Blog

Follow @bluewebcreative

Twitter has obviously become a powerhouse in the social media arena, with its real-time conversation and community categorization capabilities. Twitter’s use of Hashtags allows for a quick grouping for content of interest. Something that has not gone unnoticed by search engine giant Google. Reportedly, Google will index a Tweet 45 seconds after publication. So how can your SEO research benefit from Twitter’s Hashtags? The following examples, taken from Twitter’s website, help illustrate how to use the Hashtags:

• People use the Hashtag symbol # before relevant keywords in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets to show more easily in Twitter Search.
• Clicking on a Hashtagged word in any message shows you all other Tweets in that category.
• Hashtags can occur anywhere in the Tweet.
• Hashtagged words that become very popular are often Trending Topics.

The following steps walk you through how to mine Twitter’s Hashtags in order to gain insights on what is relevant to a particular Hashtag and what people are talking about.

Step 1: How to find relevant Hashtags.

Use either http://search.twitter.com or http://twemes.com for finding relevant Hashtags by performing a search.

A huge benefit of using Twitters search option has to do with the Advanced Search options, to perform a query in other languages, places and dates.

Important to note: Hashtags do not contain spaces.

In the screenshot below, I used socialmedia to see what kind of results there might be.

In doing so, the results revealed trending topics and another, albeit obvious, Hashtag to use for sending a Tweet about this blog post of #seo. However, depending on what type of article or blog post one is writing, you can use a number of queries to see what might be a good fit.

Step 2: Trending

Now I use Hashtags.org, to view tweet volumes, along with a timeline for conversations posted to a Hashtag.

The screenshot below shows the trending over the past week for the #seo Hashtag. The peak trending will provide an idea of not only when conversations were at their highest, but when to target your Tweet timing.

Next: select the highest volume peeks in the chart to expose the top conversation for that day / hour.

Once you have selected a peak within the chart it will take you to Trendistic, which allows for you to review all conversations for that time frame.

Step 3: Create, optimize and link to in demand content

Based on the trending, post regularly to your twitter account in a timely manner that is in sync with user interest. Generate discussions and links to the content on your site that is relevant from your Twitter account.

In addition to, the gathered keyword data and trends are great indicators to what content you should create or link to as illustrated by the interest of your followers and the community.

Summary:

The above steps outline how to read the social cues as to when is the best time to publish content on your twitter account; in addition to, it provide insights as to what types of content users are interested in and Tweeting about.

By mining Twitter and observing social media trends, you augment your SEO efforts in both Google and Bing. As it has been observed, there is a growing trend in both engines with incorporating and displaying social conversation threads in their SERPs.

By optimizing and creating content based on high valued keywords and trending topics, you can become an authority in both the social and organic arena. You provide the content and links to topics or trends that matter to your users.