Twitter’s Role in Social Search:
Social networks like Twitter and Facebook change the game for search engines because they introduce additional signals that can be used for ranking content. Google and Bing both have deals with Twitter to include Twitter messages in their search results. Because they have access to Twitter‘s data, this also means that they can use information from Twitter to help better rank websites. This is the first round of what is known as social search.

Social search refers to search engines using signals such as the number of social media shares of a link to determine how that link ranks for a given keyword. Social media reach matters now more than ever, and the kicker is that it is only going to get more important. Yes, Twitter is a powerful social media platform, but it is also a key to the future success of organic search marketing. Building reach on Twitter through sharing great content, contests, and leveraging offline promotional efforts will not only increase traffic back to your website but will also send valuable signals to search engines.

3 Simple Ways to Optimize Tweets for Social Search

1.

Use SEO keywords. This may seem like a simple step, but few companies take the time to think about the keyword focus of their tweets. Not only is focus important, but so is integration. You should have a keyword strategy as part of your search engine optimization strategy. It is important to integrate these keywords not just in your website and blog content, but also into your tweets. 2.

Ask for retweets.

Search engines are looking to see what content spreads through social media, because that can often be a strong measure of credibility of the web page linked to within the tweet. HubSpot‘s Social Media Scientist Dan Zarrella has conducted some research that shows that one way to get your tweets to spread is to, within the tweet, simply ask your followers to retweet the message. These types of tweets generate 4x more retweets. 3.

Write awesome blog post titles.

Connecting your blog to your Twitter account helps to provide a boost of timely and interesting content shares on Twitter. Your business blog is an important tool for attracting new visitors to your blog. Spreading blog posts through Twitter will help boost traffic from Twitter and search engines.