be entertained.

That’s not to say you can’t or won’t be able to convert this type of traffic but it WILL be a lot harder it will require a lot more work on your part.

The type of traffic I specialize in is search engine traffic and I prefer that type of traffic because it is targeted traffic. If you sell blue widgets and somebody types in a search query of “blue widgets” and your website shows up first in Google can we both agree that the searcher who typed in a search for blue widgets is interested in blue widgets?

If you ask me that’s the biggest difference between social media traffic, which is what you typically get with viral marketing, and search engine traffic. Search engine traffic is more valuable because someone has actually “raised their hand” and said I’m interested in blue widgets.

In my book that’s valuable if you sell blue widgets.

That being said let’s not completely write off social media traffic…

What we have to understand about social media traffic is that is that this type of traffic or person requires that you build and establish a relationship with them first. You may even have to educate them on your product and your business…

Both are still important and social media in particular serves a purpose because of the prevalence of customer reviews online these days. Unhappy customers have places to vent today and that can be a good or a bad thing depending on whether or not you’re “there” to answer any negative reviews or mentions of your company or brand.

Just like any marketing effort off line you also want to have different funnels of traffic for your website or blog online. I typically really hammer to get started with search engine optimization early because it sometimes takes Google and Bing a while to index (record and acknowledge) all of your efforts. So it may take a while for your website to hit the first page of Google and that’s a good reason to start with seo first.

Once you establish a good traffic flow from seo you can then implement and use social media to stay in constant contact with fans, prospects and clients of your products.

The most important thing, though, is to get started with some type of marketing effort online because most small business owners just build a website and then don’t do much to promote it. Don’t be one of those small business owners that spent all kinds of cash to build a great website only to let it sit there.

You can use the internet to find and locate new prospects and leads for your business and you can also use the internet to stay in contact with your existing customers and all of your new leads.

Related posts:

1. What Are Anchored Back Links And Why Are They So Important?
2. A Los Angeles SEO Company – Los Angeles Search Engine Optimization
3. Not All Links Are Created Equal

Ok so what’s an anchored back link and why am I talking about them?

Links are those things on the net we click on that take us to other web pages on the internet. Here’s a link to the New York Times website: New York Times. (I made it bold and italicized it to make it feel more like the NY Times but links can come in all fonts and colors)

Ok so obviously that’s a link and it takes you to another web page but where does the anchored part come in?

“Anchored” is simply a reference to the word or words that appear in the link. So the link above is “anchored” for the keywords: New York Times.

That’s important because as it turns out those keywords and that link play a big factor in the major search engines algorithms. Those anchored back links act like votes for the search engines and they help the algorithms determine which websites are most relevant when someone types in a search. The more votes or the more links you have the more relevant you are on the internet.

So your job as a business owner or webmaster is twofold:

1. determine which keywords your prospects might be typing into the serach engines to look for your products or services
2. optimize your website for those keywords

Basically if you sell green widgets you want your website to rank #1 in the search engine rankings when someone types in a search for “green widget.” Can we agree that if you can do that you’ll generate more sales?

The best thing about this kind of traffic is that it’s completely free. Google or any of the other serach engines won’t charge you anything to be in the top spot because they’re just trying to provide relevant results to their serach engine users. And at the end of the day that’s exactly what you want to remember.

Anchored back links are just a part of what contributes to a good search engine ranking but they play the largest factor of what contributes to a good search engine ranking in some search engine optimization experts minds. The question obviously is then where do we find or where do we get back links right?

That’s a good question but it’s not the right one. The right question is are all links created equal?

Not all links are created equal and I’ll talk about that in my next post and then I’ll get to where you can go to get some of your own links.

Related posts:

1. Antelope Valley SEO – Antelope Valley Search Engine Optimization
2. A Los Angeles SEO Company – Los Angeles Search Engine Optimization