Dear readers,

In my recent research into Twitter (and working to learn Facebook better) I’ve discovered that Twitter and Facebook can help with your SEO (search engine optimization).

It looks like the search engines are actually paying attention to social signals.  One article I read recently (and I lost the link so I apologize)…. The article said that because the search engines have relied so heavily on keyword links that they realize this is a flaw in their ranking system.  Since a large portion of your web sites ranking relies on the keyword links coming to it… it leaves the search engines open to manipulation by spammers.

One of the methods as outlined in this article at Search Engine Land is that the search engines are now looking at Twitter and Facebook.   It looks like they’re looking at links posted on these sites and links that are retweeted and liked.  These links will get a little bit more consideration than links that don’t tweeted or liked.

It also looks like the search engines are also looking at your personal authority. You might call it a “social rank”. You have a Page Rank which is a measure of the authority of your site on a given topic, you might also get a social rank which is the measure of your authority on Twitter or Facebook.  I believe Google called it “author authority”.  I guess that means they’re going to look at factors like how many followers you have, vs. how many you follow. They might take into consideration other factors like how often you tweet.  I do think it is safe to say now is the time to use some of the twitter resources to begin to un-follow people.  It’s also important to build your followers.

Anecdotally: If you run Google alerts you can see that many of the alerts you’ll get relate to the social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Again some of this information is speculative.  Some of it is anecdotal. Some of it comes from discussions with other experts or even the search engines themselves.

I hope you guys can see why I’ve been talking so much about Twitter It looks like Twitter is becoming more and more important. I think one reason is because someone can measure your Twitter authority easier than they can measure your Facebook authority.  I think it’s safe to say both are important though (and more important than I thought 3 weeks ago!)

And if this doesn’t make sense…. leave a comment and ask some questions. I’m glad to help. Sometimes I take for granted what you may or may not know

- Ben Fitts

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MLM Training > Home Business Blogs > Do Twitter and Facebook help with SEO?