There are many uses for social media sites such as Twitter, and regardless of your objectives, gaining influence, followers and social connections will help you get there. Rarely does an organization create a Twitter account with no hope of being found or followed. One of the key ways to have your Twitter handle found and followed is to improve the SEO value of your Twitter account. However, increasing your SEO is not just about the number of followers or tweets you have, there are other items to consider in maintaining a successful Twitter account.

I read an interesting article on this topic from MarketingProfs, “How to Improve the SEO Value of Your Twitter Account,” written by Daniel Rosenhaus. It offers seven suggestions, and I was surprised by some of the things that can actually hurt your SEO value. Consider this:

1. Find your target demographic. Focusing in on a target demographic will help your social connections appear relevant. Randomizing your tweet topic can actually hurt your influence because it makes it difficult for people to find you and determine if they want to follow you. For example, if you are a fitness enthusiast and often Tweet about the latest workout or diet, you will likely rank high for people interested in fitness. Also, according to MarketingProfs, you should be sure to follow people that are also relevant to your interests, “by following and being followed by relevant Twitter accounts, you increase your account’s influence, ranking, and SEO power.”
2. Write a bio to attract the right followers. So now that you know who you want to attract, how do you do it? You do this by writing a bio that appeals to your target audience. This will increase your chance of being followed by the people that have similar interests. It can also be helpful to include keywords in your bio that people interested in a particular topic might search for. For example, if you are passionate about fitness and that is your focus, include that in your bio. This will be helpful when people search Twitter for “fitness” and encourage them to follow you for more info on the topic.
3. Use Twitter lists. Twitter lists help you organize people you are interested in following and monitoring based on categories. You can also set these lists to public view, which will allow others to see themselves on your lists as well as see the lists you’ve created. By creating lists, you are helping your own SEO and that of the people you find most influential, which can in turn increase your followers. MarketingProfs recommends naming your lists using simple key words that are easy to search for. For example, you could have a list for fitness trainers, fitness gear and events.
4. Do an audit of the people you follow. Just like spring cleaning, updating your phone contacts and deleting Facebook friends that are no longer current, be sure to take care of your Twitter account.  Following people is not always a good thing in terms of SEO. If you follow more people than are following you, that is a ding against your SEO potential. Lopsided numbers can hurt you, “because to the search engines it looks like you benefit from others more than they benefit from you.” Make sure you are following relevant people that are likely to reciprocate the follow.
5. Follow accounts that everyone in your industry follows. Twitter makes suggestions to people about who to follow partially based on whom the person follows and who they in turn follow. If you want the suggestions to really work for you, follow big names for a particular industry. Using the fitness example, following Nike or a well-known trainer can be helpful. It will likely be difficult to get a reciprocal follow, but it will be a good source of content and help lend credibility to your Twitter account.
6. Eliminate the Twitter spam following you. Twitter spam is not only an annoyance, but can be detrimental to building the influence of your Twitter account. On the surface it looks nice to have those extra followers, but it can damage your social network and hurt your SEO. Search engines will often penalize accounts with spam links. If a large number of your followers are spam, your true followers will likely unfollow you and you can lose credibility. MarketingProfs recommends watching for Twitter accounts with no picture, bio, or tweets and those accounts that are only tweeting about their company’s products and services (i.e. broadcasting but not engaging with others). Typically from our Communiqué PR handle we don’t block followers that match this description, we only block those that tweet spam, so this was an interesting perspective.
7. Shorten your links. There are several free services that shorten links and allow you to see how many clicks your links get, such as http://bitly.com. By using free services like this, you can accumulate statistics on who clicks through your links and this information is helpful when you are trying to determine what content your followers find relevant.

By following these helpful suggestions, your organization can be positioned as an influential part of the Twitter community. However, it is also important to keep current. Some of these tips require attention on a regular basis. A well run Twitter account can help your organization be seen as an industry influencer. For PR purposes, this can help position you and your organization as a potential resource for stories.

For more information about the power of social media and if your company should invest, read our previous post on “Should Every Business Invest in Social Media?”