How To Use Twitter For Building Links
Twitter isn’t a link building service. In fact, aside from the one link you get in your 140-character limit bio, there isn’t a whole lot of potential for building links through Twitter. At least, not directly. However, there are some indirect methods for building links.
We’ve written about pinging your Twitter stream before. But what we haven’t talked about is how to use Twitter as link bait.
You want to build links to your website, right? Well, you have to promote it then and Twitter is a great way to promote your website. A GREAT way. Here’s one method you can use to get Twitter’s help in building inbound links to your website.
- Build up a massive Twitter following. There are several online tools available to help you find people with interests like yours. Whichever ones you decide to use, keep in mind that the more followers you have the more likely you are to get people retweeting your blog posts and linking to you from their blogs.
- Tweet your blog posts. Kind of a no-brainer, right? How are you going to build links to a site if no one knows about it? Use a Tweet/Retweet plugin for WordPress if you have a WP blog. Also, use Twitter Tools or another similar plugin so that your blog posts are automatically Twittered when they post. Bottom line, get your blog posts on Twitter where your massive follower list will see it.
- Build relationships with your followers. Tweet their blogs posts and retweet their messages. They will reciprocate. Also, send @replies and get people to talking. Once they realize you are a real human being and you have a personality, they will read your blog posts, tweet them, and link to you from their blogs.
- Use Tweetlater to retweet awesome blog posts a couple of weeks out. Just when the online passion has died down you can resurrect again with a carefully placed tweet when your followers least expect it.
- Bookmark it. Twittley is a social bookmarking service that automatically sends a tweet when you bookmark a page. Also, whenever someone else votes for your submissions, Twittley will send out a retweet. And since it is a fairly new service, you can virtually get in on the ground floor and building your reputation before the competition does.
- Build content worth linking to. Really, this one should be the first item on the list. You can do all of the other stuff here and never get a link back if your content isn’t link worthy. The No. 1 way to ensure you get a link is to make your content worthy of links.
Twitter is a great tool for promotion. It won’t provide the links for you, but you can use Twitter to promote your great content and your followers will link to the really good stuff.
25 Responses to “How To Use Twitter For Building Links”
The Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Journal is Written by SEO Expert:
Nick Stamoulis
Tel - 781-999-1222
nick@brickmarketing.com
Brick Marketing - SEO Company
Agree with you that twitter is a great way to get a ton of traffic to our sites.
But I think the key is to get the right TYPE of followers rather than a ton of followers
@Niche – This is very important! Getting the right type of followers is very important!
The right thing need to do is to search for relevant followers rather for searching non relevant one.
@Pankaj Sonkusre – Exactly, relevancy is always very important!
It’s good to see a list about how Twitter can be used, so many people say to me “but I still don’t get it”. This article explains nicely how useful it is.
@Affiliate Management – Thanks, it is funny to hear people say
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“I don’t get it”
nick mate great post, will have to get around to using that tweetlater function, currently just using tweet most items once, but is suitable to driving traffic to some of my blog posts.
thank you
I can’t tell you how many things I “did not get” when they started, like having a blog rather than a website! Some things just need to be experienced to understand AND once someone gets a lead from Twitter, they never question it again..:)
Thanks for you information its really informatics
@david – Thanks for the kind words and reading…I hope it works well for you!
@Tara Jacobsen – That is so true, once a client sees the value and benefits of Twitter first hand, they will never question it!
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Hello Nick, Thanx for sharing your list about how Twitter can be used, and I as a young marketer appreciate this useful information, and has already began to implement these tools to progress my getting the right type of followers on twitter. So thanks again for sharing your experience and knowledge on this particular subject.
@James Allen Pauley-Barker – Thanks for reading, hopefully things go well for you…best of luck with your online efforts!
Great Post Nick. Twitter is definitely a great way to get traffic and keep a group of like-minded people following along. Twittering is definitely fun, and there is benefit once you start gaining friends/following, and begin contributing.
@Frank – Thanks, I think Twitter is much like many other social sites, you get out what you put in!
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I am still struggling with what to do with Twitter and this article is great for giving ideas, many thanks.
@Liz – Thanks for reading, best of luck using Twitter!
building a loyal following is much better than having a huge following of people who follow you back automatically. I doubt they even read your tweets. This is more important now since Twitter clients like TweetDeck lets you group your followers.
@Nishadha – Thanks for reading and mentioning TweetDeck!
I have read your article but I am still a little left in the dark on what kind of content to build on like you say newsworthy is that like the stuff that people want to know like celebrity news?
Or content relating to my website and my Audio book about a Super Ninja that fights terrorism in the USA?
What is the sure fire content that I should be building on on my new blog on Twitter to get Audio book sales online?
@Reg D. Lyons – Thanks for reading and your comment.
I would recommend that you test building different relevant Twitter content that fits into the audiences of your audio book product…
Nishadia, I was coming here to say exactly what you just said. Like minds think great or great minds thing alike or something.
It’s like link building. people are still out there telling you that you need thousands of links to rank well. You need quality links not quantity.
With twitter, it’s who follows you and who you follow that count, not how many followers you have.
@Chris McElroy – Very true, quality really matters with Twitter followers!
Great, practical tips. I hadn’t heard of Twittely before. Thanks for this writeup Nick!
@Don Campbell – Thanks for reading…it seems there is a new Twitter tool launching almost daily…:)
Thanks, it is a great overview. I especially like the idea of using Twitley that allows you to automatically tweet your bookmarked pages. Including a link to some of your most interesting blog posts is also key, I fully agree.